How significant are you? - New Evangelizers

Disappointment crept into my heart when I failed to land a plum writing assignment. This came after I visualized my writing glorifying God and my work becoming significant. I thought that would help me become significant. It got me thinking about how we become significant and how we judge the significance of others in our life.

I remember hearing someone say, “The more you love, the more significant you become.” God is Love, and he is huge compared to me. Not because he is bigger, stronger and more powerful, but because he gave his Son for love of me.

How significant is God in your life?

Measure God’s importance to you by how much he loves you. Can you measure God’s infinite love for humanity and specifically for you? The cross points out how much.

Don’t wait until you grow into that charming, lovable person that you visualize everyone can love. God created you the person you are right now, his beloved child. You are already that lovable person because he already loves you unconditionally. You can’t earn God’s love by trying to acquire more holiness. You can only allow his holiness to come forth through all the clutter of your fears and self-expectations by embracing his love for you.

How significant are you?

Jesus took a child in his arms and taught us that the smaller, more child-like we make ourselves, the greater we make ourselves. Humility is what he wants from us, and he shows us how.

He leads by example. In the Incarnation, he made himself so small, so insignificant compared to his eternal power and glory, that he became like us. He humbled himself so that we could become great. What makes us significant is how God loves us. What makes us unforgettable is how we love others.

The more we give away God’s love, the more significant we become. That’s because the more we love, the more we can love, not on our own, but with the love of God. So how do we become significant? By allowing God to love us to overflowing. Our greatness comes when we allow God’s love to overflow from our hearts.
Let’s not insist that everyone must love us before we can love them. Let them respond to the love of God we extend to them and see what happens. Those who reject us, reject God. But what if God’s love persists through us and the person responds in love? Then we have won a great victory for God’s kingdom, with the everlasting consequence of becoming significant in his kingdom.

Let God layer it on!

God has so much to give us of his life, so much to reveal to us of his many-faceted love for us. We can only process so much of that revelation at a time — layer by deep layer — by staying close to him.
Prayer, Eucharist, Adoration and devotions help us find his presence, stay in his embrace and praise him for the new awareness of his life and love in us. We can let him whisper to us through prayer, circumstances and relationships as he reveals himself and his ways of loving to us.

The more we experience his mighty power in us the more he can accomplish through us. The more we can love with his love, the more significant we become to others and the less we care how important we are.
Are you becoming more significant to others by letting God’s love overflow from within you?

(© 2015 Nancy H C Ward)

Nancy Ward

Nancy HC Ward, author of Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story, was once a shy convert. She has spent decades writing about conversion, Christian community, and the Catholic faith. After earning a journalism degree, she worked for many years for the Texas Catholic (newspaper of the Diocese of Dallas) and the Archbishop Sheen Center for Evangelization, and later began her own editing service. An active member of the Catholic Writers Guild and a regular contributor to a number of high-profile Catholic publications online, she also has a busy blog on spirituality called Joy Alive.net. She’s a contributing author to The Catholic Mom’s Prayer Companion. Now, through her Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story workshops, retreats, book, and DVD, she shares her conversion story at Catholic parishes and conferences, equipping others to share their own stories.