Did you ever make your own valentines?
Most of them are crafted from construction paper, cute puns, and Spider-Man stickers.
But there’s always that one.
It’s cut from the good paper, painstakingly written, dripping with glitter, and trimmed in real lace. You spend hours creating it, trying to make it absolutely perfect.
It has to be because it’s for the person you can’t stop thinking and talking about, the person who will certainly fall in love with you the moment they see your beautiful (paper) heart.
This never works, by the way. No one has ever fallen in love over a fancy valentine, primarily because a real heart doesn’t match up to the glory you can fabricate from paper and glue.
Yet we try it with God all the time.
We take our wounded, sinful, everyday heart and dress it up in shiny praises or a stiff upper lip or striving to change before we’ll present it to God. We try to win His affection with glitter and sweet words.
But you don’t have to win Him over. He’s loved you since before the foundation of the world! We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). All He wants is your true heart, not one you’ve handcrafted to entice Him.
Lay down the scissors and the lace, the works and the pretense, and let Him love you as you truly are.
This post originally appeared on Joyful Life Magazine! Follow them for daily devotional goodness.