I am sick to death of having insecurities. Aren’t you? As women there are so many standards thrown our way every single day. We need to be young enough, thin enough, strong enough, gentle enough. Well, enough is enough!

The onslaught isn’t just upon us either; it’s upon our children. The amount of pressure heaped upon kids these days is untenable. Teenage girls are living in the era of selfies and filters and lives lived online, open to brutal scrutiny. Just like us, they need to learn whose voice to listen to.

It’s said that the ground before the cross is level. I love that! It means that when Jesus died on that terrible cross, He destroyed every boundary, every caste system, every point of division we humans have constructed. Because of the cross, we are all equal in God’s sight. Before, there was Jew and Greek and male and female and slave and free (Galatians 3:28), but now there is simply Christ and in Him we are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Every division, every point of human judgment becomes meaningless in light of the fact that every one of us has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and every one of us is utterly reliant on Jesus as our Savior – whether we acknowledge it or not.

As redeemed believers, we get to decide whose perspective we embrace.

Do I listen to the voices of the world, which tell me all the ways in which I fall short? Those voices are loud and it’s easy to hear them. As an adult (and especially as a mom) I need to realize that young people look to me and the example I set in this.

Or do I listen to the voice of my Savior, Who, through His word, tells me that I am made in His image (Genesis 1:27), fearfully and wonderfully (Psalm 139), and that I am precious and honored in His sight (Isaiah 43:4).

The ground before the cross is level. It’s up to us to embrace that!