We often look inward or outward for our own self-worth. Instead, we should look upward to the One who created us and loves us. You are worth it!
I want to talk to you. Specifically you. A lot of stuff rolls around in that brain of yours, and even more courses through your heart. You have doubts. You need affirmation, or reassurance, or comfort.
People Have Hurt You
You have a strong heart, but it is fragile. A friend has wounded you with her words too many times without apology. Your husband puts his career or his hobby ahead of your relationship. A boss has humiliated you in a team meeting. A stranger made derogatory comments about your body.
Your child said that she wished you were not her mom. Leaders at church overlook your contributions on a regular basis. An old boyfriend threatened you. An acquaintance hit you–someone who should have been safe. Someone you trusted stole your right to consent right out from under you.
You Have Hurt Others
You know how you want others to treat you. Your intentions were right, but you have found yourself on the losing side of your own history too many times. Reprimanding your kids for their negative tone of voice while you yell at them.
You insulted your husband in retribution for the ways he hurt you. Canceled plans on a friend for the third time in a row. You told a friend someone else’s secret–and they found out that you did it. You missed an important deadline at work simply because you were unmotivated. Anger gained a foothold in you, and you pushed a colleague much harder than you intended, and they fell.
You Doubt Your Worth
As you sit in the midst of all the hurt you have inflicted and the hurt you have incurred, you wonder about your own value. You worked hard at school, and yet your job is not as important or high paying as you had envisioned. You have failed at every diet you have ever tried.
Other people have talents and accomplishments that hold so much more weight than your insignificant contributions and pursuits. If your relationship ended tomorrow, you could not imagine anyone else seeing you as valuable enough to love — certainly not for a lifetime. You feel mediocre, invisible, wholly insignificant.
So, How Can God Really Love YOU?
Once you have convinced yourself of this, it becomes really hard to believe with every fiber of your being that God can love YOU. Yes, as John tells us, we should:
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.
1 John 3:1, ESV
But, God loves everyone — which is good, and right — but it is easy to take that knowledge and turn it into a love that is such a corporate entity that it can easily pass over you as just one in the crowd. God sent Christ to die on the cross for us so that our sins were redeemed. But there are so many believers. Wouldn’t it be easy for God to overlook you? Love you, yes, but love everything about you? How could He when the math you’ve done does not add up to you being worthy of his intimate, individual love?
But, He Did Make You with Inherent Worth
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
Psalm 139:13-16, ESV
God didn’t make you like a manufacturing company makes little green soldier toys. He made you intimately. He formed you, knitted you together, wove you intricately, and He saw you. You weren’t one of many. He designed you to be uniquely you.
He loves you for who you exclusively are. Individually. He sent Jesus to be an example for you. He sent Jesus to the cross to pay for those very things you have done that you think make you unworthy because He loves you. You hold weight in His kingdom, in His eye, in His heart.
You cannot determine your worth by your own perception or allow the body of believers to assign you value. Don’t let the world tell you how much weight you hold. God has already made that determination. He designed you for a purpose, and you are living that out right now on this earth. Your battle scars and new wounds do not invalidate you as a person of Godly purpose. Your sins do not disqualify you. God loves you.
You.
God didn't make you like a manufacturing company makes little green soldier toys. He made you intimately. He formed you, knitted you together, wove you intricately, and He saw you. Click To Tweet