Listen: Chris Witts presents Morning Devotions.
By Chris WittsWednesday 17 Nov 2021Morning Devotions with Chris WittsDevotionsReading Time: 5 minutes
In Part 1, I was talking about repairing shattered confidence. You know, we work hard at being accepted by others. We might buy things or wear things, we join groups, so that we feel accepted.
That’s for the benefit of being accepted by others. When you’re a kid, did you ever take a foolish dare, because you wanted to be accepted?—I dare you to do this, says a kid, and then you can be part of our game. Sometimes, you know, we’d do anything to be accepted into the peer group.
But what does God say about me?
God says I am acceptable
Romans 15:7 says, “…Christ has accepted you.” You can’t accept yourself until you realise that you’ve been accepted by him. God has accepted you unconditionally. God loves me unconditionally. He accepts me for who I am.
In Psalm 27:10 the Psalmist observes, “Even if my mother and father forsake me, the Lord will receive me.”
Maybe you grew up with unpleasable parents. They were perfectionists. No matter how much you tried, you couldn’t get their approval. If you got B’s, they wanted A’s. If you got A’s, they wanted A+’s. No matter what you did it was never, never good enough.
Maybe even today you’re trying to earn their love and prove yourself and earn their approval. But you don’t need it. You don’t need their approval to be happy. What a relief that is when you understand it. There are several billion people in the world. Who cares if two people don’t approve of everything you do? Why focus on those two? Find somebody else who does approve.
So what does God say about me? He says I’m acceptable.
God says I am valuable
Luke 12:24 says, “…God feeds the birds. And you are far more valuable to him than any birds!”
God says, You are precious to me. I am more than acceptable, I am valuable. I am worth something. I’m significant. In Isaiah 43:4 God says, ‘You are precious to me.”
How much are you worth? I’m not talking about money. We confuse self-worth with net worth. They are very different. Your value has nothing to do with your valuables. How much are you worth? You are priceless.
Jesus thought this was so important that he took a whole chapter of the Bible to talk about it. In Luke 15, Jesus tells three stories, The Lost Son, The Lost Coin, and The Lost Sheep. It’s the same punch line in each story. He says, You matter! You matter to God. You are valuable. God says I am acceptable because he loves me and, in Christ, he has accepted me. God says I am valuable.
God says I’m lovable
That’s what God says about you. He says you’re lovable. This is so important because you can’t love anybody else until you feel lovable. The Bible says, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” If you don’t feel lovable, you can’t love anybody else. It’s important to feel loved and lovable.
Isaiah 54:10 says, “The mountains and hills may crumble, but my love for you will never end, so says the Lord who loves you.”
God loves you. It says a couple things about that love:
- He loves you consistently.
- He loves you unconditionally.
He is not fickle. He doesn’t love you one day and not the next. He doesn’t love you on your good days and not on your bad days.
Some people grew up with conditional love. We all did because we’re all human beings. One lady said, Growing up, I didn’t know whether I was going to be hugged or slugged. My parents were so fickle. God isn’t like that.
He says I will always love you and it will never end and it is unconditional. You don’t earn it. It’s not, I love you if…, which is the way we grew up:
- I love you if you’re good.
- I love you if you do these things.
- I love you because you look this way or you do these things or you give me pleasure.
What if you stopped the condition? Then all of a sudden you’re not loved anymore. And that’s why there are a lot of divorces today. Marriages, for the most part, are built on conditional love. When the condition stops, the relationship falls apart. But God says, I don’t love you like that. He says, I love you consistently and I love you unconditionally.
You never have to wake up in the morning and say, God, are you going to love me today? Did I read my Bible enough? Did I pray enough? Did I talk to somebody enough about the Lord? God, are you going to love me today? You never have to ask that.
He loves you consistently no matter who you are or what you do. That’s the kind of love God has. What is the result when you really realise that? Daniel 10:19 says, “God loves you, so don’t let anything worry you or frighten you.”
God says I am acceptable, I am valuable and I am lovable. When you do that then you don’t have to worry or be frightened about anything.
God says I am forgivable
Aren’t you glad for that one? None of us is perfect and we need forgiveness. Isaiah 43:25 says, “I am the God who forgives your sins and I do this because of who I am and I will not hold your sins against you.” What a great verse! He doesn’t hold our sins against us. Once they are confessed, God does not hold a grudge. When we’ve confessed our sins to God, it’s all forgiven and forgotten and he doesn’t even bring up the past. So why don’t you stop bringing up the past? He’s not going to bring it up anymore.
Ephesians 1:4 (Living Bible) says, “…through what Christ would do for us; he decided then to make us holy in his eyes without a single fault—we who stand before him covered with his love.” Is that good news? Do you realise that when God looks at you, he sees you through Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ on the cross, paid for all of your sins so that you’re forgiven, they’re forgotten.
God says he looks at you as without a fault—faultless, covered with his love. Does that change your opinion of God? Does that make it a little bit easier to relate to him?
That’s why becoming a Christian is such good news, because I give him all my life—the good, the bad, the ugly. He takes it and he forgives it. He gives us a new chance and says, Now I see you without a single fault. You stand before me covered with my love.
When God made you, he knew in advance the worst thing you would ever do. And he still loved you. He knows all the things you’re going to do in the next ten years or however long you live. He still loves you! The good news is that Jesus Christ has wiped out my sins.