Get the appScrap the Shame: Embracing What God Actually Thinks of YouSample
Day 3: The Truest Thing About You
The truest thing about you is that you are deeply loved.
Read that again.
The truest thing about you is that you are deeply loved.
Do you believe those words?
God knows absolutely everything about you. Even the things you wouldn’t want Him to know. And yet, His posture towards you is one of love. There has never been a moment where God has forgotten you or overlooked you or thought badly of you.
A church leader, Paul, wrote a letter to a church in Rome with these words: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
He’s saying that there is nothing you could do that could make God stop loving you.
Your identity is not marred by shame; your identity is formed by love.
Jesus tells a story in the book of Luke, about a son who took his father’s money — that was supposed to be his inheritance — and ran away. Sometimes we miss it in translation, but it would have been an incredibly offensive thing to do. The son was essentially telling his dad he wished he were dead. The son spent all the money, getting drunk and sleeping around.
He ended up running out of money and food. After a while, he realized he would be better off as a servant in his dad’s house. He decided to try to go home.
His dad saw him from a distance and started to run towards him. He hugged him and kissed him and welcomed him home. The son would’ve been shocked, he didn’t deserve it.
But this story is not about the son’s shame, it’s about the father’s love.
That’s true for your story, too. God does not look at you ashamed. He looks at you with eyes full of love. God is the Father running towards you with open arms, wanting to welcome you back home.
The truest thing about you is that you are deeply loved.
Go deeper with this video from our friends at BibleProject:
About this Plan
The feeling might be familiar: the flush of embarrassment flooding your body, maybe a pit in your stomach, or your shoulders feeling tense. Every part of you wants to run away or hide. The feeling is called shame, and it’s not from God. So what do we do with shame? What does God actually think of us? And how can we embrace who we truly are? Join Change Conference in this 5-day devotional where we'll learn to scrap the shame and embrace how God sees us and who He's calling us to be.
More
