Hope For The HopelessSample

You Matter!

Sometimes it begins to feel like the universe has grown hostile toward my very existence. I am uprooted and drifting. I can’t see hope in this sevenfold horror of outer darkness.

Yes, even an Optimisfit gets the blues now and then.

The worst part for me is feeling alone. When I’m alone with my thoughts, I find that I don’t really like the company. There is a reason that solitary confinement is considered the fiercest punishment. I hate being alone in my own head.

What makes it worse is when everyone else seems to be having a great time. When I see everyone else’s picture-perfect lives and lovey-dovey Facebook posts and Instagrams, I stumble around filled with envy and cynicism.

Holidays and days like Valentine’s can make this feeling even worse.

The only cure I have found for this kind of despair is to rethink what Love is really all about.

It isn’t just about heart-shaped boxes of chocolates and bouquets of flowers. It isn’t just about finding that perfect someone who completes you or at least fills in the loneliness gap.

Because, ultimately, no person can really be the answer for our need for love…except the One who invented it.

The Prime Mover of the universe is Love.

God loves me completely and obsessively. Not for who I might be someday, but for who I am today.

Another beloved person might seem to fill the void of our need for love, but it never really holds up. Only He can really fill and fulfill me.

There is no character in any of Nicholas Sparks’ romantic novels who loves with the kind of passion that God feels toward me. Romans 8 tells me that nothing can separate me from His love. Nothing.

Not my mistakes. Not my lousy attitudes. Not my repeated failures and doubts. Not the dumb stuff I will probably do about ten minutes from now.

He loves me more than I can possibly understand and more fully than I can possibly feel.

I am the recipient of the greatest love the universe has ever known. And so are you.

You matter to God.

He knows the brokenness in your heart. None of your pain has gone unnoticed.

The Bible contains about 900 references to the heart, and when the heart speaks, it isn’t just referring to the tough little muscle that pumps your blood. It speaks of the sum and seat and center of who you are—the nexus of your emotional existence. And the idea of the broken heart? It can be traced all the way back to ancient Hebrew literature. In fact, the Bible invented the phrase “a broken heart”!

God wants to heal your broken heart.

And at the same time He wants to use your brokenness to heal others.

The scars you share with others can become lighthouses to warn those headed toward the same rocks that nearly shipwrecked you.

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If you enjoyed these devotions from Optimisfits by Ben Courson, and are ready to join the squad of misfits igniting hope in the world, visit: https://amzn.to/2Fl8z30