Trusting and Believing: Devotions From Time of GraceSample

Why Is It so Hard to Trust God?
Self-Hatred

Everybody has been bullied. Everybody has been pushed around, ridiculed, and mocked. People assume that those doing the putting down must feel powerful, but actually it’s the reverse. People who hurt other people really don’t like themselves much, and so they want to drag others down to their own level of emotional misery.

Honestly, though, we’d all have to admit that there are things about our own lives that we don’t like, and so we don’t like ourselves all that much either. The evil one wants us to think that we are worthless trash. He will use the meanness and cruelty of others, and our own weaknesses and failures, to make us loathe ourselves.

Here’s why we need God so much. We depend on God’s high opinion of us to give us a reason to believe not only in him but in ourselves again. Scripture says, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Imagine that! The Lord Jesus thinks you are so precious and valuable that he was willing to die for you in your messy state. He didn’t wait for you to clean yourself up first. He died so you could belong to him. If he thinks you’re valuable, then you must be valuable. If he thinks you’re worth dying for, then you must be precious indeed. If he sends his Holy Spirit to live within you, then you are not helpless. If he loves you, then you can love yourself again.