Do you often feel less than worthy of goodness, loving-Do you often feel less than worthy of goodness, loving-kindness, mercy, or even life itself? It is a miserable thing to labor through life feeling contemptible. I hope this prayerful contemplation persuades you to the truest truth and, like me, brings your spirit everlasting elation.
Truth: You and I, my friend, have an irrevocable claim to all of God’s love.
Abba, All my life, I was told I didn’t deserve Your love, mercy, and grace. I confess that for as long as I heard that equivocation, I believed it. It kept me far away. And when I pretended to come near, I made sure to stay out of reach and sight, so as not to presume upon Your good graces—especially as one so undeserving.
But lately, I’ve been musing that perhaps it is precisely because I deserve Your love that my soul requires it. How dare I irresistibly crave what I don’t deserve? How dare You let it be the noose from which my very life dangles? Yet, because You have time and again demonstrated that I am worth all of Your love—despite my repeated straying—I am daring to wager my whole heart on this golden thread.
The Chasm of Unworthiness
For a long time, I gazed at the caricatures of You painted by the world. They depicted a merciless, sadistic tyrant, reviled for cruel indifference to miserable wretches who hinged on Your mercy. This became my only knowledge of You. But from time to time, I’ve been struck with awe and wonder at the staggering goodness, mercies, marvels, and beauty in the world You made. I’ve found myself conflicted and convicted.
Perhaps You are not who they say You are. The mouths of men are like graves, ever murmuring decay. Therefore, I am inclined to suppress their slander and examine the evidence I suspect will point me to the truth. What if You are who You say You are, and I am who You say I am?
“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule…’”
There has been a rage within me for as long as I can remember—a hostile dissonance with the misrepresentations of false witnesses who obscured Your character. These deceptions were scrawled with criminal intent, painting sadistic portraits of You. It is no wonder Your children grind their teeth in terror or seek refuge in Sheol rather than run free as dearly beloved offspring may. But I would dare to believe that I am Your beloved, and thereby dance and prance like a dearly loved child knows how.
Your slanderers know that distorted identity is the most devastating crisis a person can suffer. Who we believe we are informs how we act and the ensuing consequences—for good or evil. Therefore, if our Maker is harsh, cruel, and unlovely, so are we. If our Maker is good, gentle, and kind, so are we.
Like many humans, my experience with my earthly makers nearly convinced me that my original Maker was cold and cruel. It was etched in my soul that I was unworthy of positive, life-giving words, help, or praise. Over the years, I sat under many sermons that weekly reinforced my undeserving nature, and my need to grovel for mercies, big and small. My soul raged against these lures until I was sure I would go mad with the conflict and turmoil. “Undeserving.” This word I have hated, and for so long not known why, until You opened my heart to see the chasm it breaches between us.
The Revelation of Worthiness
A friend once told me a bone-chilling ritual his father used to inflict on him and his siblings. Though they were dirt poor and starving, their father would occasionally buy meat, only to feed it to his dogs while his children watched in excruciating horror. Another friend sobbed her heart out as she shared how her mother abandoned her and her siblings to live out her ambitions and, as soon as they became of age, cast them out of her life forever. Cruel and conceited associations with earthly parents deeply confuse our sense of being and belonging, and therefore our worthiness. One of my greatest mental distresses has been reconciling the passion of worthiness I knew in my spirit with the resignation to unworthiness so many destructive words and actions marked on me. For a time, I believed obscurity was my lot in life. It’s taken my conceiving flesh of my flesh, in my own image, to lift the veil that was concealing Your truly wonderfully lovely heart.
From the moment the pregnancy test revealed the arrival of our baby, we felt the weight of devotion and sacrifice that a Maker who has long awaited the completion of what had been confined to dreams and concepts must feel. When I became a mother, the perplexity I’d felt about the doctrine of undeserving evaporated as I considered its absurdity against Christ’s probe: “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
Every day with our daughter revolves around seeking all the ways we can make her experience of this realm as excellent and fruitful as possible. Because she did not ask to be here. Because we decided to be like our Maker by engaging in the sacred act that let her be.
Thus, one afternoon, feeling spent after a hard morning, I fixed a cup of tea. A few sips in, I saw my little creature coming to me at full speed, chanting “milkisy, milkisy,” beaming with the obvious expectation of what is hers by merit: inexhaustible love, affection, and devotion. In this case, demonstrated by cheerfully scooping her up in my arms, dirty clothes and all, and bringing her to my breast for a sweet bonding moment.
As I looked down into her content eyes, my soul, in vehement exoneration, proclaimed emphatically: “Of course, I am deserving! You are my Maker. I am your child. I am deserving of Your steadfast love, affection, and devotion!”
In my mother tongue, the proverb states: ubyay’ikiboze arakirigata. This is a graphic portrait of the wild love an animal that births a rotten thing yet tenderly licks it, exerts. Even I, as wicked, defective, and sullied as I have been, and still get from time to time, You must love me, for I have come from You.
“Besides you, I have no other. Since the beginning, I was tethered to you, inseparable, dependent on you for my every resource. Should I now be severed ruthlessly from you and damned undeserving of that which I can obtain only from You, my Maker?”
The Gift of Deserving
It is not for want of trying that I conclude I can only obtain what I deserve from my Maker. I have sought out other sources, and for a time they seemed to suffice, but in the end they all proved to be putrid and broken cisterns incapable of quenching my great need and thirst.
“You have made me, and by that, I warrant your love, mercy, and grace. They are to my soul as breath to my lungs, which you also abundantly supply. You, my Lord, who gives breath so liberally to all Your creation, should You now withhold the essentials for their souls discriminately?”
In my new trust as mother, I was swiftly convicted to the fact that I tread along the delicate lifelines of love and truth. A love that relinquishes self-conceit to lay down my time, resources, attention, interests, and needs for my treasured trust. A truth that firmly corrects, rebukes, teaches, and trains up in righteousness.
On that glorious afternoon, my soul glimpsed God’s heart and felt a dark cloud lift, freeing my spirit to soar with joy in the most precious knowledge: I am deserving of all of Your love.
Even the one that burns with deadly wrath at the awful horrors of my disobedience and rebellion. And the one that is fiercely jealous when I turn to worthless things and dishonor You, leaving You no choice but to issue the verdict of death. But especially the One whose death in my place propitiates all wrath, covers a multitude of sins, and declares me deserving of eternal life dancing in everlasting arms, where the love lasts forever.
Deciding to forsake all other notions and choosing to live in the only way You’ve prescribed for reconciliation was the key to living in the knowledge of deserving Your love and thereby having my spirit restored from the bondage of striving, condemnation, and isolation to the freedoms of receiving, compassion, and communion.
While believing I was unworthy meant constant groveling and tediously straining to earn favor, praise, and affection, living in this knowledge has relieved me from striving. The knowledge that I am deserving of Perfect Love despite my messiness has also silenced the inner critic, transforming my judgment into empathy for myself and others. I am continually being emboldened to simply receive love and grace as the irrevocable gifts they are, and I’m stepping out of hiding into the light of true intimacy and communion, knowing there is nothing to hide and no need to pretend. Slowly but surely, my soul is reviving in on-and-off baby steps.
This kind of knowing is regenerating the foundation of my soul’s identity from one of shame to that of unwavering worth, making it possible for me to perceive and pursue the truly great life God designed for me to live!
May you also know that you are deserving of all of Abba’s steadfast love.
xoxo Nimi
Kingdom Purposed Daughter 
Leave a comment