You Always Have and Do Matter

Dear one — I hear the fears running through your mind, I feel the iron grip that your strongholds have on you. It hurts, beloved. It hurts so much, I know. Those words, they cut so deep and the wound just does not heal. That person having left and gone, it hurts and your soul echoes with the condemnation that you could have done something more. This silence, it shouts that you are not worthy and you cannot help but agree.

But that is not the truth, beloved.

Your spouse walking away? Your friend telling you she no longer wants to be in contact with you? Your child leaving with all that bent anger, walking away from you and the Lord? Your parent telling you once again that you are not enough, that you will never be enough? Your sibling refusing to talk to you at all, to take your calls? Your church family wounding you every time you go to church?

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:6-7)

That is not the truth, beloved. You are not what these people, what these circumstances deem you to be. Though it feels real, it is not the reality. Because you matter. Oh beloved, you still matter. You are still loved.

I know this moment, these circumstances do not leave you feeling like you are loved, by anyone at all. It feels like you do not matter anymore. But that is not the truth, my friend. You are loved by a good Father, One who gave His everything to save your heart. You are loved by the God With Us, by Him who knows your heart inside out and decides to stay. You are loved by the Almighty God, who parts the Red Sea to make a way where there is no way.

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

This is not the end, beloved. You are loved. You are a chosen vessel of God. You are being refined for now, for a glorious purpose coming along the way as you bring glory to God. You are His masterpiece, beautifully and wonderfully made, and your story is being written like the great poem it is. The Lord is not done with you yet, He is creating beauty out of ashes and it will all become something glorious.

And I know, it is not easy to leave these things behind, to let go of all this that feels so real because the pain is real, because the hurt is written in the scars of your heart and because you carry the weight of it all on your shoulders. But in this moment, for this small period of time — let these words of truth be engraved on your heart: you still matter. You are loved. You belong. You have been chosen.

Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

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