The Struggle to Accept God’s Love
I struggled with accepting God’s love for over a decade. I had no doubt that God loved sinners so much that he would send his Son to die for them.
But I did doubt that he could love me that way.
Now, if a friend were having doubts, I could spout out a dozen verses about why they should have confidence in the love of God. There was no doubt in my mind that God would send his Son to die for them, but I could not accept it for myself.
If this sounds like you, know you are not alone. Keep reading, and I’ll show you how I began to truly believe that God could love someone like me.
Why Do I Doubt My Salvation?
Have you ever bought snacks from a vending machine using quarters? You slide the first one in with a scrape, plunk. The second one goes in scrape, plunk. But when you slide in the third one, there’s just a scrape… and silence.
You look up at the screen and it says you’ve only got fifty cents, so you push the machine a little. You try to jiggle in side to side, but nothing happens. The coin just won’t drop.
This is what happens with us when we know the gospel, but cannot enjoy the peace it truly brings. The good news that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son to bring eternal life to sinners who believe is firmly implanted in our minds. But for some reason, that truth stays up there and refuses to plunk down into our hearts.
I knew the gospel message thoroughly the whole time I doubted, but I needed something to jar me hard enough to knock the quarter loose.
Here is what jarred it loose for me.
You Cannot Doubt Your Worthiness Without Doubting God
The Good News we read in the Bible is this:
God promises forgiveness of sins for all who put their faith in Jesus (Acts 10:43).
Our faith can look like proclaiming and believing that Jesus is the Lord—the Son of God who died and was raised for the forgiveness of sins (1 John 4:15; Romans 10:9).
If you believe those two things above, I want you to ask yourself these two questions:
- Is God a liar?
- Is Jesus too weak to handle your sin?
The fact of the matter is this, if you believe what the Bible tells us about salvation but still doubt that God can love you, you are implicitly approving of one or both of those ideas.
Either God is not going to honor his word to save you even though you truly believe Jesus is the Son of God who brings salvation into the world. That would make God a liar.
Or for some reason, the work of salvation that Jesus performed is not big enough to handle your sins. He is not righteous/holy/pure enough. He is not strong enough.
If you believe the gospel message, then those are the only possibilities available for those who doubt God’s love. I hope that is a jarring realization.
And with that came one more kick to my vending machine head.
My Inability to Accept God’s Love Is Due to a Sneaky Form of Pride
I spent over a decade of my life in this doubt because I was addicted to a feeling that I thought was humility.
I thought that my sin was so great that God could not love someone like me. For some twisted reason, it seemed right to feel that way. Like I was humble and lowly to acknowledge my lack of acceptance.
What I didn’t realize was that this was not humility. It was self-pity. Self-pity feels so much like humility in the moment it is easy to be deceived. In reality, it’s just pride in a different hat.
In self-pity, we cannot stop thinking about ourselves. Our pain is front of mind. I was not weeping in my bed because others didn’t know God. I wept for myself. I was not praising God for his glorious might in salvation. I was pleading with him for the thousandth time to do what he already promised to do.
I was so obsessed with myself that I could not focus on giving God praise and showing my neighbor love.
How to Develop Trust in God
For me, learning to trust God completely took some corrective thinking. After realizing that my doubts in myself reflected doubt in God, I had to ask myself those questions whenever doubts arose.
Is God a liar? Is Jesus too weak to handle my sins?
Phrasing it like that allowed me to confidently answer “NO!” And if I firmly believed that, then there was no room for me to be excluded.
For me, doubting my salvation was such an ingrained pattern that I had to repeat those questions for a long time. Though I still use them now to praise God. When I pray to him, I thank him that he is ever true. I praise Jesus for his perfect righteousness and power—far greater than me and my sin.
And now I can recognize my self-pity a little better. That twisted high I get from setting myself apart—even if it is lower than everyone else.
It is not admirable to hate yourself. You should never hate someone that God loves.
I had to keep reminding myself that my inability to accept God’s love was not humility, but rather an exaltation of my own sin above the power and love of God.
Accept Your Unworthiness to Accept the Worthiness of Christ
Friends, you feel unworthy of God’s love because you are unworthy—in and of yourself. That is the entire beauty of the gospel message! Your worthiness does not play into the equation AT ALL.
It was God who loved us while we were still sinners—unworthy. And by his Son, he makes us worthy. Every ounce of worthiness comes from Jesus and is applied to us in salvation.
By holding on to the idea that you can out-sin God or that you must reach a level of worthiness in order to be loved by God, you are destroying the joy of salvation. Accept your unworthiness. You are not good enough. But God loves you anyway. In fact he loves you so much that he sent his perfect Son to save you because you are unworthy.
It is my hope for you that the quarter finally drops, so that you can finally live in the joy of the gospel.
For further reading, check out The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges.
