Day 37

Perhaps the greatest barrier we put between us and intimacy with God is self-rejection. When we reject ourselves we are rejecting the image of God that is stamped on us—we are rejecting the claim of Jesus Christ that calls us his “workmanship” (Ephesians 2:10 NKJV). When we reject ourselves we are emptying the cross of it power and the tomb of its promise.

Rejecting ourselves puts us in league with our enemy. We are never more in agreement with the devil than when we reject ourselves, and nothing slams the door in the face of God’s blessing and protection and plan like self-rejection does. Self-rejection is in essence God-rejection and it is perhaps the most effective lie of the enemy as he attempts to keep us in bondage and brokenness.

“The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, ‘Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody.’ ...[My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved.’ Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”

—Henri J.M. Nouwen

The sacred voice of God has a name for you: Beloved. You are loved.

This is the Truth that makes the devil sweat.

To believe that we are wholly loved, wholly accepted and made clean by the blood of Jesus is the most powerful act of faith in the world. This is the faith that moves mountains (Matthew 17:20). To live, freely and lightly in the knowledge that God knows us fully and accepts us fully, unlocks that dark prison inside us where we have been languishing, tied up in chains. We hold the keys to those chains, to that prison— we’ve held them all along but refused to use them.

“Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.”

—Frederick Buechner

God has a name for you: Beloved.

You are loved you are loved you are loved