Daily Hope with Rick Warren 28th December 2024, Saturday Devotional Message
How to Know What God Thinks of You
By Rick Warren
“We know that God loves you and has chosen you to be his own.” 1 Thessalonians 1:4 (GNT)
If you want to live with hope for the rest of your life, no matter what happens to you, you must first anchor your identity in what God says about you. It will never work if you try to base your identity on what other people say about you or even what you say about yourself.
The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 1:4, “We know that God loves you and has chosen you to be his own” (GNT).
I don’t need to know what other people say about you, because I know that what really matters is what God says about you. And the Bible says God loves you and has chosen you!
God says you are valuable and you are acceptable. Other people may not accept you, and other people may say you’re not lovable. But God accepts you and loves you just the way you are—and he loves you too much to let you stay that way.
Do you want to know how much God loves you? Just look to the cross. That’s where Jesus stretched out his arms and said, “I love you this much. I’d rather die than live without you. I love you so much, it hurts. You are worth dying for.”
Jesus is the only person who will have scars in heaven. You won’t have any, but the scars of the cross will be on Christ as reminders for eternity of how much he loves you.
Psychology has discovered that your self-worth tends to be based on what you think the most important people in your life think about you.
I highly recommend that you make Jesus Christ the most important person in your life because what he says about you matters much more than what anybody else says about you.
You don’t have to worry about anyone else’s opinion of you anymore. You can hope in God’s promises of how he feels about you: You are valued, you are accepted, and you are loved.
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