Fully Loved

In a time of prayer with a friend, we got a sense that God wanted us to go deeper. We asked Jesus what it was he wanted to show us. I saw my head resting on the kitchen table the morning after my daddy left us. Jesus showed me a thermometer. The mercury was dropping as I cried. That was how I felt about my worth in that moment. It dropped to half. If my daddy didn’t love me enough to stay, then I was not worth very much. That lie was lodged in my heart and I had been living with it ever since.

My friend laid her hand on my shoulder and asked Jesus to fill me with the truth of his love for me. The truth of my worth as God sees it. What God declares truth is true indeed. I watched in my imagination as the mercury rose to full. To this day, when I am tempted to believe the lie of shame, I remember that thermometer rising to full.

Perhaps that is what struck David in the middle of Psalm 139. With all his weaknesses and sin, with all the pain he had caused and all that had been done to him, God still called him wanted. God called him worthy. God called him beloved.

This is very good news indeed.

Lisa Sharon Harper is the author of The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right along with several other books. A sought-after speaker, she is also the chief church engagement officer at Sojourners. Content excerpted from The Very Good Gospel by Lisa Sharon Harper Copyright © 2016 by Lisa Sharon Harper. Excerpted by permission of WaterBrook, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.