Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we persuade our hearts to be faithful: if our hearts look down on us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he looks at everything. (1 John 3:16-22)

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God: "What you give to others is often flawed and incomplete, but it is also beautiful, wonderful, and helpful."

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I struggle with feeling bad because I fall short of God’s wonderfulness. Even though God showers me with love every day, I don't feel good about receiving it because I am so (fill in the blank): faithless, worldly, fearful, inadequate, generally a failure. But the Bible says that we look down on ourselves because we only see what is right in front of us. God sees the bigger picture. He turns our efforts into good in ways that we can't fathom. If we are trying to love God and other people, we can set our hearts at rest no matter how we feel.  Be at peace in him even if you are full of doubt about yourself.

 

God: "Surely you don't think it's a coincidence that you're going through all of this drama just when you're starting to minister to others…”

 

God: "There's no point in trying so hard to do the right thing that it makes you not want to do anything at all. Lighten up!"