Identified As Worthy, Approved By God

“Many proclaim themselves loyal,

but who can find one worthy of trust.”

— Proverbs 20:6 (NRSV)

“Why am I such a failure?” “What is wrong with me that my parent(s) left me?” “How could my parent(s) expect so much of me and make me feel bad for not achieving what they wanted me to achieve?” “Why am I the black sheep?” “What must I do to be loved like my sibling?” “How do I create closeness in my relationship with my parent(s) when they are always distant to me?” “Why don’t they give me eye contact?”

These, and many more questions, haunt adult children scattered all over the earth.

Parents—as a genotype—proclaim themselves loyal, but all fail. All humans will fail us. But God never will. Even where our parents were marvellous, some things in childhood still did not sit well, and are rooted in our sense of lack, today.

Whenever we enter a process of psychological therapy we can always expect our childhoods to be explored and to be revealed as the source of our pain. It’s a humbling reality for parents and children alike.

Until we can wrestle with the fact that our parents were highly fallible—some to the extreme—we cannot venture forward to receive our necessary healing.

Growing an Identity of Impenetrable Worthiness

The best of identities of personality flourish with an instinctive worthiness.

But none of us, of ourselves, are worthy—not truthfully. But, of course, this is the best news; we have a Saviour who came to be perfection for us in order that he would die for our imperfections.

Still we cannot escape the issues surrounding our felt sense of unworthiness.

Sometimes, no matter how much we know God loves us, we still struggle to accept this so-called unconditional love. We attempt to receive it, but our focus is consistently interrupted.

Of course, God understands. We have a Lord who understands, and accounts for, our fallibility better than we know.

Still we must come back to the fact that the only worthwhile approval is not of human making at all. Only in practicing the concept of our worthiness in God can we truly become the people of God the Lord has destined us to become.

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The root of unworthiness comes from hurts unreconciled from childhood. And yes, we all have them. We need God to heal us of those hurts. In God we have a path to worthiness, through Jesus’ love—the spread of his bloodied arms spanning the cross. It’s an impenetrable worthiness.

Impenetrable worthiness—true, lasting healing toward wholeness, in the Son’s name—is only available in God.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.