As I sat at the table that evening with my five-year-old son, we played with every parent’s favorite toy…Play-Doh. Just like so many times before, he used all of his different tools to make various creations. First, it was a pizza. Next, it was a flower. Then, it was something that I could not recognize. He explained to me that it was a dinosaur. I couldn’t quite see it myself, but I played along anyway. I built him up with praise and admiration. Then we played a little longer before I suggested that we clean-up our mess.

As we swept up and crumbled what seemed like thousands of tiny pieces of broken Play-Doh, my son gave me his Play-Doh dinosaur as a gift. He wanted me to keep it forever. In that moment, the cheap red and green clay mound of this ancient creature became a revelation to me.

I began to think about how God sees us versus how we see ourselves. 

At times, we feel unworthy, undeserving, and inadequate. We have insecurities, doubts and worries about ourselves. We let someone down. We lose our temper. We fall short. We forget. We layer these feelings and hold on to them. The Play-Doh dinosaur reminded me that even when we cannot see our own worth, God sees us as beautiful creations made in His image. 

“Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…”
Genesis 1:26 NIV

We are His prized possession. Our feelings are not who we are. There is not a single thing that we can do that will cause Him to see us any different.

“Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous-how well I know it.” 
Psalms 139:14 NLT

I love how the New Living Translation uses the word “complex” in this verse. We are indeed complex, sometimes convoluted, nuanced creatures and God knows it! He knows the mess we can be and loves us completely. When we feel like a mess, He still sees us as wonderfully made. 

It is likely my son will never realize how his messy, Play-Doh dinosaur spoke to me and I pray that it speaks to you. In the moments where we fall short, let’s cling to the good, good Father that loves us just as we are and sees us as perfect…even while He is still molding and shaping us into who we are meant to be!

“But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.”
Jeremiah‬ ‭17:7‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Is it just me or does it seem like the most brutal questions you’ll ask yourself start popping up about 0.5 seconds before you fall asleep?

As someone who has struggled with confidence and has confronted serious moments of self-doubt, I’m bombarded with the brutal questions fairly often. “Am I good enough? How could I mess that situation up today? How can they really love me? What if this life just goes away?” The two verses immediately before the verse above in Jeremiah mention what we sign up for when we rely too much on ourselves and put all of our trust there. 

“This is what the Lord says: “Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans, who rely on human strength and turn their hearts away from the Lord. They are like stunted shrubs in the desert, with no hope for the future. They will live in the barren wilderness, in an uninhabited salty land.”
Jeremiah‬ ‭17:5-6‬ ‭NLT‬‬

A few nights ago, I was drifting to sleep and the word “confidence” popped into my head. So, I started praying to God about confidence before the questions could start showing up. Following that up with a swift Google search for scriptures on confidence, I found myself studying these verses as God started speaking to me.

He showed me that if our confidence is misplaced, our potential is stunted. And worse than that, when we put our trust in the wrong thing, we set ourselves up to live in a place of death. You see, confidence issues don’t always present themselves the way you expect them to. They can manifest in your thinking too little of yourself or even thinking too much of yourself. 

Whether it’s self-loathing or self-importance, self-degradation or self-inflation, it’s all self, really. If you don’t think you’re good enough or you think you’re too good for something, it’s all based on what you think. It’s putting your word over the Lord’s. 

Can I share one of the most freeing truths in the world if we could just grasp it? What we think about ourselves pales not only in comparison but also in importance to what God thinks and says about us! 

What God showed me is actually what confidence is centered around. Look at the word:  C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-C-E.

The middle two letters are ID: your identity. It’s not our confidence that the enemy calls in to question, but our identity. If we base our identity on our own definitions of success or happiness, it can destroy us. And it’s not just based on who we are, but also in what we do. I’m a drummer. If I base my identity and therefore confidence in my ability as a drummer, what happens when someone better comes along? That one stings because I’ve lived it. I’ve put all of my eggs into a basket that just got tipped over. Or, what if someone is a better speaker than you? Or what if someone has this seemingly natural gift to attract friends? Or what if you’ve been serving your heart out for years on the same serve team or at work and someone comes in for what feels like 3 weeks and is thrusted into leadership?

An identity and confidence based on ourselves lashes out or shuts down. But, an identity and confidence in Christ wants to see glory go to God, not to self. A confident heart rooted in a firm foundation of identity in Christ will see people who could replace them as a reason to party, not panic. This truth can change how we serve one another. Basing our identity in how we see ourselves and what we do can crush us when we fail. God won’t fail. When we base our confidence and identity on God and His word, we will be blessed. 

We will thrive. 

“They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit.”
Jeremiah‬ ‭17:8‬ ‭NLT‬‬

If there’s one thing I have learned in ministry that I empathize and relate to the most...it’s that a lot of us are walking around with father wounds. Not a week goes by in my role as a Connections Pastor that I don’t have a conversation with someone about depression, anxiety, relationship issues, substance abuse and more roadblocks, especially around the holidays! I’ve often found that the culprit is an unresolved and deep hurt or a complete lack of relationship with their earthly father. That lingering hurt can manifest itself in so many different ways. But, at the root of all of it, we all crave a father that loves us unconditionally. We were created to want a father to tell us he’s proud of us and to accept us even with all of our faults and shortcomings.

I can speak to this because I’m a product of divorce. My parents broke up when I was two years old, so I never was able to see a mom and dad in a loving, healthy marriage (that’s another blog for another day). I went to ten different schools, yes ten, growing up. My mom mostly raised me and my younger brother and we would see my dad about every other weekend. He was a good father, for the most part. He never abused us and was physically around most of the time. 

That’s important to note because most of us understand the ills and trauma that come from having an abusive or absent father. But, I read a book on parenting once that introduced me to a third option, “Anonymous,” and it completely shifted my thinking. While my father wasn’t abusive or absent, he was definitely anonymous. One definition of anonymous is “lacking individuality, unique character, or distinction.” My dad was there physically, but he was never there emotionally. He never said things like “I love you” or “I’m proud of you.” He never showed me how to treat a woman one day. He was truly an anonymous father. Through the years, I have learned I am not alone in having an emotionally absent dad. Many of us have grown up with these types of fathers and experienced this hurt. 

If that’s you, I have good news to share! Whether you grew up with an abusive, absent, anonymous parent or even if you had none of those and your dad was amazing, we all have access to a Heavenly Father that loves us beyond what we can fathom.

William Paul Young, the author of The Shack (amazing book on forgiveness by the way, yet another blog for another day) said the following: “My relationship, for example, with my father -- very difficult, and very painful. It took me 50 years to wipe the face of my father off of the face of God.” 

How many of us continue to do that today? We take our relationship with our father, whether good or bad, and we place his character onto the character of God. But, our earthly fathers, even the great ones, pale in comparison to our Heavenly Father. In fact, you can’t even compare them at all. The Bible says we are all evil compared to God! Jesus gave us a glimpse of this in Matthew Chapter 7. 

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” Matthew 7:9-11

The Bible records two times where God speaks directly to Jesus in an audible voice. The first time is in Matthew 3:16-17. God says, “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” The second instance is recorded in Matthew 17:5 when Jesus took Peter, James and John to a mountain to speak to God. This time God says, “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Sound familiar? God says the exact same thing in two entirely different instances. I personally believe that these weren’t the only two times God said this to Jesus. I believe this is something He would say over and over, because that’s the kind of Father He is. He’s the kind of Father that will constantly give us these three things; acceptance (you’re my son/daughter), adoration (whom I love) and affirmation (I’m well pleased with you). 

So whether your dad was always there for you physically and emotionally, you had an absent father (which sadly applies to 1 in 4 children in our country right now), an abusive father, or anonymous father, know this: You have a Heavenly Father that loves you more than you can ever imagine. He wants to take all your pain and hurt and heal you completely. Why? So that you walk in freedom and purpose. So that you can find other hurting brothers and sisters and lead them to the only Father that can truly give us what our heart longs for.

Here’s a worship song to help you enter into God’s presence today and lean on Him to be your Heavenly Father: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHQOcUizZuQ