PSALM 40:16-17 – Let all those who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; Let such as love Your salvation say continually, “The Lord be magnified!” But I am poor and needy; Yet the Lord thinks upon me. You are my help and my deliverer; Do not delay, O my God.”
How do you think God thinks of you? Before you answer, really consider. It is so easy to say the right words but there might be a gnawing doubt somewhere in our hearts wanting to say, “You wish He did.” Let’s unpack this issue a little.
Every Christian will proclaim, “I am a child of God because Jesus is my Savior.” And we would say such truth with conviction because that is what God has said – He (Jesus) was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:10-13).
Yes, throughout the New Testament, God has given witness to the truth we are His children. He wants us to believe Him, but with every work of God, the devil comes with the opposite. If God longs for us to believe Him concerning our being His children, and He does, the devil will seek to sow doubt in our thinking. Is this not what he did to Eve – get her to doubt God’s Word – Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden (Genesis 3:1-2).
If we listen to the devil and begin to doubt God’s love and how He thinks of us, gone will be our joy in the Christian life, and gone will be our confidence in sharing our Lord Jesus. And here is a good place to get the proper thinking of ourselves as God sees and thinks of us – But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Peter 2:9-10).
So, the next time we are tempted to have hard thoughts of our God towards us, put 1 Peter 2:9-10 against such thoughts. Our minds will be renewed with the proper way of rejoicing over how God truly sees us according to His Word.
PRAYER: “Father, I praise You for loving me and not holding my sins against me.”
QUOTE: “What we believe in how God sees us will determine our joy in our walks with Him.”