I am rubbish

His parents divorced when he was one. He never saw his mother again. His father was too busy working to pay attention to him, so his grandparents raised him. His grandma had a “heart of tofu but a mouth of knives” and his grandfather used fear by threatening to poke him with needles to shape him. Growing up he thought “I must be rubbish, no one cherishes me. If I was precious, they wouldn’t treat me like this.” Many times he wanted to kill himself.

Now, he was tired of being entangled in their sin, so he prayed, accusing his mother of abandoning him, his father of not building up his own son and his grandparents of not treating him like something precious. He forgave them all, knowing they would face God and be judged for their sin against him and that his Heavenly Father would make sure their sin against him and against God was paid, either by Jesus’ blood or their own. He then confessed believing Satan’s lie “I must be rubbish, no one cherishes me” and asked God to forgive him. (Satan is so clever, using the sin of others as soil for his lies.) He rejected this lie for two reasons; 1. in Matthew 5 God said if you call someone “good for nothing” you are guilty enough to go to hell and 2. Jesus was precious but wasn’t treated as precious either. He told God that their words and actions had affected him very deeply, so he asked his heavenly father for help, asked him to break the power of the lie and to give him something for his heart to believe. He waited and then heard “you are fearfully and wonderfully made.” These words gave life to him, so he accepted them and asked God to plant them deeply in his heart.

As believers, sometimes we get the impression that we are rubbish. We may even say that Paul called himself rubbish in Philippians 3 . But that’s NOT what he said, he said “(I) count them rubbish,” referring to his accomplishments, NOT to his person. There is a big difference. God is not trying to get rid of us, he’s trying to get rid of our filthy behavior.  – Mike Banker