The Question

In 2003, Paul Edward asked me a question I have never been able to shake: What does God think about you?

Paul was a business coach I had hired. I was struggling with relationships and needed help handling my business. He had been a customer first, and he recognized something in me and wanted to help.

I was deep in a pity party at the time. The kind where you send out the invitations, you’re the only guest, and you’ve decided it’s going well. I wasn’t looking for theology. I was looking for someone to agree with me.

Paul didn’t agree with me. He asked the question and he waited.

Looking Past the Grievance

So I tried to answer him. That meant looking past the grievance and going deeper than the story I was telling myself, which was not easy to do.

What I found there surprised me. I saw my heart. Underneath the self-pity was a true motive, something good that I had been honoring for a long time as someone who cares. I didn’t understand what that was. But I knew that being a good husband, father, friend, businessman mattered to me, and so did honesty, integrity, and service.

And when I took stock, I had actually been living those things. As a loyal, faithful, loving husband. As a loving and providing father. As a sober member of the AA community and my church fellowships. As a businessman people could trust. People loved me and valued me. So why was I beating myself up?

Calling God a Liar

If I remember right, Paul’s next question was the one that landed: If God says one thing about you and you say another, who are you calling a liar?

I was. That’s the plain truth of it. I had been calling God a liar, quietly, from the couch of my pity party, and I had been calling it humility.

Here’s what I couldn’t see back then. The voice telling me I was no good wasn’t only mine. The enemy’s oldest move is accusation, and it sounds exactly like my own thinking. It slips in right where I’ve done good and talks in my voice, so I’ll agree without noticing. Revelation 12:10 calls him the accuser. In Zechariah 3 he stands to accuse Joshua, and the Lord is the one who answers him. So when Paul asked who I was calling a liar, I was agreeing with the accuser against the one who made me.

Self-contempt dresses up as honesty. It sounds so reasonable. But if God has already spoken, then agreeing with my own condemnation over his word isn’t humble. It’s a disagreement with him, and one of us is wrong.

What He Says

That’s when I saw it. God loves the heck out of me. He had made me great.

So what is he saying about me? Here is what I’ve found since.

He made us in his own image, and he said so before we had done anything right or wrong (Genesis 1:27). He knit us together and knows us completely (Psalm 139). He calls us precious in his eyes and honored, and says he loves us (Isaiah 43:4). He showed his love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). Not after we cleaned up. While.

Twenty-three years after Paul’s question, a study in Daniel hit me hard this week. It was another story of God’s love from his living word, and my heart was ready to receive it. It was as if I had never seen it before, though I have been through the Bible many times.

Daniel has just spent an entire prayer confessing, owning his people’s rebellion without one word of self-defense. Then Gabriel shows up and tells him an answer went out the moment he began to pray, and that he is greatly loved (Daniel 9:23).

The Hebrew word is chamudot. It comes from the root that means to desire, to delight in. It’s the same root behind “covet.” Usually that word describes what a person wants. Here, heaven is the one doing the wanting. God looked at an old man in sackcloth and ashes and said, in effect, you are the one I desire.

Why I Don’t Stay There

Here’s what I still can’t fully explain. I can sit with what I’ve lived. I can sit with what God’s word says I am. And still some spirit comes in and convinces me otherwise.

I’ve come to recognize that it has something to do with ego, which always wants to be right, even when the case it’s arguing is against me. And underneath the ego, it’s fear. I am blind sometimes, and I suffer attacks from the enemy: doubt and discouragement.

So why don’t I trust a love that is this obvious? I’m not sure obvious is the same as safe. I can see that a bridge will hold and still be afraid to walk out on it.

Daniel gives me some comfort here. In chapter 10, a few verses past the answer I love so much, he is trembling and has no strength left. And the messenger says it again: greatly loved (10:11). Then, a few verses later, he says it a third time, with fear not attached, and Daniel is strengthened (10:19). The same word from chapter 9 had to be spoken again.

Maybe the truth isn’t a place I arrive at and stay. Maybe it’s something I have to be told again, by God, by Paul in 2003, by the people in the rooms.

Daniel isn’t the only one. Joseph in the pit, Moses in exile, Job in his grief, Ezra and Nehemiah in their shame: I’m collecting how God shows up for each of them on a companion page, How He Shows Up: Daniel’s Thread.

I’m not going to tie this up neatly. There is a deeper truth underneath all of this that still eludes me, and I’m still learning to trust what I can see. But I know which voice has never lied.