Helping you navigate the tension between faith & mental health by looking at a tension point, a talking point and a truth to ponder.

Tension Point

"I guess I believe that God loves me. In the way a parent loves a child, no matter what they do. But that doesn’t change how I feel about myself: a failure, a disappointment."

Talking Point

The chances are, if you have signed up to these emails, you believe that God loves us. It’s a message that is central to the Bible and everything Jesus said and did. But believing that and allowing it to increase our sense of self-esteem – how we view ourselves and our sense of worth – can be hard. Both our theology and life experience can complicate things:

Theologically we can believe that God loves us and struggle with low self-esteem. After all, it almost feels like a biblical view, right?! We can convince ourselves that our low self-esteem is actually just humility and low self-esteem can lead to whole-hearted appreciation that God loves us despite our failures. For those of us who struggle with a very low sense of self, this idea that God loves us 'despite ourselves' can confirm our worst fears: we ARE a failure and a disappointment, to those around us and to God.

And maintaining a healthy self-esteem in the messiness of life is hard! Our sense of self and worth is so easily impacted by circumstances and the people around us. This starts at a very early age in our development, whether through parents, community, peers, teachers, or whoever we engage with in the world. As social creatures we soak in the opinions, comments, nuances of body language and behaviours of other people- whether we realise it (consciously) or not (sub-consciously) and it all builds up a picture within us of who we really are.

There are two truths we need to grapple with here:

God thinks you are awesome. The bees’ knees. Beautiful, strong and priceless.
Our life experiences often lead us to find it really hard to believe that concept.

Truth to Ponder

The Bible is full of verses that give us a glimpse into how God sees us, which we can declare over ourselves:

You ARE beautiful (Psalm 139:14), a delight (Psalm 147:11), indestructible (John 6:51) and valuable (Luke 12:24). In fact, we have prepared a list of 301 of these that can become your own personalised declarations. Just visit our Self-Esteem blog here and scroll right down to the bottom.

Can God’s word re-shape our thinking and sense of self? Absolutely! Can His Word tear down things we think about ourselves that aren’t true? 100% yes! But to allow those truths to heal and take precedent over our life experiences takes a journey.

It can take a lot to unpick how our life experiences and the opinions of others have shaped our own sense of self. God invites us into this journey, not by slapping us with His Word but by gently encouraging us to explore why we don’t believe it, to notice and to encounter Him as we encounter ourselves. Find out more below.