The following is a devotion from my message series 10 Steps to Freedom. I hope these devotionals help you experience lasting freedom in Jesus!

STEP THREE: day 1

Cultivate a relationship with your Heavenly Father

Does God still love me? That’s a question that has haunted you for far too long. You may know what the Bible teaches and you know you’ve asked for forgiveness for your many mistakes, but you’re not sure if God really loves you anymore. Maybe He does love you, but you think He’s definitely disappointed in you. And it’s easy to see why: you’re disappointed in yourself. You’ve messed up too many times, you’ve made too many mistakes, you’ve hurt too many people, you’ve broken too many promises. Promises to God, promises to others, promises to yourself. When you think of what God sees when He looks at you, your first instinct is to imagine God looking at you the way you look at yourself. And if you’ve been in the battle with addiction long enough, when you look at yourself you see defeat, you see disgrace, you see disappointment.

One of the greatest transformations you have to walk through to truly experience lasting freedom is your relationship with God, namely your interaction with Him as your Heavenly Father. For too many Christians, we assume that God is angry or at least disappointed with us because of our many sins, causing us to instinctively avoid Him because we fear His wrath.

The truth of how God sees you is profound, life-altering, and the third step to your freedom. Does God still love me? When the answer to that question jumps from the pages of Scriptures and settles into the deepest part of your soul, you will experience a joy and a freedom that can only come as you cultivate a relationship with your Heavenly Father.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. When you look at yourself in the mirror, what do you see? If you were honest, would you say that you see defeat, disgrace or disappointment?

2. What are some things you have experienced that have caused you to doubt God’s love for you in the past?

You can read other devotional entries for 10 Steps to Freedom here.