Uninvited: Living Loved When You Feel Less Than, Left Out, and Lonely

by Lysa TerKeurst

Negative self-talk was a rejection from my past that I had allowed to settle into the core of who I am.

Rejection steals the best of who I am by reinforcing the worst of what’s been said to me.

Rejection isn’t just an emotion we feel. It’s a message that’s sent to the core of who we are, causing us to believe lies about ourselves, others, and God.

Things of this world all eventually reveal what incapable anchors they really are.

The exhausting manipulation and control it takes to protect an identity based on circumstances will crush our hearts and hide the best of who we are behind a wall of insecurity.

The mind feasts on what it focuses on. What consumes my thinking will be the making or the breaking of my identity.

Live from the abundant place that you are loved, and you won’t find yourself begging others for scraps of love.

Giving with strings of secret expectations attached is the greatest invitation to heartbreak. That’s not love. That’s manipulation.

Living loved is sourced in your quiet daily surrender to the One who made you.

The gravity of living in a sin-soaked world will always try to hold us back from living loved. But if we will remember to return often to our Instructor … our Creator … we will discover His loving hands still pulse to continue making us. Tweaking us. Molding us. Filling us. And daily completing the good work He began in us.

How dangerous it is when our souls are gasping for God but we’re too distracted flirting with the world to notice. Flirting will give you brief surges of fun feelings but will never really pull you in and hold you close. Indeed, the world entices your flesh but never embraces your soul. All the while, the only love caring enough to embrace us and complete enough to fill us, waits.

He waits every day with every answer we need, every comfort we crave, every affection we’re desperate for, while we look everywhere else but at Him.

We run at a breakneck pace to try and achieve what God simply wants us to slow down enough to receive. He really does have it all worked out. The gaps are filled. The heartache is eased. The provision is ready. The needs are met. The questions are answered. The problems are solved.

I needed to reconnect with the One who knows how to breathe life and love back into depleted and dead places.

When we abide, delight, and dwell in Him, He then places within us desires that line up with His best desire for us. Therefore, He can give us whatever we ask, because we will only want what’s consistent with His best. He can fully satisfy our hearts, because they are consistent with His heart. He can promise us stability, because we’re tapped into His consistent power.

Fullness comes to us when we remember to be with Him before going out to serve Him. He wants our hearts to be in alignment with Him before our hands set about doing today’s assignment for Him. So, He extends what we need and invites us each day to receive in prayer, worship, and truth from His Word. And He lovingly replenishes our cups while whispering, “This isn’t a race to test the fastest pace. I just want you to persevere on the path I have marked out especially for you. Fix your eyes not on a worldly prize but on staying in love with Me.” Then, and only then, will I stop flirting with this world. And, instead, operate from the full assurance of His love.

It’s not deciding in my mind, I deserve to be loved. Or manipulating my heart to feel loved. It’s settling in my soul, I was created by God, who formed me because He so much loved the very thought of me. When I was nothing, He saw something and declared it good. Very good. And very loved.

Therefore, I can bring the atmosphere of love into every situation I face. I don’t have to wait for it, hope for it, or try to earn it. I simply bring the love I want. Then I’m not so tempted to flirt with the world, h...

No, God’s love isn’t based on me. It’s simply placed on me. And it’s the place from which I should live … loved.

We must respect ourselves enough to break the pattern of placing unrealistic expectations on others. After all, people will not respect us more than we respect ourselves.

No, it’s not wrong to need people. But some of our biggest disappointments in life are the result of expectations we have of others that they can’t ever possibly meet. That’s when the desire to connect becomes an unrealistic need. Unrealistic neediness is actually greediness in disguise. It’s saying, “My needs and desires deserve to tap into or possibly even deplete yours.” This will never set a relationship up for success.

No, the fullness of God is tucked into the sacred places within them. The full taking in of God is their soul oxygen. It’s not that they don’t need people. They do. God created them for community. But the way they love is from a full place, not from an empty desperation. As we talked about in the last chapter, they are living loved.

But living loved isn’t just their mind-set; it is a choice they make daily. It isn’t just a possible thing they should try. It’s the only solution that actually works. We have to tell our minds to live loved. But then we must also tell our flesh no.

Being full of God’s love settles, empowers, and brings out the best of who we are. On the other hand, the more full of the flesh we are, the more we grab at anyone and anything to fill that ache for love and acceptance.

It is impossible to grasp the fullness of God without grasping the fullness of the love of Christ.

You are full, because Christ brought the fullness to you. Yes, I am fully loved, fully accepted, and fully empowered to say no to my flesh. Speak that truth in the power He’s given you. Believe that truth in the power He’s given you. Live that truth in the power He’s given you. That’s how you tell your flesh no. That’s how you live fully prepared in the fullness of God.

And if we aren’t careful, being resistant can easily turn into being rebellious against divine opportunities. Life doesn’t add up. People don’t add up. And in the rawest moments of honest hurting, God doesn’t add up. All of which makes us hold our trust ever so close to our chests until it becomes more tied to our fears than to our faith.

Girls who have the lingering whispers of rejection still echoing in the hollows of their soul rarely feel completely held safe. So they look at gaps of the unknown and hesitate at best. Run away at worst. They crave for life to make sense. They cringe when it doesn’t. It’s unfathomable to take a leap into something as uncertain as air and expect to stay intact.

David started this stunning soul declaration with the assurance that with God there is fullness. There is no lack. Nothing can be added or subtracted with human acceptance or rejection. With the fullness of God, we are free to let humans be humans—fickle and fragile and forgetful.

The peace of our souls does not rise and fall with unpredictable people or situations. Our feelings will shift, of course. People do affect us. But the peace of our souls is tethered to all that God is. And though we can’t predict His specific plans, the fact that God will work everything together for good is a completely predictable promise.

God will lead us, comfort us, guide us, walk with us, prepare the best for us, and continue filling us with such lavishness that we’re not just full but overflowing.

If we become enamored with something in this world we think offers better fullness than God, we will make room for it. We leak out His fullness to make room for something else we want to chase.

But at some point every one of those things will reveal its absolute inability to keep us full. And then, since we denied God’s power to lead us, we forget His power to hold us. In an effort not to free-fall, we chase something or someone else we think will ease our emptiness.

People who care more about being right than ending right prove just how wrong they were all along.

If we react with more emotion than is appropriate for an isolated incident, it’s probably not so isolated. The escalated emotion of this situation is probably an indication of painful ties to the past.