God's Truth Part 1

But when the Pharisees heard the He had silence the Sadducees with His reply , they met together to question Him again. One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap Him with this question. “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” Jesus replied, “ You must love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.

Matthew 22:34-40

From the time I came to the Lord when I was 26 until about the age of 45 or so I always struggled with

this scripture simply because I always hated myself or had some level of self-loathing. How could I truly

love others if I hated myself, I didn’t even know where to begin because there was always this nagging in

my heart that I wasn’t good enough, lovable or had any redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Then, by the grace of God, at age 40, He put me in front of a Christian counselor that immediately had

my respect and I knew I couldn’t talk circles around this guy like every other professional I had been in

front of. As we worked through my many, many challenges and short comings, we eventually came to

the fact that satan is not that clever or original. When it comes down to it, he only has three main ways

of attacking people:

1) You are not good enough

2) You could be, only if

3) How could you trust your Heavenly Father if you could never trust your earthly father

Along with this epiphany came another one from my counselor, now friend, coach and mentor who has

always had this amazing way of asking me questions that there is no way to wiggle away from. I had to

either act on the information that I knew to be true in my heart or I would have to ignore it. He said,

“Drew have you ever considered that if you believe yourself to be junk, what you are really doing is

telling God that He is a liar. Are you ok with that?” With those five words my entire life started to turn

to a heart that could embrace that I was made on purpose for a purpose.

Since then I’ve been blessed to have some great mentors in my life, a statement that I heard from one of

them a couple of years ago helped me understand the root of my self hatred and how ridiculous that

thinking was. I heard him say, ”when I knew that I was special I automatically knew that everyone else

was special and when I realized that I had value I automatically knew that everyone else had value.”

When I heard that, I knew my challenge was the opposite. Everyone is special and valuable except me.

Being that I’m a numbers guy, wrapping my head around the statistical impossibility that I’m the only

one not special and valuable made it clear that I’m just as special, valuable and uniquely made as

everyone else.

I’m so grateful that God speaks to me in a way that I can receive, which makes sense because He made

me. I just needed to be vulnerable with Him and listen to that still small voice.

Drew Bain

Scripture taken from New Living Translation Version