Has there ever been a time in your life when you felt unloved; like no one cares about you or you aren’t important to anyone? Perhaps you feel this way now; a lot of people do. When you think no one loves you, feelings of rejection, emptiness, and despair can set in and leave you bottomed out in life. To be loved is as essential to human beings as air. Human beings can actually die from a lack of love.
I can remember feeling unloved as a youngster when my parents divorced. As children will do, I thought: “If they really loved me, they wouldn’t do this.” I did not know what my parents hoped to achieve by divorcing or what they wanted, but I knew they didn’t want me. To my nine-year-old way of thinking, the divorce meant my parents loved someone or something outside of our family enough to leave me behind and that, in turn, meant they didn’t love me.
Regardless of whether your feelings of being unloved are the result of a divorce, the breakup of a relationship, being rejected by people you care about, being spurned by someone you love, or for any other reason, here is something need to know; something I wish I had known many years ago as a nine-year old child of divorce. On your worst day of feeling empty, alone, and rejected, you are loved. In fact, there is no one in the world who is loved more than you are. This is the message in John 3:16 where we read: “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
From the moment you were conceived, you have been loved. Even the little baby whose mother didn’t want him and left him in a dumpster recently is loved. There is no circumstance in which you should feel unloved because God loves you. There is not a moment in a day in which you should feel unloved because God loves you. There is not a time of despair, loneliness, or dejection in which you should feel unloved because God loves you. Better yet, God loves you more than even the most devoted and loving mother can. His love for you never wavers, is unconditional, and lasts forever.
To understand how strong God’s love for you is, consider how He showed it. Even though we don’t deserve His love, God sent His only son to die an agonizing death on the Cross so you and I can live eternal lives. Because He loves us, God allowed His only son to be rejected, ridiculed, defamed, beaten, scourged, and crucified. God’s love is beyond human understanding, but it is real and it is always with you.
To grasp even a hint of how much God loves you, consider this scenario. The most undeserving person you know—a person who is self-centered, self-serving, self-absorbed, and selfish—is going to die. Would you be willing to send your only son or daughter to take his place? Would you be willing to sacrifice a child you love beyond all else to save the life of an undeserving scoundrel? This is exactly what God did when He sent Jesus to die for you and me.
It is one thing to be willing to lay down your life to save the life of a friend or loved one. A lot of heroes have done this on the battlefield, in response to emergency situations, and during natural disasters. But could you send your only son or daughter to die a substitutionary death in one of these situations? That is a much tougher call than laying down your own life. Sacrificing your only son so that someone else might live demonstrates a level of love you and I cannot even comprehend. So, next time you find yourself feeling unloved by friends, family, or anyone else, remember this: you are loved beyond human understanding by a God whose love for you will never die, is given unconditionally, and will last forever.
Dr. Goetsch is the author of Veteran’s Lament: Is This the America We Fought For? and Christian Women on the Job: Excelling at Work without Compromising Your Faith, Fidelis Books, an imprint of Post Hill Press.
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