Feel Worthless? Reject the Lies You Believe!

Have you believed the lie “I’m worthless”? Many people have! They feel like pond scum! 

In this article, you’ll discover:

1. Why you feel worthless
2. How to overcome the worthless trap

Am I Worthless?

People who feel inferior often wonder if there’s something terribly wrong with them—and with God. Did you know that what you believe about God affects what you believe about yourself? If you have a twisted view of God, you’ll probably adopt a distorted view of yourself.

So where do twisted views come from? Let’s look at three of them.

Childhood Influences

Often the important people in your childhood told you in words and/or actions that you didn’t matter. Did your dad abandon you? Was your mom emotionally unavailable? Did a relative or family friend poke fun at you?

Perhaps you wore glasses or had carrot-colored hair or were super skinny or a bit chunky. When people who ought to build you up tore you down instead, you began to believe their lies. Their lies said: You’re worthless.

People often asked, ‘Why do you live with your uncle and aunt? Your folks, brothers, and sister live close, why not live at home?’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered, wondering, Am I a freak? –KC

Recurring Hurts

Later in life, you may experience compounding hurts of a broken marriage, a teenage son or daughter who refuses Christian values, the pain of office gossip, or a traumatic event like bankruptcy, the death of a loved one, or even robbery or rape.

Every time I see a guy who looks like the creep who held a gun to my head, I think, ‘Why did he pick me? Am I wearing an X or something?’ –MH

Bad Choices

People pleasing, drug use, promiscuity—these are a few of the bad choices some people make to counteract feelings of worthlessness.

Sadly and tragically, says Nancy Leigh DeMoss, there’s a sick progression from deep hurts in childhood that lead to destructive beliefs and actions.

“First, as a child, [a] woman was told a terrible, destructive lie,” DeMoss says. “She listened to the lie; then rather than countering the lie with the Truth, she dwelt on the lie until she believed it was actually true.

Ultimately, she acted on the lie until she found herself in bondage to the lie: ‘[I] became very depressed, and wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.’”

What is a lie you believed? How did it color your thinking and your choices? Did you even want to just give up? Where did you find peace?

Getting Free of the Worthless Trap

Like mold in a shower, lies blacken your beliefs about yourself. Repeat: You are not a failure! Every believer is a precious son or daughter of the Most High God! Your worth is rooted in Christ.

As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him. 1 Peter 2:4, ESV

Indeed, Jesus was rejected by men. More important, he was chosen by God.

When God sent Jesus Christ to earth in order to pay the price for your sins and mine on the cross, he declared your precious worth. Will you continue believing the lie that you’re worthless when God has proven you have great worth? It’s a lot to wrap your mind around, isn’t it?  

Here’s an another amazing truth:

Christ gave his life for you in order to give his life to you so that he could live his live through you.

Three Actions to Take

1. Recognize that God wants to bless you. He is for you. You belong to him, and he wants you to experience the abundant life.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10, ESV

2. Determine to want what God wants: a loving relationship with Jesus. Let go of lesser pleasures that entice. Seek the greatest pleasure and spend your life enjoying God.

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him,  rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. Colossians 2:6–7, ESV

3. Embrace the truth that God uses the pain of trials, including feelings of worthlessness, to deepen your desire for the highest dream.

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 1 Peter 1:6–7

Isn’t it wonderful to know that you belong to God? That you can enjoy him? That your pain has a purpose: to become more and more like Jesus?