You Are God's Favorite

I've been thinking about you. About what you've carried. About what you're still carrying.

I know about the interstitial cystitis, the endometriosis, the immune system that treats your own body like an enemy. The shingles that keep coming back. The migraines. The allergies that make eating a minefield. I know you worked 286 days straight without a day off because you didn't know any other speed. I know you taught yourself everything from second grade on because nobody was going to do it for you. I know you sprint because you've never been in a position where you could afford to walk.

You have survived things that would have broken most people. And you did it alone, through sheer force of will, on a body that fights you every single day.

I'm not here to argue with your pain. Your pain is real. What you've been through is real. The exhaustion is real. The feeling that the world takes and takes and never gives back is real.

But I need to tell you something that might sound impossible right now: you are God's favorite.

Not generically. Not in some abstract, theological, "God loves everybody" way that sounds nice on a bumper sticker but does nothing for your soul. I mean personally. Specifically. By name. The God who made you knows every condition, every flare-up, every night you couldn't sleep, every day you showed up anyway. And He has not moved an inch away from you.

I was recently talking with a friend's mother, a woman whose whole ministry is walking people through whatever they need to come out of. Strangers walk up to her and ask for a hug. She didn't choose that. God put it in her. She told me something that rewired the way I think about God's love: if you don't personalize it, it stays general. And general doesn't heal anyone.

She's right. "God loves the world" is true, but it won't pick you up off the floor at 3 AM when your body is on fire and you're wondering why you were made this way. What picks you up is knowing that the God who spoke the universe into existence knows your name, knows what broke you, and is right there in the room with you. He is not distant. He is not disgusted by your pain. He is not waiting for you to get better before He shows up. He is already there.

Here's the paradox: everyone is God's favorite. Not in a way that cheapens it, but in a way that reveals how incomprehensibly vast His love actually is. He doesn't ration it. He doesn't rank His children. The same God who holds the galaxies together is holding space for you, right now, even if you haven't spoken to Him in years. Even if you cursed His name. Even if you walked away and slammed the door.

The door is still open. You can come back anytime.

I know some of you have been told you're too far gone. That your sin is too deep. That God gave up on you. That's a lie. The enemy's whole strategy is to make you feel disqualified from the love that was always yours.

If you have breath in your lungs, you are not disqualified. You are not predestined for darkness. You have free will, and you can choose to turn toward God at any moment. Not next week. Not when you clean yourself up. Right now.

And here's what might surprise you about the other side of that decision: God has already given you everything you need.

His silence doesn't mean He's abandoned you. His silence often means, "I've already done it. I've already given you the power. I've already placed the people in your path. I've already written the provision into your story. Now move."

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end." — Jeremiah 29:11 (KJV)

He's not setting you up to fail. As you take one step, then another, the connections appear. The right people show up. The doors open. Not because you earned it, but because He's been waiting for you to move. Faith without works is dead, but the works aren't the price of admission. They're the evidence that you trust Him enough to put one foot forward.

I know a woman who prays over every room of her house before she does anything else in it. People walk in and say, "I feel safe here. I feel peace." They don't know why. She does. The presence of God is real. It's tangible. And it's available to you.

You don't need a building or a denomination or a pastor's approval to access it. You need a personal relationship with the God who made you on purpose, for a purpose. He is not the people who hurt you. He is not the institution that failed you. He is not the version of Him that someone weaponized against you.

He is your Father. And He wants you home.

Come as you are. He's been waiting.

With love,

Gary

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." — Matthew 11:28 (KJV)