I still cringe when I see two kids picking teams from a group of kids. I was never athletic, so I was always the last one picked and told how worthless I was. These painful memories remind me how difficult it was to be different and feeling like I never fit in.
Challenge of Feeling Like We Belong
Most of us have all experienced a time when we felt like we just didn’t belong. Although God created us with the ultimate invisible need to belong to help us search for Him, we don’t understand that as a child. When we are faced with being teased and bullied about not being like the other kids or having the skills to help them or the group, we feel outcast and alone.
It is also interesting that people who have been considered leaders or the best also struggle to feel like they belong. They believe they always have to be the best, the leader, or in control to feel like they belong. They’re focused on acceptance, performance, and control, which interferes with their willingness to make personal connections and feel like they belong. Either side of the world’s acceptance scale leaves us questioning if we belong.
God Designed Us to Belong to Him
God designed us with a spiritual desire to belong to Him from birth, but we don’t know it. In our unawareness, we try to feel like we belong by pleasing other people. We may try to join groups, cults, or organizations to feel connected. However, nothing on this broken earth can fill our spiritual need to belong to our Father and Creator, God.
Unfortunately, receiving salvation doesn’t instantly download us with the knowledge and understanding of who we are in Christ and that we are adopted into God’s family.
(Eph. 1:5) Most of us don’t have an instant feeling of belonging, which is confusing. However, our feelings and unawareness of God’s truth don’t change the fact that we belong to God.
Many Christians love Jesus and do their best to follow him, but they don’t feel like a son or daughter of their Father, God. If the church hasn’t taught them their Christ identity or they haven’t learned it, they can still feel like they don’t belong in church or with other believers. They can also doubt if God loves them.
How the Enemy Uses Our Emotions
The enemy loves to use your emotions to confuse you. Your feelings keep you busy trying to fit in, so you don’t study God’s truth and grow in a deep relationship with Him and Jesus. The devil also uses your emotions to ignite your insecurities of identity, value and being loved. Although your emotions are real, they are not logical, and they are not following God’s truth when they are inflamed. In your highly emotional state, you want the pain to stop.
When we feel and believe that we do not fit in or belong anywhere, we can become closed off, anti-social, and hard-hearted. We can develop depression, be self-destructive, or be destructive toward other people. We don’t realize our protection walls have imprisoned us and separated us in our relationship with Jesus, our Savior.
We may be deceived and drawn into an abusive relationship without knowing it because an abuser tells us that we are their “soulmate.” By the time we realize our relationship is unhealthy or abusive, we feel trapped, scared, and unsure how to get out. When we don’t know Christ’s love design or God’s word for ourselves, we can also be deceived by misused or misquoted scriptures. These out-of-context verses can lead us to believe that we must stay in an abusive marriage, which is a lie and spiritual abuse.
We can be enticed into joining radical and unhealthy groups or cults. These groups look for people who are searching for somewhere to belong. They know what to say to convince people they are special and have finally found where they belong. People’s desire to belong can keep them blind to the unhealthy and disrespectful practices, secrecy, rules, destructive morals, and lifestyles these groups operate in.
Unfortunately, when we fail on our own or when people abandon or reject us, we can fall into the temptation to escape or dull our pain. The devil deceives us through alcohol, drugs, sex, pornography, eating disorders, cutting, or any other means. He keeps us in pain to keep us from seeking God’s truth.
When worldly Band-Aid fixes consume our lives, we miss seeking Christ’s answers. We don’t seek his healing, and we don’t grow the confidence that we are God’s children. We are unaware of the reality that our home is with Jesus and our Father, God.
Finding Our Way Home
Knowing and believing that you are a child of God and a disciple of Christ will eventually change your feelings. Through salvation, you will ALWAYS belong to God’s family, even if you don’t feel like it or believe it yet. We must understand that we have programmed our minds and emotions to find a way to feel like we belong in this broken world, which is not our truth as a child of God. Jesus tells us.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:1-3)
Our desire and drive to spiritually find our true home can only be filled by the one who created it inside of us, our Father, God. Once we realize that God and Jesus are the home and place where we belong, we need time to understand it and believe it. As Christ’s disciple’s we must remind ourselves that we are just passing through this earth. We are aliens on this broken earth, so we will NEVER fit into the sin-focused ways of the world.
While we are visiting, we are commanded to love, obey, and honor Christ’s sacrifice by sharing his love, hope, and gospel. We must become more intentional about the attitudes, words, and actions we share with others. Disciples of Jesus Christ and children of God, it’s time to open our hearts and share the opportunity that everyone has to know that they belong to a family who will love them now and forever. Let us show people how to truly know and feel confident that they belong to God’s family!
Here is a great song to remind you that you will always belong to God! Ryan Stevenson ~ No Matter What (Lyrics) https://youtu.be/It_xQ4NYtDQ
Learn who you are in Christ and how to live in his identity in the online course Who Are You?
Find encouragement and support for the challenges you face every day. Join my private Facebook group Growing Through God’s Transforming Grace.
