“Dear Jesus, Do You Still Love Me When I Mess Up?”

Claire Black: Welcome to the True Girl podcast for girls and their moms. I'm Claire Black. Together, we'll explore God's truth for us one drive at a time. Buckle up. You're about to grow closer to each other and closer to Jesus! 

Song:

I am a true girl.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
I am, I am, I am a true girl!

For a few weeks here, we're answering some of the biggest questions girls send us in the mail. It's like we're writing a big letter to Jesus. That's why this season is called “Dear Jesus.” Last time, Dannah and Suzy helped us think about a question you might have had if you're a pet lover: Is my dog going to be in heaven? Be sure to listen to that episode if you missed it. 

Well, today our question isn't just for pet lovers. I think just about every Christian has asked it. “Dear Jesus, do You still love me when I mess up?” And we don't mean mess up like, “Oh no, I spilled my black cherry soda on my mom's white chair.” Nope, we're talking about sin. 

Have you ever promised yourself, "I'm not going to lose my temper again,” or "I'm going to obey my parents today instead of grumbling." Maybe you've prayed this about a certain sin. “Jesus, please help me not to do that again.” But then you did it again. That's when you might wonder if Jesus really loves you, even when you keep sinning. 

To answer that, Dannah Gresh and Suzy Weibel are opening up God's Word to discover something amazing about God's love, His forgiveness, and His grace. Here's Suzy.

Suzy Weibel: All right, we are back with our huge stack of letters from True Girls, and Dannah, do you have another one to read?

Dannah Gresh: I have another letter to read. This is from Montana. Whoa, that's a cool name. 

Suzy: Wait, that's the name, not the state.

Dannah: That's the girl's name. I love that name. She's named maybe after a state.

Suzy: I have name jealousy. I love it.

Dannah: It says: 

Dear Dannah and Suzy, 

I want your help. My mom says she loves me, but it's hard to believe. You see, I lie a lot, and I'm not nice to my mom. And when that happens, I don't feel loved by her. And when that happens, I don't have good sleep. Please help! 

I understand. I giggled there because oh, I have felt bad about my sin and not been able to sleep. Have you ever been there? 

Suzy: Oh yeah. 

Dannah: And so she says, "Please help,” and then she signs it Montana. 

So we're going to answer this question today. I feel like this whole idea of sin disrupting our ability to feel loved doesn't just show up in our relationships with our mom or our dad or our friends or our teachers, whoever we sinned against. We kind of feel that. But we get a lot of girls who tell us that they don't know if they feel like God loves them when they mess up.

Suzy: Yeah, that's actually a brilliant letter.

Dannah: We're going to dive in. You've done the research, and we have some good answers from Scripture—some really good, solid, clear answers. Our answer to last week's question wasn't super clear. So this one we have a clear answer to. 

So the question we're going to address today is, dear Jesus, do You still love me when I sin? 

Suzy: Yeah, and this is a resounding yes. We'll just answer it right out of the gate. It's a resounding yes. Absolutely, Jesus still loves us when we sin. 

I was watching a reel on social media, and a girl (she's a bit older than our True Hirl, she was 18) was explaining why she doesn't believe in God any longer. She said it's because she thought about the "Bible," her understanding of that was that the Bible says, "Oh, you make one little mistake, and sorry, you're out.” 

And I thought, Wow! First of all, that's a gross misunderstanding of a couple of things. So the first thing is that is a gross misunderstanding of sin in general. You know, to call sin one little mistake—oops.

Dannah: Oops is something I say when I trip. 

Suzy: Yeah, right.

Dannah: Oops is something I say when I like am playing a game of soccer and and fall down, or miss a goal. But sin is the willful, disobedient choice.

Suzy: It’s rebellion.

Dannah: Yeah, like what Montana is describing here? “I lie a lot, and I'm not nice to my mom.”

Suzy: Right.

Dannah: Montana, we have good news for you, so hang around. But that sort of is a description of the word “rebellion.” And the Bible does tell us that. I'm thinking of Romans 6:23. The wages of sin, or the cost of sinning the cost of that rebellion, is death

Suzy: Our True Girls know that. They understand that. We ask that at our events. That's one of those where we begin a verse, and they fill in the blank. They're all aware of the consequences of our sin. So if we put it in a courtroom language, we have sinned, we're guilty. We show up before the judge, and any judge who is worth anything is going to pronounce a sentence on one who is guilty. Because if the judge doesn't pronounce that sentence, they are not a just judge.

Dannah: And the condemnation of our sin is the sin itself. Like Satan says, "You've sinned, and so the cost of that is death. 

But to go back to your court example. So the judge says, "All right, Suzy, you sinned. You lied. This is going to cost your life. But it doesn't end there. There's someone in the courtroom.

Suzy: Yeah.

Dannah: Who is that?

Suzy: Jesus is in that courtroom, and He steps up. I've heard other examples of this, like where the story is told that the judge, after banging that gavel and pronouncing us guilty, then steps down from his seat. He takes off his robe, and then comes down and stands in the place of the guilty and says, "I will receive this sentence.”

Dannah: That's Jesus! So Jesus is the judge saying guilty, and then He takes the robe off and says, "You sinned. Step aside. I'm going to die. I'm going to stand here in this place where punishment is being issued.” And Jesus did. He died. Yes, He died for us. He died on a cross, and He died there for Dannah's sin. He died there for Suzy's sin. He died there for Montana's sin. And everybody listening, He died for your sin.

Suzy: If we go back to Romans, the wages of sin is death. That's the sentence. That was fulfilled. It was met. The requirements of that sentence were met in Jesus.

Dannah: So it's the antithesis or the opposite of truth when we believe that God wants to condemn us because of our sin.

So, Suzy, why do we feel like Montana said? She said she doesn't feel her mom's love when she says she struggles with lying and not being nice to her mom? Have you struggled with that?

Suzy: Oh my, lying? Yes. Not being nice? Yes. The person who says that they don't lie or haven't lied is lying. Ironic, right? 

Dannah: Why do you think we don't feel the love of our mom or our dad or God when we sin.

Suzy: Well, I'm going to have you help me answer this. 

Dannah: I have a theory.

Suzy: I can give you the first half of what I think, and the first half of what I think is that God has given us this beautiful gift called a conscience. Because we are image bearers (we talked about that last week), He has planted within us His moral code, His moral DNA. So when we do something like lie, when we do something that we know hurts Him or disappoints Him or hurts someone else or disappoints someone else, that conscience that is awakened in us, and we become really uncomfortable with what we've done. We realize that something has to be done to fix it. 

Dannah: I think I have the second part of the answer. Because the conscience awakens us to something's wrong, right? 

So I tell this story at a lot of True Girl Live events about a time when I sinned. I sinned against God, but I also sinned against my dad. So, my dad's office had white carpet in it, which I don't know why we had white carpet in our house at all! But my dad had white carpet in his office, and we were not allowed to take snacks in his office. It was kind of his man cave, and we weren't really supposed to go in there except to retrieve things. But I wanted to use something in his office, so I went in there one summer with a glass of Kool-Aid. You know what Kool-Aid is? Thankfully, I don't think I see it very often anymore. 

Suzy: Was color was that Kool Aid? 

Dannah: Red!

If you don't know what it is, it is like a powdered drink mix that you put a lot of sugar in, and it's either blue or red or orange. It's just basically food coloring and sugar.

Suzy: Right.

Dannah: I had this red Kool-Aid. I spilled it on my dad's white carpet. That's bad! I scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub.

Suzy: That makes it pink.

Dannah: You couldn't really see it by the end of the day, but you could see that the carpet fibers had been rigorously attended to. 

And so my dad comes home. He goes in his office. He puts his briefcase down. He comes back out. He says to my brother and I, “So who would have had red Kool-Aid in my office?” I don't know if I left a cup in there or what, but somehow he knew. My brother just stood up and sort of shirked and shrugged. He twisted his body with a word that said, "I don't know, but without words.” Does that make sense? 

Suzy: Yeah, like body language.

Dannah: But I was like, "Ooh, body language. I don't have to lie outright. I can just make a ‘I don't know’ sort of look at my dad.” And I did. My dad and I were really close. We used to go to dog shows together and show our dogs, and we just had a really special relationship. That night when he came in to say goodnight to me and kiss me goodnight, I felt really far away from him. And the next day, I felt even more far away. And the next day, I felt even more far away. 

Suzy: Wow! 

Dannah: Until finally, I said, "I did it! I did it! I spilled the Kool-Aid.” I was very dramatic about it. 

And he was like, "Yeah, I know.” 

And I'm like, "But you kept coming to hug me goodnight. You kept coming.”

His relationship to me didn't change, but the way I felt about all those encounters changed. You see, he still loved me. But the fact that I was bothered by the sin, your conscience, that feeling of not feeling like the relationship was right, was the invitation to repair the relationship. And that's what God's inviting us to do when we feel that conviction—to confess our sin to Him and say, "Okay, I spilled the Kool-Aid, or I lied to my mom, or I wasn't nice to my brother. That helps restore and repair the relationship—not because He's not still coming to love us every day like my dad was, but because He wants us to feel that love.

Suzy: Yeah, that’s good. 

I mean, I'm thinking as you tell the story, I'm thinking of you, and thinking of Montana. I’m thinking of her mom saying, "I love you.” God's Word says that it's His kindness that gets in there and speaks to our conscience and leads us to repentance. Your conscience was awakened. You felt distanced from your dad, and that was pushing you to confess it. But what made you feel safe to confess it? What made you feel safe to say I did it?

Dannah: That's a good question, because it was his love.

Suzy: Yeah.

Dannah: I knew he still loved me. He was still coming to hug me goodnight and tuck me in and pray with me. I just wasn't feeling it the same way. 

Suzy: Oh, that's good.

Dannah: So, we have a very clear answer for you this week, True Girl. Does Jesus still love you when you keep messing up? Oh yes, so much. He loves you when you sin. He loves you when you are good. His love doesn't change, but the way you feel about it may change, and that's the invitation back into relationship. 

So, what is the action point? What do you do? Let's just say we're writing back to Montana, and Montana is saying, "I feel bad because I lie a lot, and I'm not being nice to my mom.” Suzy, what advice do you have for her to do? She says, "Help me.” 

Suzy: Well, I think the first thing that I would do is invite Montana and little Dannah, which rhymes, and little Suzy, to do is to remember and trust what God's Word says. So we've already shared that God's Word says that He loves us. That while we were sinners, that's when He came. That's when He died for us. That's when He stepped in. So the first step would be trust that. Then the second step is to respond to that and say, "I did it.”

Dannah: Yep, I did it.

Suzy: And then let that love come in.

Dannah: So Suzy, let's say that you are trusting God, and you're like, “Okay, I have confessed this to God. I confessed to my dad. I confessed to my mom.” Maybe Montana tells her mom about a lie she's told, and her mom forgives her, and Jesus has forgiven her. But she's still feeling that bad feeling. What do you do then?

Suzy: I think we need to remember the three words that Jesus spoke as He breathed His last. He said, "It is finished.” He was talking about His work. This is paid in full. There is no more debt. The debt is paid. To continue to feel guilt, to continue to feel shame, I think it's the conscience which awakens us to say something's wrong. I need to take care of this. But to continue to feel it after it's been confessed is to forget that Jesus said, "No, this is finished. This is paid in full.”

Dannah: I do that a lot of times when I confess a sin. I struggle with getting my heart and my emotions to line up with what I know is true, which is that I've confessed it, and it's forgiven. So I don't confess it again. I'll say something like, "Dear Jesus, I confess to you that I told a lie, and I know that you've forgiven me. Please help my emotions understand that.” I'll say something like that. 

Suzy: That's good. 

Dannah: So I don't reconfess it. 

Hey, Mom, I know that you're sitting over there, probably in the driver's seat, listening along with your daughter. So let me just bring you into this conversation too. So many times in my parenting, I run to the consequence. I'm like, "You're in timeout. You're grounded,” or whatever. We also have to model like my dad did that we're still pursuing relationship. 

I think about back in the book of Genesis when Adam and Eve sinned for the first time. God comes looking for them and says, "Where are you?” That's kind of like my dad coming into my bedroom every night, being like, “Hey, I still love you.” He knew that I had sinned. He knew that I had lied, and he was still coming, sort of saying, "Where are you?”

And then in the garden of Eden, God makes these comforting garments of fur. The very first death happens on the planet. That must have been so sad. God makes fur garments to comfort them, and we need to do that for our children. Now, we can't do that unless we first are comforted with the garment of God's comfort, which is really a robe of His righteousness. It's the first picture we see of God clothing us in something we don't have. Instead of seeing our sin, then God the Father can look and see our righteousness, the garment that Jesus has put on us, His forgiveness. 

And so, Mom, if you're struggling in your parenting and receiving the confession, maybe just run back to the gospel yourself and be like, “Jesus, I feel like I need some help here. Comfort me with the righteous robe of Jesus Christ so that I can respond to my daughter when she confesses her sin the way You would respond.”

Suzy: Right. That reminds me of Scripture saying that God comforts us so that we can give that same comfort to others. So, moms, remember that you were this little girl. Some of you probably received comfort from your parents like Dannah did from her dad, and maybe you didn't. But that's the beauty of the new life, of being born again. We can do things that our parents didn't do for us.

Dannah: So cool, so good. Thank you, Montana, for writing us here at True Girl. We're so glad that we got to answer that for you. And you're not alone in asking that question. That's probably one of the biggest questions that we either ask outright or that we feel. So, God does love you, Montana, and so do we.

Suzy: Amen.

Claire: I hope today's conversation encouraged your heart. The Bible says we've all sinned and fall short of God's perfect standard, but that's exactly why Jesus came. He didn't come for people who never sin. He came to rescue people like you and me—people who tell lies and disobey. So the next time you sin, don't run away from God, run to Him. He's always ready to forgive. And remember, He loves you all the time, no matter what.

You know, following Jesus is a whole lot easier when you have people cheering you on. That's one of the reasons we created the True Girl subscription box. Our next box ships soon. The Pajama Party Box is all about choosing the right friends and understanding how they have a big influence over the choices you make. 

Inside the Pajama Party Box, you and your mom will find a book called The True Girl Pajama Party by Dannah Gresh. It's got recipes, games, and planning ideas for a mom-daughter PJ party. But it's not just any party; it's a party designed to help you explore what God's Word says about choosing wise friends, being the kind of friend who points others to Jesus, and standing strong when everyone else is making different choices. 

And hey, maybe you could do your PJ party on the road in a hotel when you come to a True Girl Crazy Hair Tour stop in October. Dannah is touring with worship leader Yancy. You'll spend two-and-a-half hours worshiping, laughing, learning from God's Word, and meeting other girls who are following Jesus too. You can find a tour stop near you, and learn more about the True Girl subscription box at MyTrueGirl.com. 

Have you ever been hurt by someone, whether physically or emotionally? Does a fish swim? The answer to both questions is a loud yes. And next time on the podcast, we'll answer the question: Why do I have to forgive someone who hurts me? Hope you'll join us. 

Song:

Oh, oh, oh, oh.
I am a true girl.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
I am, I am, I am a true girl!

The True Girl podcast is a production of Revive Our Hearts, calling women of all ages to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ
 

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.