As I stared at the computer screen in my study, suddenly it came to life and I could see my interviewer in his studio at Trans World Radio somewhere in the Manchester area in the UK. He introduced himself and we chatted for a while. Then he outlined what we would cover in the interview we were about to record. [To watch this interview, please click here.]
‘First, I’ll ask you where you live and where you might take me if I were to visit you in Sydney,’ he explained. ‘Next, we’ll talk about your new book Swansong – why you wrote it, the importance of speaking life-giving words to others and so on – and then I’d like to ask you about your fiction books too. Is that okay?’
I warmed to him immediately. With my other recent radio interviews, I had had no real idea what question would come next. In the end, they were fine, but knowing what lay ahead was definitely reassuring.
In the end, this interview lasted for twenty minutes, with one question flowing easily onto another. But the most important question, I sensed, was one my lovely interviewer asked around half way through.
‘When I was a child, if I made a mistake, a close family member would say to me, “Oh … you’re useless!” I don’t think they meant any harm by that – it was just a throwaway line – but for many, many years, those words harmed me. So, what would you say to someone who has experienced something like that? How can we bring forgiveness and restoration into those situations?’
Immediately, my heart went out to him across the miles. I could see by his facial expression how important this question still seemed to be and my mind worked furiously to grasp the right words to say. I began by suggesting that this is the opposite to how God views us. In Genesis 1:27, we read we are all, male and female, created in the image of the God of the universe. Further, we were each created and formed with such intricate care, as King David wrote about:
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Psalm 139:13–14
As well, when God called Jeremiah to be a prophet, Jeremiah was told God knew him even before he was born (Jeremian 1:9a) – and surely this is true for each one of us today too. On top of that, we who believe in Jesus Christ have been given the amazing privilege to be called children of God (John 1:12), something John continues to marvel at in his first letter:
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! I John 3:1a
My point in sharing these thoughts with my interviewer was that, given we are God’s beloved children, created in the image of God with such care, how could we ever be useless? I can well understand how we can come to believe such things about ourselves when others say them to us, even once, but surely this is the work of the enemy who always seeks to accuse and deceive?
Useless? I don’t think so – do you?
Jo-Anne Berthelsen's Blog 