In moments of isolation and loneliness, God’s love is available to you through the Atonement of Jesus Christ to comfort you and lift you up.
Soon after my return from a full-time mission, I felt distant from God. It was almost as if he had left me drifting on an endless ocean. I felt alone, isolated, and confused. Despite my attempts to regain the same warm closeness that I was accustomed to feeling when I prayed, read the scriptures, or attended church, I felt only emptiness. It became more difficult for me to feel God’s presence in my life, and I no longer felt worthy of his love.
Image by Francesco Ungaro
In the October 2021 general conference, I heard Elder D. Todd Christofferson share in his talk “The Love of God” that God’s love is “a Father’s pure love—universal to all yet personal to each.” He continues, “We need not hesitate to call upon God, even when we feel unworthy.”
These truths did not immediately change my spiritual habits, but it did remind me why praying, reading the scriptures, and attending church are important: to show my love for God. As I eased back into praying, reading scriptures and attending my church meetings, I could feel myself becoming more full of God’s love and appreciation for me. Comfort covered the pain of separation, and I realized that no matter how unworthy I had felt of God’s love for me, his feelings had not changed.
Even though I didn’t feel like I was worthy of God’s love, that didn’t mean that God’s love was no longer available to me. After all, it was he who sent Jesus Christ to suffer not only our sins, but also “the pains and the sicknesses of his people” (Alma 7:11). Once I remembered that Christ was acquainted with the loneliness and pain I would experience, I was comforted with the knowledge that he knew me and loved me all the same. I was worthy of his love.
This same love is extended to all of God’s children, whether we feel we are worthy of it or not. You are worthy of God’s love simply because you are his child. His love is yours to accept, now and forever.
Discover how you can feel God’s love in Elder D. Todd Christofferson’s talk “The Love of God.”
Source: ChurchofJesusChrist.org
—Alyssa Anderson, Latter-day Saint Insights
FEATURE IMAGE BY OBEY NUNO
Find more insights
Read more about how Christ’s Atonement can lift us in Sister Linda S. Reeves’s talk “The Lord Has Not Forgotten You.”
Discover how our mistakes are part of God’s plan with Elder Lynn G. Robbins’s talk “Until Seventy Times Seven.”