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Lately I have been feeling more and more depressed. I feel as if God does not love me anymore. I try my best to be a good person but I have done some bad things. If I were Heavenly Father, I would not love me either. I feel like even though I have repented that I don’t deserve God’s forgiveness. At times I feel completely useless and worthless and just want to completely give up. I sometimes don’t have the energy to do anything because I don’t see the point because I know I’ll just end in failure. Even though I’ve repented I feel as though God has not forgiven me, and I also have not forgiven myself. I am so exhausted of this life and I just wish God would take me away because I don’t believe I deserve the gift of being here. I think Heavenly Father is punishing me though for my sins by allowing me to remain here and suffer. I don’t know what to do anymore. I just want to know how I can try to be in God’s Favor again?

Thank You,

Unimportant

Dear Unimportant,

Doctrine & Covenants 18:10

Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God;

When you read that, what do you think of? Probably missionary work. Probably how much Heavenly Father values bringing in more souls into the Church.

Luke 15:4
4 What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?

You are a child of a loving Heavenly Father who loves you. You have infinite worth! You are worth saving and bringing back to the ninety and nine!

The hard part about this life sometimes, is separating our identity from our roles in life. Our identity is our self-worth – which we get from our Father in Heaven. Our roles is how we judge ourselves in various areas of our life – father, mother, sibling, child, employer, employee, church callings… we end up comparing ourselves to others.

The way to work to overcome this (and it’s not easy) is to remember your self-worth.

2 Nephi 25:23
23 For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.

As members of the church, we seem to focus more on the latter part of that verse “after all we can do”. But that comes AFTER we believe in Christ and to be reconciled to God.

We typically focus on the “after all we can do” as a response to other Christians who only believe in grace. Believe me, we believe in grace! We just believe that when your heart has turned to the Lord, that you’ll want to show your intentions by doing your best to avoid sins.

Alma 24:10-11
“And I also thank my God, yea my great God, that he hath granted unto us that we might repent of these things, and also that he hath forgiven us of those our many sins and murders which we have committed, and taken away the guilt from our hearts, through the merits of his Son.”

“And now behold, my bretheren, since It has been all that we could do, (as we were the most lost of all mankind) to repent of all our sins and the many murders which we have committed, and to get God to take them away from our hearts, for it was all we could do to repent sufficiently before God that he would take away our stain.“

Sometimes, you just have to accept that you are doing all you can do. Of course, you need to be doing all you can do… just don’t use the “righteousness checklist” to judge how much you’re supposed to be doing.

There are three basic steps to improving in this area:
1) Do what you can
2) Do the best you can
3) Rest very little

I wish you all the best our Father in Heaven offers you, to comfort you and to help guide you and others who are experiencing a difficult time. The Lord is mindful of you and your needs. He knows. Reach out to Him and just bear your soul to Him. Build a relationship. You will then begin to feel more of His presence in your life.

Hope this helps.

Gramps

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