How to Stop Feeling Unworthy and Secure an Eternity of Joy

Inside: Discover the underlying reasons why you’re feeling unworthy. Plus, find out the truth of how to fix it so you never have to feel unworthy again. Don’t forget to download the free Scripture Cards to help you get your self-worth back.

My boyfriend was way over me. Like eye-rolling, here we go again with this chick, over me.

He was sick of me messing up and creating unnecessary problems in our relationship. Like a clueless ninny, it seemed I was always starting something.

No matter how innocent and unintentional my actions, I somehow always turned out to be wrong. And he was seriously over it.

It’s no wonder I was pretty sure God was way over me too.

My boyfriends’ endless aggravation and exasperation with my lack of…well, everything…left me feeling unworthy of his love. And if I wasn’t worthy of this mere mortal man’s love, what chance did I stand with the matchless Creator of the entire universe, for goodness’ sake?

How much more unworthy of His—and anyone else’s—love must I be?

Bonus: As a bonus for joining my weekly newsletter, get this free printable download—The Instant Pep-Talk Pack. It has 8 Scripture cards to help boost your confidence and ramp up your courage.

What Does It Mean to Feel Unworthy?

Before we go any further, let’s get clear about what it means to feel unworthy.

According to Merriam-Webster, one definition of unworthy is, “not good enough to deserve something or someone.”

So you’re feeling unworthy because you think you’re way below the standard someone—your man, your boss, the world, or even you—has set. And if you’re like me, even though you feel like you’ll never measure up, you keep trying anyway.

When you’re feeling this way, you’re usually tangled up in shame, unworthiness, anger, and confusion. Your thoughts can look like this:

Shame: “What the heck is wrong with me? Clearly, I’m defective.”
Unworthiness: “I don’t feel loved or valued, and I don’t deserve to.”
Anger: “Why am I always the one who’s wrong? Why is something always wrong with me?”
Confusion: “I thought I was a good person but good people don’t feel like dirt. So what does that make me?”

If you dwell in this negative space and let these thoughts take root, your mental health can take a hit. You may even find yourself battling depression. If you are, please consider calling a national depression hotline. They can help you identify and deal with depression symptoms.

But if you’re not there yet, you can avoid the trap and stop feeling unworthy. You can fight the lies you’ve been told about your lack of worth with an unlikely weapon: God’s truth.

But before jumping into how you can nip it in the bud, let’s dig up and expose the lies making you feel unworthy in the first place. This way, you’ll know how to recognize them and beware when they come at you again.

Why Do I Feel Unworthy of Love?

Only when I came out on the other side of it did I see clearly enough to understand how I fell prey to feeling unworthy in the first place. I’m telling you now so you can rescue yourself before you sink deeper into the swamp of unworthiness you’ve been shoved into.

You feel unworthy because of relationships that have impacted your life, even in ways you haven’t yet recognized. Those relationships may be current or they may be over. They may even have evolved and changed since the initial inflicting of pain.

But their aftereffects are now influencing how you feel about and see yourself. Let’s dig in a bit so you can start healing the hurt from when someone made you feel unworthy.

Feeling Unworthy of a Parent’s Love

Maybe the first person whose actions made you feel unworthy was a parent or authority figure in your life. This could have happened through emotional or physical abuse, or by their absence from your life. By their actions, you learned you weren’t worth their time, regard, or presence. You learned you weren’t precious and valuable.

Or maybe, like my dad, your parent was emotionally unavailable. He was a benevolent presence—nice, charming, and well-liked—but distant. Always holding himself apart in ways I felt but didn’t understand.

So their treatment of you wasn’t outright bad. But you ended up with the message that they didn’t think you were worth loving.

The thing is, when someone makes you feel unworthy of love, it’s often because they don’t know how to love you since they don’t love themselves. This turned out to be the case with my dad, and it may have been the problem with your parent or other authority figures.

They didn’t withhold what they had because you didn’t deserve it. It turns out, they didn’t have it to give to you in the first place.

Feeling Unworthy in a Relationship

Or maybe you’re in a relationship right now where you’re feeling unworthy of your partner. It’s not that he doesn’t love you, you tell yourself. After all, he swears up and down on his love every day. But he somehow still makes you feel unworthy of his love.

In my toxic relationship, my ex-partner straight-up told me he’d proven his love by putting up with so much from me over the time we’d been together. With one proverbial hand, he caressed my face, and with the other proverbial hand, he slapped it. He made it crystal clear to me so I would be in no doubt: I wasn’t good enough for him and didn’t measure up to the standards of who his woman should be.

But I take responsibility. You see, because I hadn’t set standards for myself in this area of my life, and because I bought his PR about what a great catch he was, I swallowed his opinions—his lies, really—about my lack of worth, hook, line, and sinker.

The thing is, you can keep trying to improve yourself in a desperate attempt to prove you deserve his love. But since you’re human and therefore imperfect, you’ll never measure up. Never.

At some point, you’ll fail yet again to meet his standards. And you’ll cycle right back around to feeling unworthy.

The Instant Pep-Talk Pack download — Get your FREE printable download to help get your confidence back—The Instant Pep-Talk Pack.

Feeling Unworthy of a Friend’s Love

Maybe it was a longtime friend who set you aside for a new friend or lover. Or maybe it was someone who abandoned you when you thought their love was supposed to be limitless. Whoever they were, these people withdrew their love when you were less than perfect. Or they never returned your love in the first place.

Through their actions, you got the message that you’re unworthy, and now you believe it as the truth.

Here’s the thing: When someone makes you feel unworthy, you don’t have to believe their story. You can just decide it’s a bummer for them and their loss that they chose not to love you as you are, especially since you’re kind of amazing. The Bible says so.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
Psalm 139:14 (ESV)

Wouldn’t you rather believe God’s unfailing, inerrant word over people’s fallible opinions and fickle actions?

How Do I Stop Feeling Unworthy?

So all these people—your parents, your man, your friends—have you feeling unworthy of their love. If you’re like me, you now believe you must, even more, be unworthy of God’s love.

Except, it’s a lie.

People usually love you for a reason, like because you’re kind, beautiful, fun, loyal, or hardworking. Since their love is conditioned on a reason, if the reason goes away—if they stop believing you’re any of those things—then so does their love.

You do the same so don’t be too harsh in your judgment of them. Think back to the last person who disappointed you and you’ll see it’s true. Didn’t your feelings for them change? At the very least, your love decreased for a little while until you got over your hurt.

This shows firsthand how fickle human emotions can be. In fact, they’re the most undependable foundation on which to build your self-worth.

The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable—who can understand it?
Jeremiah 17:10 (CSB)

One minute, someone can profess their undying love for you. And the next minute—because of one action, word, or changed perception—they don’t love you the same or stop loving you altogether.

But not God.

You literally cannot earn His love so He literally doesn’t have to love you for any reason on Earth. And yet, He loves you without conditions or limits, just as you are.

This is why God’s unconditional love for you is the most solid foundation upon which you can rebuild your self-worth and start feeling worthy again.

Bonus: As a bonus for joining my weekly newsletter, get this free printable download—The Instant Pep-Talk Pack. It has 8 Scripture cards to help boost your confidence and ramp up your courage.

The Father’s Love When You’re Feeling Unworthy

You don’t have to take my word about God’s unconditional love for you because He’s proven it.

You see, your sin caused a separation between you and God. Because of His holiness, which requires payment for sin, your destiny was to suffer in eternal darkness and torment, paying the ultimate price for your imperfection and continuous, willful sin.

But God loved you so much, He came up with a plan to help you out of the mess you didn’t even know you were in. His holiness required atonement for your sin but instead of putting payback on you, He put it on His Son, Jesus.

But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8 (CSB)

Without you doing anything to earn it, God poured His love out on you. And He keeps pouring it out without putting conditions on His love.

This means you don’t have to be one drop worthier or better to get or keep God’s love. And it means you don’t have to do a darn thing to be worthy of it. He won’t love you any more or less than He does right now, no matter what you do.

You see, His love doesn’t depend on you. It depends solely on Him. His love for you just…is. He gives it freely and abundantly.

All you have to do is receive it and let it wash away your feelings of unworthiness.

Jesus’ Love Makes You Worthy

Not only did your Father sacrifice His Son for a payment you couldn’t make. But Jesus chose to lay down His life for you because He loves you and He loves His Father.

Scripture makes it clear: Jesus didn’t want to go through the unimaginable physical and spiritual torture required to pay for your sins. Who would? Even as He abandoned His will to God’s way, Jesus struggled with the decision.

“Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” Then an angel from heaven appeared and strengthened him. He prayed more fervently, and he was in such agony of spirit that his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood.
Luke 22:42-44 (NLT)

He suffered at the thought of what lay ahead of Him. Yet He still walked into it on purpose! He did it to free you from the threat of death and reunite you with the Father.

That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God.
1 Peter 3:18 (MSG)

Jesus’s love for you and desire to reunite you with God spurred Him on to sacrifice Himself on the cross. If He didn’t love you, He wouldn’t have done it. Jesus said so Himself:

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13 (ESV)

Which means you’re worth Jesus’ love and His life. I dare you to tell me how you can be unworthy when you’re worth Jesus’ life.

You’re Worthy of the Friend’s Love

The Holy Spirit isn’t left out of this wonderful act of heavenly love. After Jesus paid your way out of an eternity of suffering and into an eternity of God’s love, He promised you a forever Friend.

I will talk to the Father, and he’ll provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can’t take him in because it doesn’t have eyes to see him, doesn’t know what to look for. But you know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you!
John 14:16-17 (MSG)

Not only does the Holy Spirit hang out with you, but He also loves and helps you in ways you don’t even know about.

And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.
Romans 8:26 (NLT)

Do you see? God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit see you as so worthy, they work together to:

Save you from eternal damnation.
Give you eternal life.
Guide you on your Christian walk.

So next time you’re feeling unworthy, remind yourself of what our God of the universe has done and continues to do because He loves you.

Scriptures on Feeling Unworthy

Even though you now know you’re worthy of love, you may still have moments when you doubt it’s true. When those times come, you’ll need to:

Choose to believe God’s word over your fickle feelings.
Choose faith in God over your self-doubt.
Reach for Scripture when feeling unworthy hits you.

You can start with these verses.

5 Bible Verses for When You’re Feeling Unworthy

You’re not worthy because of who you are or what you’ve done. In truth, you’ll never do or be good enough on your own to rate worthiness in God’s presence.

But Jesus’ loving sacrifice makes you worthy to live in God’s holy presence. And if you’re good enough for God, you’re good enough for any human being.

1. But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) Ephesians 2:4-5 (NLT)

2. And such some of you were [once]. But you were washed clean (purified by a complete atonement for sin and made free from the guilt of sin), and you were consecrated (set apart, hallowed), and you were justified [pronounced righteous, by trusting] in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the [Holy] Spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6:11 (AMPC)

3. Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Matthew 6:26 (NLT)

4. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows. Luke 12:7 (ESV)

5. May the God of your hope so fill you with all joy and peace in believing [through the experience of your faith] that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound and be overflowing (bubbling over) with hope. Romans 15:13 (AMPC)

Any time you find yourself wondering how to stop feeling unworthy, God’s word has your answer.

How to Pray When You’re Feeling Unworthy

When someone makes you feel unworthy, the best place to go is to your knees before God. Bring whatever’s on your mind to Him. And if you don’t know what to say, you can use this prayer as a starting point.

Oh God, I feel terrible right now, like I’m a bad person, the absolute worst. I feel unloved and unloveable, drowning in unworthiness but not wanting to feel like this.

Lord, help me to remember to trust your word above others’ opinions, even my own. Your word says You love me faithfully and unfailingly, which means you see me as worthy of Your love. And if You—God of heavenly hosts—see me as worthy of love, who am I to argue with you? And who are others to say different?

Father, help me also to remember to trust your word above my fickle feelings. Your word says You’ve given me a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. This means any thoughts and feelings that go against Your declaration about who I am aren’t from You and, therefore, aren’t trustworthy.

Holy Spirit, help me to remember that even though others abandon me because they think I’m unworthy of their love—and even though I sometimes abandon myself—You’re always with me. Remind me that, as a born-again believer, I’m God’s temple so You’re always with me.

Jesus, as the enemy comes against me through my own thoughts and others’ words, please help me not to fall for the lies. Through Your sacrificial act, You’ve washed me white as snow. Because of You, Jesus, I’m worthy to stand before the Father, which means I’m worthy to stand before any man and in any circumstance.

Thank You, God, for Your love which makes me loveable and worthy. Amen.

Get Your Free Printable Scripture Cards (With Bible Verses to Boost Your Self-Worth)

When you rebuild your feelings of worth on purpose, you take back your emotional power from anyone who’s stolen it!

One way to keep your power and your peace is to know what God says about you. Use these Scripture cards to set that foundation now.

Get the free Scripture cards. You’ll get the printable cards and join my weekly newsletter. Just click here to get the cards and subscribe.
Print the cards. You can print them on any type of paper but heavy cardstock is best so they last.
Keep the card you need most right now in your wallet (they’re sized to slide right in next to your driver’s license and bank cards), stick it on your bathroom mirror, or prop it on the base of your bedside lamp so it’s the last thing you see at night and the first thing you see in the morning.

Here’s a sneak peek of your free printable Scripture cards:

From Feeling Unworthy to Knowing You’re Priceless

My boyfriend was way over me and I let his exasperation and arrogance undermine my self-worth. I let him make me feel unworthy of his love.

But do you know who I was always worthy of? God. He made me worthy, just as He made you worthy too.

Our God of the universe made it so you’re worth the most priceless gift in creation—our Savior’s life. This means no human has the right to make you feel unworthy. Don’t give anyone that power or privilege, my darling.

Before you go, get your FREE printable download to help conquer your confusion—The Essential Guide to Finding Clarity.

One more piece of good news:

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38-39 (CSB)

This means nothing can come between you and God’s eternal love for you. Not even the things you do or say to exasperate others and have them feeling like they’re way over you. He loves you now and He’ll love you to eternity.

God’s merciful patience with and love for you are infinite, and you are—and always have been—worthy of both.

How to Stop Feeling Unworthy, Know Your Value & Secure an Eternity of Joy