I Am Not a Bum
“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
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” 1 Corinthians 1:27
I am not a bum, a loser, or a failure. And NEITHER ARE YOU. My life is not worthless, useless, or good for nothing. And neither is yours. But let me tell you something — I spent most of my life believing it was. And if you’re reading this right now, there’s a fair chance you believe it about yourself too.
Has someone’s words or actions hurt you so badly you don’t think you can take it any longer? Are you constantly depressed and tired of putting on a happy face for the rest of the world? Feeling like dying would be the answer to everything — that you have nothing left to live for? Are you feeling suicidal?
DON’T YOU DO IT. I mean it. And read on.
Or maybe someone’s words or actions hurt you so badly it makes you really, REALLY angry. Is that anger building and building inside you, boiling away and needing an outlet? Do you find yourself taking it out on others — those weaker than you, or those who are different? Would people call you a bully?
STOP IT. NOW. And read on. Because this is for you too.
I know both of those people. I HAVE BEEN both of those people. The one who wanted to disappear off the face of the earth, and the one who hurt others because the pain inside had nowhere else to go. So I’m not talking down to you. I’m talking TO you. From the inside. Pull up a chair, because this is going to be the most important conversation you’ve had in a long time.
Have You Ever Stopped to Think About How Valuable You Are?
No? I didn’t think so. Neither did I — not for decades. And here’s why: you’ve been too busy DROWNING. Negative words became negative thoughts. Negative thoughts became a dark, screaming inner voice demanding dark actions. You didn’t have time to consider your value because someone, or SOMETHING, has been working very hard to make sure you never do. And that’s not an accident, my friend. That’s a STRATEGY.
The Oldest Trick in the Book
Let me tell you something that changed my life. Not a self-help technique. Not a motivational poster you stick on your fridge next to the shopping list. This is an ancient secret — as old as time itself — and it is devastatingly simple.
Here it is: there is an enemy, and he has a playbook. It has ONE play in it. And it works almost every time.
The Bible calls him Satan. The name literally means “the accuser” — the one who points the finger. And here’s what makes him so effective: he doesn’t come at you with a pitchfork and a cape. That would be too obvious, and honestly, a bit ridiculous. Can you imagine? No. He comes at you through the mouth of your father, your mother, your teacher, your classmate, your boss, your so-called friend. He comes through the people who are SUPPOSED to love you. He whispers through them: “You’re a bum. You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re stupid. You should never have been born. You might as well just kill yourself.”
Now here’s the thing — he CAN’T tell you God doesn’t love you, because God’s Word says otherwise, and that’s a fight he’ll lose every day of the week and twice on Sunday. So he does something much sneakier. He gets to you BEFORE you ever open a Bible. Before you ever hear that you are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). Before anyone tells you that God has plans for you — “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). Before you learn that God deliberately chooses the people the world considers foolish and weak and overlooked — to do EXTRAORDINARY things (1 Corinthians 1:27).
That’s like a restaurant giving you food poisoning before you ever see the menu. By the time you sit down, you don’t want to eat. HOW SNEAKY IS THAT?!
He plants the lie first. And then everything God tries to give you after that — love, purpose, belonging, a future — bounces off the wall that lie has built. That’s the strategy. That’s the whole play. And it’s been running since the Garden of Eden.
Why It Works So Well
Here’s what makes this so maddeningly effective: when you hear something often enough, especially as a child, it stops being somebody else’s words and becomes YOUR voice. Psychologists call it internalisation. The insults move from the outside in. They become the voice in your head. And once they’re in there, you don’t even recognise them as lies anymore. They just feel like… the truth.
You stop thinking “My dad says I’m worthless.” You just think “I’m worthless.” And then the dominoes fall. You destroy the good things in your life because you don’t believe you deserve them. Or the pain gets so unbearable that dying seems like the only exit. Or the anger gets so explosive that you start inflicting the same wounds on someone else — because that’s the only thing that gives you five minutes of relief from your own agony.
The victim becomes the bully. The bullied child grows up and bullies their own kids. Hurt people hurt people. And the cycle spins, generation after generation, exactly the way the enemy designed it. It’s the world’s worst hand-me-down. Nobody asks for it, but it keeps getting passed along like a fruitcake at Christmas — except this one actually does damage.
But Here’s What He Doesn’t Want You to Know
If you were truly worthless, NOBODY WOULD BOTHER ATTACKING YOU. Let me tell you, you need to sit with that one for a second.
You don’t put a security system on an empty house. You don’t send an army to guard a pile of dirt. The very fact that you have been targeted — that someone, or something, has invested THIS much effort in tearing you down — is actually evidence that you are valuable. Deeply, dangerously valuable. Valuable enough to be a THREAT. Smith Wigglesworth used to say the devil knows your potential even when you don’t — and that’s why he hits so early and so hard. The enemy isn’t wasting his ammunition on nobodies, friend. He’s spending it on YOU because he’s TERRIFIED of what you’ll become when you figure out who you are.
God chose the weak things of this world to shame the strong. He chose the overlooked, the despised, the people others write off as bums and losers — and He said, “Those are Mine. Watch what I do with them.” The enemy knows this. He’s seen God do it a thousand times — with David, a shepherd boy nobody took seriously. With Moses, a stuttering fugitive living in the back end of nowhere. With a bunch of uneducated fishermen who turned the world upside down. He KNOWS God has a purpose for you. And that terrifies him. So he gets to work early. Before you can discover who you are, he tells you who you’re not.
My Story (A Taste)
I was about seven years old. My father would come home from work, wrestle with me on the living room floor — playful, the way dads do — and then he’d lean in close and whisper the same words into my ear, over and over: “You’re a bum. Nothing but a bum. You’ll always be a bum.” His breath tickled the tiny hairs in my ear. But the words didn’t tickle. They took root. They grew into something that shaped every decision I made for decades. No matter what good things God put in my life, I found a way to destroy them. I didn’t deserve them. That’s what the voice said.
But at the same time — and this is important, so don’t miss it — that same seven-year-old boy would secretly open the family Bible. I’d look at the pictures: Noah and the ark, Daniel in the lion’s den, David standing over a giant, Jesus carrying a lamb on His shoulders, talking to little children, hanging on a cross. Something in those pages was speaking to me, even then. Two voices, competing for the same child. One whispering death. One whispering life. And I didn’t know it yet, but the one whispering life had already won — it was just going to take me a while to catch up.
What’s Coming
I’m going to unpack this in a short series of posts so you can peel back the layers one at a time without your head exploding. Here’s the roadmap:
Post 2: My full story. The darkness, the destruction, the moment I hit rock bottom, and the breakthrough that changed everything.
Post 3: The truth about your value — what God says about you versus what the enemy has been whispering — and how to start replacing the lies with what’s real.
Post 4: How to take the high ground and keep it. Practical, spiritual, and lasting. So you don’t go back to that dark place again.
All you have to do right now is keep reading. I’ll do the heavy lifting. Because here’s what I need you to hear today, even if you can’t believe it yet: YOU ARE NOT A BUM. You are not a loser. You are not a failure. You are not “good for nothing.” You are someone the Creator of the universe took the time to put together with His own hands — fearfully and wonderfully — with a purpose so significant that the enemy has been trying to destroy you before you could discover it. Which means, in a strange and beautiful way, the very pain you’re in right now is proof that you matter.
Stay with me. The best part is coming.
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A Moment Before You Go
A.W. Tozer wrote, “The enemy is not error; the enemy is the absence of truth.” The lies you’ve been carrying aren’t just wrong — they’re placeholders. And the truth is coming to take their place.
C.S. Lewis put it this way: “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” The enemy’s been attacking the body and the mind — but he can’t touch the real you. Not unless you let him.
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Next: I Am Not a Bum — Post 2: Two Voices, One Child
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If you or someone you know is in crisis right now, please reach out. You are not alone.
New Zealand: Lifeline 0800 543 354 | Need to Talk? Free call or text 1737
USA: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 988 | Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
UK: Samaritans 116 123 | Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
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