Diane to God:
Dear God, I love the idea that if we don't feel Your presence, perhaps we feel unworthy. Is that a perhaps or is that an always? And is it possible to sense Your worth before we sense our own worth?
God:
Dear Diane of My heart, thank God it is possible to glimpse your worth before you consciously know Mine, and yet they are the same. Knowing your worth is knowing Mine. Knowing My worth is knowing yours. It takes some amount of sense of worth to draw a breath. Some sense of Reality. I am not a stranger to anyone. All do know Me. All do experience Me. But they cover that up in non-recognition or disbelief. Whatever, they avert their eyes from Mine.
This you can know for certain. I am with you. I am a most intimate part of you. I AM you. I never leave you even for a moment. You are never out of My sight, I am closer to you than you are to yourself. If this is true, if it is true that I am right there with you, then what on earth could possibly prevent you from knowing Me?
Adam and Eve in the Garden became ashamed. That was when they stopped seeing Me. They covered their eyes with something called shame. Shame is feeling unworthy. And that is a shame, to feel unworthy. My own creation to feel unworthy in front of the God Who gave them their very life and Himself? To feel too unworthy to even look at Me? To feel too unworthy to even take the chance of looking up at Me and seeing themselves as I see them?
Eating the apple was choosing the material world in preference to the Light that created it. But it was My children, typified as Adam and Eve, who thought there was such a difference between Me and My creation. They thought eating the apple was denying Me when all the while, I created the apple for them. They saw the world as separate from Me, and they believed the snake of shame, and that is the inheritance they left you.
It is as if My children enter the world to prove their unworthiness because that proves they are sovereign of themselves. If I do not exist, if they cannot see Me, then they can go their own way and find more of the world and less of Me.
You can understand this. When you have done something you call wrong, you are ashamed to see the person you wronged. You may even say that he doesn't want to see you. You may even say he pushed you away out of his Garden. You may say he accused you of stealing an apple from his tree, but it was you who decided you were capable of stealing, for the Gardener said it was all yours. You may even say he wronged you in the first place and that you are innocent.
The truth is you are innocent. I proclaim your innocence. But shame and unworthiness are not innocent. They are contrived. They are a show of contrition. They are not the real thing. The real thing is stop shame and sense of unworthiness.
I say, Hey, stop this nonsense! Get over here right now. Open your eyes and see Love and Acceptance before you. I don't care what you think you have done. I care that you know you are not less than I say. You think you are unworthy. I say, you are worthiness itself. I say, you are full of worth. Take My name, not your shame. Take My Worth and know it is yours.
C'mon, children, the cab is waiting. Hop in. You say you don't have the wherewithal for cab fare? I say you have it. All that is required is yourself. You need nothing more than My invitation. Get in. Leave behind you all that keeps your heart away from Mine. Step in. Sit back. Know I know who you are and that you have unlimited entry into Heaven. I say, Come with Me. Come with Me right now. You don't need to wait for another cab. You don't have to dress up. Come as you are. Your baggage is worth nothing. You are worth everything.
If one of My children does not feel My presence, then it is definitely always from feeling unworthy. As each of you feels worthy, you make it easier for everyone else to accept their worth. Christ led the way. Now you follow. Come with Me as he did come with Me.
The difference between you and Christ is that he believed Me when I said he was worthy to be My son.