I sang my heart out on stage and, afterward, no one said anything.
Ouch.
I tried to brush it off. Even as a voice major, I knew the spotlight didn’t always need to be on me. Yet the experience left me with questions:
Did I do okay or did I mess up in some way?
Am I any good at this, at all?
Whether or not you’ve ever sung in public, I’m guessing you can relate to my experience.
Maybe for you, a presentation at work went unacknowledged or you sat by as a friend complimented everyone in the room except for you. These moments may be small, but they can sting.
Yet in every moment where we feel overlooked and less-than, Matthew 3:17 offers encouragement.
Speaking of Jesus, at His baptism, the gospel notes:
“Behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Matthew 3:17 (WEBBE)
This verse reminds us of two things:
One: When we are less-than we ought to be, Jesus is more than enough.
There are times when our performance is lacking. It’s not that someone is judging us too harshly or is overlooking our impressiveness. There are times when we truly fail.
- We mess up.
- We strike wrong chords in life.
- We sin in ways that hurt ourselves and others.
Yet, when our own imperfections are all we can see, this passage shifts our eyes to the beauty of Christ’s perfection.
Yes, we have failed to meet God’s standard. (Maybe, we’ve even failed to meet our own standards). But Jesus has not failed in any way.
He is holy in every detail and is perfectly pleasing to the Father.
He is the Son of God promised in the Old Testament and faithfully given to us in the New Testament. (Isaiah 42, Psalm 9)
So, here’s what that means:
Jesus is the Savior He claims to be. He is fully qualified—and fully willing—to rescue us from our sins and to rework our brokenness into something beautiful.
Our lives may be full of missteps and wrong chords, but they can still become joyful songs of victory if we’ll let Jesus orchestrate them from here.
Two: When we are overlooked by others, we are loved and pleasing in Christ.
There are also times when we feel “less-than”—not because we’ve failed—but because we’ve been overlooked by others.
- We finish our song and no one acknowledges it.
- We reach out in friendship, but the friendship isn’t reciprocated.
- We tell someone what we do and they immediately begin looking around for someone more impressive to network with.
In all these moments, we must remember: the words God spoke over Jesus are also spoken over us.
My beloved child…with whom I am well pleased…
You see, if we are in Christ, then we have been adopted into God’s family. We are now children who are deeply loved and unconditionally cherished by our heavenly Father.
And in spite of our flaws, He is well-pleased with us.
When God looks at you and me, He does not see our failures, our career accomplishments or even our social rank. He sees all the goodness of Jesus, covering and completing us. He sees us as the whole and holy people He has made us to be, in His Son.
So, here’s what we can take away:
When others overlook us, God looks at us with love in His eyes.
And when others are unimpressed, our Father is pleased.
Perhaps, this feels like shallow comfort, when what we really want is a pat on the back from someone we can see.
But if we will rehearse God’s words in the silence after we sing, when others fail to applaud as we’d hoped, His approval will begin to feel like enough. His trustworthy “I love you” and “well done” will fill up the affirmation-hungry places in our souls.
May we tune our ears to hear the voice that really matters.
This devotion is based on one of the Scriptures from my 2025 reading plan: “A Year in the Gospels” To receive a copy of the reading plan (and future reading plans), sign up for the email list below. Hope you’ll follow along! You can also learn more about my Scripture over Screentime experiment here.
Written by Paige K. Burhans
©2024 Paige K. Burhans
Scriptures taken from the World English Bible British Edition. Public Domain.
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