The Value of You
If you are feeling kind of low today, maybe this blog will perk you up a little bit. Why? Because I am going to write about how much God loves you and what that means to all of us. Scripture is full of, not only examples of God's love, but the many times God himself says it again and again. Of course, we know we don't deserve it, and we surely cannot earn this great love God has for us. But it is there. In fact, His love is so evident we have to go to great strides to minimize it to fit our small, human minds. There is a way to realize this love though, and today I hope to show that in this blog.
First off, we can see evidence of God's great love for us in John 3:16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Some people believe they can "capture" a deeper walk with God by saying how wretched we are and then transfer that over to explain that we are not worthy of God's love. DUH!!! Of course, we are not worthy of His love, but don't minimize His love by putting the spotlight on us alone. Put the spotlight on this great love and realize how much it should endear us to Him. Jeremiah 31:3 Long ago the Lord said to Israel: “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself. This love, God's love should not be ignored, explained away, or coupled with our unworthiness, but just enjoyed. GOD LOVES YOU!!! Nuff said....or not!
Some people through life circumstances of their own will try to become like so many religions where we get into a "I am a wretch" competition when thinking of God's love.
Some religions actually beat themselves, bake in the hot sun, and do many other religious practices to show how low they are. Which begs the question "How low can you go"? To try and "one up" each other on how low we can make ourselves becomes a competition between weird thinking people who are trying to make points in the humble competition, but then that becomes a thing of pride.
If anything, we should rely on just how marvelous God's love is toward us and live in the realization that He loves us that much. There is where the humbling part kicks in. Also, realize we are His handiwork. He made us as the psalmist says in Psalm 139:13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. I can take some scripture and prove the worm theology that is so self defeating in some circles today, but be sure and read the whole thing. In Psalm 22:6 the Psalmist is speaking from a time when He thought God had forsaken him and in that frame of mind said in verse 6 But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. The psalmist is speaking from a man's point of view because of how other men think of him, not how God thinks of him. So whoever gets to thinking in terms of us being worms is probably like the one writing the above psalm, but they are trying to show that is how God thinks about us and in the verse it is how man thinks about us. GOD LOVES US!!
God has given us the greatest thing we could ever get. He gives us VALUE! This is not a prideful statement. It is an identity statement that compels us to live in the power of the God of the universe loving us this much. Back to John 3:16 and the realization this love God pours out on each of us involves God sacrificing His only son for our release from the penalty of sin. Paul wrote about us in this way in Ephesians 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. We will never do those great works by sitting in our so-called humble condition and reveling in our low standing. We live out of Victory, and our victory is found in Jesus. Don't minimize it. Also, we are not a religion, because we live out of relationship and that changes everything!! God has taken great pains to draw us close to Him, so don't mock that effort by pulling away from Him. 1 John 3: 1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
God loves us His children and His promises are true and eternal and we should give Him praise with our lives as asknowledgment of His great love for us!! To realize His great love for us doesn't mean we are not being humble. It just means we realize just how much He cares and that prompts us to serve Him. You might liken this to the woman who poured the oil on Jesus' feet and cleaned His feet with her tears because she "realized" who He was and what He was there to do. May we never become numb to God's greatest expression of love because of His great love for you and me.
The Pilgrimage Continues......
David Warren