Photo by hannah grace on Unsplash
There has been a common theme found on this site. We are talking about hope for those who are feeling hopeless for a variety of reasons. The symptoms of feeling hopeless are seen as we feel scared, overwhelmed, or brokenhearted. But there are many other symptoms as well. Sometimes, it can seem as simple as finding it difficult to get out of bed in the morning or having our appetite affected…either eating too much because we seek comfort in food, or not having any appetite.
We often feel alone and worthless. So we need to think about where our value comes from. We certainly can’t get our value from how we feel! Our feelings can be very untrustworthy.They are not based on truth but are totally subjective. As a woman, I can tell you, my feelings about my looks alone can vary in 24 hours from one extreme to another. Surely my feelings of being horribly ugly to feeling really beautifull can’t be based on facts! Of course, they aren’t. The same goes for my goodness as a person. We can’t intellectually make ourselves believe we are valuable. There has to be more to it than that.
Where does your value as a person come from? Not from reminding yourself how valuable you are!
Your value comes from GOD! He created you in HIs image and He has given you value as a human being no matter how much or how little you accomplish!
As I have been reading lately, I have been reminded of some important emphases that I don’t mention as often as I should. The first has to do with your value as a person. Your value as a human being comes from GOD. When He places value on you, who can argue with that? How high is the value He has placed on you?
When He created humans in the beginning, His assessment was “very good!”
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens
and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.And God saw everything that he had made,
and behold, it was very good.
And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.Genesis 1:26-27, 31 ESV
We all have value as humans, but we don’t have the same hope because we haven’t all trusted Christ for the forgiveness He has offered us.
“None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law,
so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight,
since through the law comes knowledge of sin.But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law,
although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—
the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
For there is no distinction:for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
It was to show his righteousness at the present time,
so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.Romans 3:10-12,19-26 ESV
GOD has created each human being in HIs image. That is where He gave each of us value.
The Fall brought brokenness to our world and to those beautiful images. It deeply marred them as well. But those images are still there. Each has value placed there by Him…no matter how marred or broken.
As we minister to one another, we dress each other with the dignity GOD gave us…whether the other person is “in Christ” or not.
No matter what, we are valued by GOD as human beings because we are created in His image. After the entrance of sin into the world and spiritual death to mankind, the plan that GOD had already made for our redemption, was put in place. Years after the Fall, Jesus was born in a manger. This GOD/man who was fully human and fully GOD lived a perfect life on earth. Only He could die to pay for an infinite number of people’s sins because He was GOD. Only He was able to die for us because He had lived a perfect life here on earth. He never once sinned in thought, word, or deed. He never committed a sin of omission or commission. It is mind blowing!
Because He had a perfect record of a perfect life lived here on earth, He was able to figuratively give me His record in exchange for my awful record of disobedience to his laws. My sins of omission and commission were piled up. My sins of ignorance and intention were piled on top of them. And my intentional desire to go my own way instead of GOD’s. It was a damning record. Jesus took it all on Himself and shed His blood for me, to pay for that sin!
In order to receive that gift of salvation, what must I do? I must humble myself and realize that I am totally unable to fix myself! GOD is the only One who can do it! I need to follow Him. I need to do things the way He wants, not the way I want.
That is how I will “find myself” and my true value! He created me and He knows what is needed to make me function well as His creation. This is our hope! That the One who created us knows what is best for us. That He can guide the process of growth in our lives through all the stages of life until the time when we will meet Him in heaven…forever!
added 9/20/20: When I wrote this, it was before COVID 19. It was before the killing of George Floyd…and so much more. It was before I moved to another layer of listening to my black friends. I have a local one who speaks very straight to me…and she isn’t the first in my life that has done that over the years.
Each has been a gift. Now I have a new online one. Her name is Lucretia Berry. She is giving me a lot of information I wanted my black friends to tell me. But I was wearing them out. Especially now. They are tired and weary. They are grieving. They keep hearing the same arguments from white peopla to justify things that are unjustifiable. Please! Give them a break!
Brownicity.com is for beginners and maybe not so beginners. It’s an online website/course designed to catch us up on history, culture, etc. so we don’t keep offending our black sisters and brothers over and over and over again. I’ll write more on the topic, but I wanted to add a note here since my photo may have indicated this article had to do with race.
I just put the photo there so not every photo on my page was of white people. I wanted to be inclusive. I like to mix it up. I also believe the truth of what I wrote here…that each one of us is valuable to GOD. Despite the way many American Christians have treated many black people over the centuries, this is true. We simply have to live up to who we are. We have failed terribly in being who GOD made us to be.
While it is true that GOD forgives us when we ask Him, another way to find forgiveness and restitution is to stop being quiet when we learn truth.
