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"From God’s perspective we are totally worthless. That’s right. There is nothing of worth in the victim or the victor when compared to a perfect and infallible God."
I know you have heard me deal with the point I'm making from my quote today many times in these presentations. Look, I'm not trying to get you to think less of yourself with the reality that we are totally worthless before this God that loves us. I'm trying to get you and me to stop thinking of ourselves at all when it comes to how we feel about God's love in our lives.
You see when we look to what we can do to prove that we are lovable before this God, we take the good news of Jesus and twist it into a religion that does nothing but bind us up in victim thinking ways. Worth will never be enough to prove that we deserve the love God is so desperate to give us. Worth requires that we do things to prove our identity merits what we think it is worthy of. Compared to an all-powerful, all-knowing and perfect God, how can anything we do ever compare when it comes to worth and our identity?
If this line of thinking depresses you in some way, I hope I can change that thinking in my presentation today. The fact that our worth does nothing to prove who we are to this God should be the most encouraging and freeing news you have ever heard. Why? Because if this fact is as true as I'm beginning to see in my life, all the effort that I expend on trying to prove my worth can be used to do other, more productive things. God rejoices when we come to this point of surrender as it relates to worth and identity. When we surrender to what God says about who we are, worth becomes something that we just don't have to prove.
I love today's Bible reading. It really shows us the Father's heart through the plan of salvation we have available to us. Let's read today's verses now.
But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. Titus 3:4-7 (NIV)
We didn't receive God's love gift of salvation because we were worthy. It was because of His kindness and love for us that He can overlook our worthlessness through Jesus' death on the cross. That's why it should be so freeing to come to the understanding that our worth before God is of no value whatso ever. It is when we accept God's loving kindness that we can stop wasting our time and energy in trying to prove our worth to this perfectly worthy God.
Not only do I love today's reading because it highlights God's plan for this world, it makes some amazing statements of fact about who we are in God's eyes. The end of our reading makes three promises the victor needs to know is there, even when victory is so far from our lives.
The first promise is that we are justified. What this means is that the fact that we are worthless doesn't carry any weight when it comes to this perfect God. Because of Jesus, the fact that we have fallen short and will fall short in our lives has no bearing on whether God loves us or not. His love is for us because God's standards for justice was met on a cross some two thousand years ago. We are free from having to defend ourselves. We are free from having to prove our worth. That is freedom indeed!
The second promise from today's reading is that we are heirs in God's Kingdom. Specifically, our reading says we are heirs to eternal life. Elsewhere in the Bible it says we are heirs to the Kingdom of God. I don't know that I will fully know what this means, but it is BIG. It is like Bill Gates announcing one day that he has chosen you to be one of his heirs. From the worldly standpoint, this means that all Bill owns, all his name affords his children is just as much yours to because you have been named an heir. Take that and multiply it by infinity and that's what we have access to according to our reading today. That is very exciting to say the least.
The last promise I see from today's reading is found in the amazing word hope. You don't know the power of this word until hope is completely missing in your life. My prayer is that you will never have to feel the sting of hopelessness unless you are quickly able to tap into the amazing feeling of finding hope when it seemed so absent in your life. Not much compares to the transition from hopelessness to having hope again. Those who have been there know exactly what I'm talking about. Hope is a promise that means the world to me. I hope it comes to mean the same in your life as well.
So, the fact that you are worthless before this perfect God should be a statement that brings you a feeling of optimism, excitement and satisfaction. You should be satisfied by being worthless because, through Jesus, you are completely justified in your worthlessness. You should be excited because you are an heir to a Kingdom so big and powerful, nothing in this world can ever compare. You should be optimistic because you are promised a hope for tomorrow that might just be what carries you through today.
Stop trying to prove your worth. It is a waste of time. Just let what you chose to do today be done from a place of passion and desire. God put that passion in your life. He placed that desire in your life there in the first place. Don't cloud the issue with thinking that you need to do what you do to prove who you are. Your worth is assured by the fact that God calls you His Child. Be part of spreading hope in a world filled with the hopeless strategy of trying to prove our worth to those by what we do. Let your actions be driven from a place of power that comes when we realize our worth comes from God, not by what you might chose to do in your life today.
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