You're Valuable to God!!!!

You're Valuable to God!
by Pastor Don Neighbours

Years ago I heard a man say, “God don’t make no junk!” At the time he was trying to encourage someone to not quit in the face of difficult circumstances because the person to whom he was speaking was a Christian and God was involved in his life.

I was reminded of those words when I read from Psalm 139: “13For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

The Bible reveals here something every Christian should have in the front of their mind: God not only knows everything about me, He made me—literally—“knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

We are on the earth not merely as the result of a biological process but by the direct action of God, our Creator. That fact has to be the overwhelming reality of our life because that means our existence is not an accident of birth but the plan of God. The psalmist knew that as he wrote: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Psalm 139:14 ).

Christian, do you believe that? Do you believe God’s “works are wonderful”? Because if that is true, then the rest is true also: you are an individual work of God and that makes you, yes, wonderful! Rub that into your self-worth!

That has life-shaking implications for us as a God-made, Blood-bought, Born-again child of God! Not only must I think better of myself and how I live but also I must think better of my fellow Christians, whether they agree with me or not! Not only must I love myself, I must love them! I must love them because they are a work of God just like me! Not only is the ground level at the foot of the cross (Jesus died for us all), but also the ground is level at Creation (God made us all). Of course, we know that sin has messed up God’s creation but sin does not change how God sees us—He loves us, all of His children.

Christian, you are of enormous worth to God! But before we get puffed up with pride at being so valuable to God we have to remember that our value has nothing to do with our performance, and it has nothing to do with our appearance. Our worth to God is not connected with how smart we are or how brave we are or how long we have been a Christian. Those are all things that people use to assign value but our worth is determined by what God has done. God loves us; therefore, we are valuable to Him. People rush into burning buildings to retrieve personal items like photographs and letters because they have personal value to them. We have personal value to God; He made us and He loves us. He went to inconceivable lengths to demonstrate that by sending His Son, Jesus, to the cross to reconcile us to Himself (2 Cor. 5:17-21).

There is more evidence all through the Bible, for example, Isaiah 43:3-4. Here God is talking to His people, trying to make them understand their relationship with Him, so that they will trust Him and faithfully follow Him. “3Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. 4Even to your old age and grey hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”

God used the personal pronoun I seven times: “I have upheld you…, and carried you… I am he who carries you even to your old age and grey hairs… I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and [again] I will carry you… He said [again] I will sustain you… and rescue you....”

Not only the Old Testament, but also the New Testament has it written again and again:
•John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
•Ephesians 2: “4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
•2 Timothy 1: “8…God, 9who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time…”
•1John 4:10: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
Get the idea?

We know we are valuable to God because of two unchangeable things:
1.God made us.
2.Jesus died for us.
So why are we so hard on ourselves and why are we so difficult with each other? Life will be better when we value ourselves and value our relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ!

God doesn’t love us because we are valuable—we are valuable because God loves us! So we are free to love ourselves and love one another because “God don’t make no junk!”