Worth, Value, Esteem – Just How Much God Thinks of You

WHEN you were born, a whole nine months of gestation after the miracle of conception, you winning your first race, and you breathed for the first time, new life bore the mark of God’s glory — in you; you, perfectly you, yet, a perfectly broken you.

Your younger years featured a time of innocence, and for so many people an innocence betrayed; even well-meaning and competent parents cannot get it right all the time, and it goes without saying that some grow up in despicable environments.  And despite the tough situations you found yourself in, and in spite of how harrowing the trauma was that you endured, God remained there, by your side through it all, whether you imagined him there or not.

As you traversed your school years and then trained for or embarked on a career, there were more damaging examples of where love failed you, but in your persistence, God’s Presence worked hard.  You found that God’s grace truly was sufficient for the thorn in your flesh that made your life hard.

At some pivotal stage you found yourself being bullied in the workplace, or you lost a crucial opportunity, or something else served to wake you out of your spiritual slumber.

Suddenly, even as it were, overnight, you wised up to the travesties in this world and vowed never to trust again; at least you were tempted to.  That was until you realised how broken the world was, and how inevitable is the issue of loss.  You realised the complexities of life were implicitly a struggle.

Then you discovered something remarkable that’s only available for the learning when you’re on the spiritual precipice: the world is harsh, but God is gentle; the world makes no sense, but in faith God makes sense, because some things make no sense.  You worked out that God counters every confusion by faith — our cracks are how his light gets in through each step of faith we make.

Then you were converted to a special form of humility.  Previously you had no need of God, even though you might have said all the right things.  Such a conversion to humility requires the facing of awkward and harrowing truths.  Reality bit hard and you moved through the initiatory rites of truth into an irreversible adult world some adults never enter.

For the losses you endured you became not lesser a person, but more; more capable, more confident, more assured, and more safe in your own skin.

And then you hit on a truth — the fact that God cannot love you more and will not love you less.  Your worth, your value, your esteem before God soared to the heights of truth.  Only after you’d journeyed all the way through hell did you realise how taxing the process is, and yet God’s Presence assured you of the way that must be taken.

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Never question your worth. God went to the cross to secure us. Our worth is in Him. According to the Father, Jesus’ worth is our worth.

God values you and I more abundantly than we could ever comprehend.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.