If you've ever thought that you're not worthy of God's love and grace, then you're not alone. If you've looked in the mirror and seen all your scars and known what you've been responsible for in this world and all the mistakes you've made, and you've wondered how God could possibly care about you, you're not alone.
If you've looked at your life and realized it's not where you want it to be, you're not alone. If you've worked hard and stayed clean and done well and you can't get anyone to seem to recognize that, if you can't get this world to give you a chance - or take a chance on you - and it makes you wonder if you're just some worthless piece of junk, you're not alone.
We have all kinds of questions about our worth. All the time. Every one of us. Either we're getting more than we think we're worth or we're not getting what we think we're due or we think ourselves bigger than where we're at or we think ourselves too small to even start. Whatever it is, worth is the kind of thing that keeps a lot of us up at night.
Who am I? Am I anything? Do I have value? Does anyone - even God - love me? We spend our whole lives trying to make ourselves worthy, trying to be worthy...of whatever it is. Whatever, or Whoever, we want to notice us.
But what if the key to your worth was not in making yourself worthy, but in making yourself unworthy? What if everything you've ever wanted was at the end of a road with a weird name?
What if the entire aim of your life is not to become worthy of God (for who among us ever could, but for His grace?), but to live so that this world is unworthy of you?
That's what Hebrews 11 calls us to, in the same chapter that it recounts the lives of all the saints of the faith. Live with such faith and righteousness that this world is not worthy of you.
It really turns this whole question on its head, doesn't it?
Live in such a way that you expose the world's brokenness, rather than always fearing it exposing yours. Live in such a way that you illuminate God's goodness, rather than letting this world burden you with your own badness. Live love and grace so thoroughly that the so-called tolerance of this world cannot hold a candle to it.
We've all seen it. That guy who's with that girl who is just leagues above him, who has more class in her pinky finger than he's got in his whole body or that girl who's with that guy who is leaps and bounds out of her reach, but somehow reached and chose her anyway.
Man, that's it, isn't it? As citizens of heaven, we are leaps and bounds out of the reach of this world, and yet, we reached back by the grace of God and chose it anyway. Let's not forget how that happened, okay? Let's live like it's our hand that is reaching out to the world, not the world's hands that have us in its clutches.
It's about living in such a way that we expose the world for what it is. And when anyone sees us together, we are so centered on our heavenly lives, on our abundant life now that Jesus promised, that they can't help but shake their heads and say, Man, that person is way out of this world's leagues.
We do that, we live in such a way that we make this world unworthy of us, and we don't have to wonder what we're worth. We know. Because we're living it.
It's love.
(Psst...it always has been.)
If you've looked at your life and realized it's not where you want it to be, you're not alone. If you've worked hard and stayed clean and done well and you can't get anyone to seem to recognize that, if you can't get this world to give you a chance - or take a chance on you - and it makes you wonder if you're just some worthless piece of junk, you're not alone.
We have all kinds of questions about our worth. All the time. Every one of us. Either we're getting more than we think we're worth or we're not getting what we think we're due or we think ourselves bigger than where we're at or we think ourselves too small to even start. Whatever it is, worth is the kind of thing that keeps a lot of us up at night.
Who am I? Am I anything? Do I have value? Does anyone - even God - love me? We spend our whole lives trying to make ourselves worthy, trying to be worthy...of whatever it is. Whatever, or Whoever, we want to notice us.
But what if the key to your worth was not in making yourself worthy, but in making yourself unworthy? What if everything you've ever wanted was at the end of a road with a weird name?
What if the entire aim of your life is not to become worthy of God (for who among us ever could, but for His grace?), but to live so that this world is unworthy of you?
That's what Hebrews 11 calls us to, in the same chapter that it recounts the lives of all the saints of the faith. Live with such faith and righteousness that this world is not worthy of you.
It really turns this whole question on its head, doesn't it?
Live in such a way that you expose the world's brokenness, rather than always fearing it exposing yours. Live in such a way that you illuminate God's goodness, rather than letting this world burden you with your own badness. Live love and grace so thoroughly that the so-called tolerance of this world cannot hold a candle to it.
We've all seen it. That guy who's with that girl who is just leagues above him, who has more class in her pinky finger than he's got in his whole body or that girl who's with that guy who is leaps and bounds out of her reach, but somehow reached and chose her anyway.
Man, that's it, isn't it? As citizens of heaven, we are leaps and bounds out of the reach of this world, and yet, we reached back by the grace of God and chose it anyway. Let's not forget how that happened, okay? Let's live like it's our hand that is reaching out to the world, not the world's hands that have us in its clutches.
It's about living in such a way that we expose the world for what it is. And when anyone sees us together, we are so centered on our heavenly lives, on our abundant life now that Jesus promised, that they can't help but shake their heads and say, Man, that person is way out of this world's leagues.
We do that, we live in such a way that we make this world unworthy of us, and we don't have to wonder what we're worth. We know. Because we're living it.
It's love.
(Psst...it always has been.)
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