Working in retail, you see it all the time, customers refusing to pay full price for products they feel aren’t perfect. It’s as if a slight imperfection cancels out its usefulness and value. If something has so much as the tiniest scratch, I’ve witnessed customers ask for a discount of some kind. I’ve ordered new items for customers because there was a page in a book that wasn’t perfectly aligned with the others. These slight imperfections caused products to lose their value in the eyes of paying customers. The same is true of cars. As soon as you drive a car off a lot it begins to lose its value. A car’s value is based on the name on the car, the number of miles that’s on it, how many accidents it’s been in, how old it is, etc. The more miles, accidents, and years it’s been around the less people are willing to pay for it. Just like products in stores and cars on a car lot, we too have so many things trying to devalue us and take away our worth.
The way the world and people treat products and cars is sometimes the same way they treat people and sometimes it’s the way we treat ourselves. Living life we all fall short and make mistakes. The world and people are sometimes so quick to hold those things against us and note that as one of the ways in which we aren’t perfect and have lost our value. The world and people define your worth by where you grew up, who your parents are, what college you attended, how much education you have, your ethnicity, your weight, your past etc. with some upping your value and others lowering your value. We sometimes even allow our past to dictate our value and worth. We’ve all got a past, we’ve done things we aren’t proud of and because of this many of us have felt unworthy and devalued. We’ve felt devalued because some of us have lived promiscuously, others have lived a homosexual lifestyle, others have lied, cheated, some have sold their bodies; others have been abused and molested, etc. And we’ve all felt this way at some point…like those things made us less, like they took away some of our worth. And we became ok with others treating us less than what we deserve. And we settled for randoms that only valued us for our looks and our bodies because we’ve let our past define our worth and say I’m not valuable enough for a really good man of God, who will treasure me, protect my virtue, encourage/push me to grow spiritually, and who will love me like Christ loved the church.
I’m here to tell you today that you have so much worth and value! You are worth so much more than your past. You are more than your body. You are more than where you grew up. You are more than your education. YOU ARE MORE THAN YOUR MISTAKES. Mistakes and your past may cause you to lose your value in the eyes of the world and people, but in the eyes of the one that matters you are worth it, you are highly valued! I want you to see yourself the way God does, Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s masterpiece. He created us a new in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” You are God’s masterpiece! A masterpiece = a person’s greatest work, anything done with masterly skill, a consummate example of skill or excellence of any kind. YOU ARE GOD’S GREATEST WORK. YOU ARE AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE AWESOMENESS OF GOD. YOU ARE HIS CREATION. YOU ARE MADE IN HIS VERY IMAGE! God doesn’t look at you and begin to check off all the many ways that you don’t measure up. He doesn’t sit down and go through your wrap sheet, docking your value for every wrong turn and mistake you’ve made. He didn’t say to himself, my Son’s death wasn’t for her; she’s not valuable enough for my Son to die. To God you were worth His Son, Jesus dying, you were worth saving, and you were worth buying back from death, hell, and the grave. In God’s eyes you are highly valued and you have so much worth! You are a daughter of the Most High God! Refuse to let your past, your mistakes, the world, and people take away your value and worth. If they don’t recognize your value, pray for them and move on. You don’t need to around people that don’t see your worth because they will cause you to lose sight of it yourself.
Sis, whatever you’ve done, whatever your past, whatever your mistakes you have not lost your value and you have not lost your worth. Know that you are highly valued. That God paid a high price for you in sending His Son, Jesus to die for you because He deemed you worth it! In God’s eyes you never lost and never will lose your value and worth.
Love,
Mariah
You were worth the Son being sent and given…
“For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” ~John 3:16
P.S. Don't forget to check out the new Changed Hearts: I AM Woman site that can be accessed through www.changedheartsunited.com and Mariah Milan's blog at www.mariahmilan.blogspot.com!
No comments:
Post a Comment