You have unbelievable worth. Why unbelievable? Because most of us do not / cannot believe it. We are Christians. We are afraid of thinking about our value for fear of pride. We quote the scripture that we are “sinners, saved by grace” to be humble. It reminds us that we are “unworthy sinners”. We think we cannot have immense value or worth.
Nevertheless, each of us has mind-boggling value.
I have long contemplated the verse in Ps 139 that says God “knit us together in our mother’s womb.” This isn’t talking about our physical body, which is truly an amazing, miracle-filled vessel. I think that when God was busy knitting, he was giving each of us our personality, our uniqueness, our gifts — everything that makes us who we are deep inside. Each of us is different than everyone else. It used to be, you talked about fingerprints as the way to show identity and uniqueness. Now you can also look at DNA. You can look at dental records. You can look at many things physically to show the individuality of each of us. But how much more, the inner person you are!
Even within families, each child is different from the others, in spite of extremely similar DNA. My sister and I were born 13 months apart, but we are not alike at all. My mother used to say, “I knew from the time you were very small that she was the homebody and you would be a world explorer.”
Deep within your soul, that spark of identity was put there by God. And that gives you significance. How do you feel about that? Do you warm to the idea, or push it away? Can you stand a little straighter when you come before God? If you stop to think about God having worked intimately within you to make you who you are, and he loves you, it can give you boldness to come to him.
There is another wee thing that adds to that value that each of us have. When God was busy working on who you are before you ever saw the light of day, he finished up by stamping your identity with his own. Have you ever seen that on TV where someone drips wax on an envelope and presses their seal into it? It leaves the impression of their crest, their symbol, their initial, an identifying factor. On ceramics, the potter often “carves” his signature or a symbol in the clay bottom. Within you is the stamp of the Maker. Each one of us was created in the image of God.
Now I know that we’ve covered it all over with layers and layers of sin, with our fears and pride, with our addictions and bad habits, our insecurity and our striving for all the wrong things, with the ways we’ve been hurt and the ways we hurt others. But that does not eliminate what God invested in us. It is precious, it is priceless, it is wonderful.
The story of salvation is basically about our coming to Jesus and submitting our lives to him. The Holy Spirit begins clearing away those layers of gunk so the person God created you to be can become visible again. You can be who you really are. Those pieces of your personality that sin broke? The Holy Spirit brings them together again and you become whole. The darkness is cleared away and you can shine. That is God’s plan for your life.
So here you are, standing free and clear before God, grinning because you know that he loves you and has created you with love and care, has made you a bearer of his image, has given you wonderful gifts. You stand before him, loving him for all the things he has done for you and is doing, and just because he is such a marvelous God.
The very foundation of our lives is knowing that God is the one who has worked deep within us to make us who we are and invested his very own image into our personality.
From that perspective, we step out into our days and weeks and years.
Molly Deatherage 