God Says You Are Valuable - August 28, 2013

1 Corinthians 7:23
23 God paid a high price for you, so don’t be enslaved by the world.

God says not only are you accepted, you're valuable.

How much do you think you're worth? I'm not talking about your net worth; I'm talking about your self worth. Don't ever confuse your valuables with your value as a person. You can be rich or poor but it has nothing to do with your value as a person.

What determines value? There are two things that determine value in life:

It depends on what someone is willing to pay for it. How much is your house worth? Your house is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it. No more.

How much is a baseball card worth? To some of you, it's worth nothing. To Matthew, my son, it's worth a lot of money. Some people are willing to pay $10,000 for a baseball card.

It depends on who owned it in the past. Sometimes something is valuable because of who used to own it. Would a guitar be more valuable because it was owned by John Lennon? I read about a pair of stinky, smelly, worn out basketball shoes that sold for $7,000 at an auction because they happened to be owned by someone named Michael Jordan.

Based on these two things, what's your value? Ask yourself, "Who owns me?" "What was paid for me?" The Bible says, "You have been bought and paid for by Christ, so you belong to him - be free now from all these earthly prides and fears" (1 Corinthians 7:23 LB).

You belong to Jesus. How much does that make you worth?

What we own does not represent what we are valued for. What we are valued for is our personality and differences. Everybody is different and we ALL have different attributes, pros and cons, style, and etc... We may all have a different price HOWEVER we are all priceless BECAUSE of the fact that we were all created by God therefore we have the priceless price tag.
We were all created by God and are priceless but some people sell their bodies and cause harm to their bodies. Doing this would cause pain to God because he created us and seeing his children doing this to themselves hurts him. It is like if your children became a prostitute or started cutting themselves, how would you feel? probably terrible and responsible for how your child got to that point.
In times of struggle and depression, doing any harm to your body is not the answer, like yesterday's devo everything has a purpose and is part of God's big plan. We are all priceless so why put a price on ourselves.

For the NEWbies, if you guys don't know what to write, just write something. Whatever came to your mind, what it reminded you of, what you learned, anything is right because there is no such thing as a "right way" to do devos. And instead of just reading what other people wrote, write something because writing anything that is relevant to the devo is better than not writing at all.

If God thought that we weren't valuable, He wouldn't involve struggles into our lives. We know that we're valuable, because God takes us as we are. We don't have to change for Him to accept us, He already appreciates our flaws. He takes our imperfectness and takes us in, and sends His own son to die on the cross for us, each and everyone of us. He has engraved each of our names in the palms of His hands, showing His love and our worth to Him. Since we are valuable in His eyes, I feel as if we should always be joyful, knowing that the sacrifice of His own son was for us. As we're seen as God's children, it's equivalent to our parents seeing their children as beautiful and precious creations. Since God sees how important we are to Him, should we not be satisfied with ourselves?

I really found nothing in the devo physically applicable to my life.

One thing I did find was the lack within my life to have some sort of 'Jesus mentality'. When I referred to Jesus in that sense, I meant the acknowledgement of his deed to wipe out my sins. A lot of the times, this is something I find myself neglecting my ideals when trying to keep a good life. It's really easy to remember to follow something as practical as the, say Beattitudes. But something that's abstract like an ideal that you follow by day which does not really take physical form, it's easy to forget the purpose behind and why we do it.

In summary, if I had to take anything from this, I have to mind the small ideals that really feel insignificant at first.

God puts no rankings based on the materialistic things you have nor does he care how rich or poor you are. Each and every one of us have our own unique personalities, interests and talents that make us who we are. God sees you for who you are as a person on the inside, and we need to start realizing that.  In today's society people are so caught up in having the latest technology and buying the newest clothes, but in the end none of this really matters. What does matter is how you live your life every day, and how you should please God and live for him whole-heartedly. I personally get really distracted by a lot of the materialistic things of the world, and always like to get the latest iPod's and clothes. But I need to remind myself that that is not what is important, and when the time comes for God to judge all of us none of that will matter.
1 Corinthians 7:23
23 "God paid a high price for you, so don’t be enslaved by the world."
Like the verse says, we should not be enslaved by the world but instead focus on our purpose in life, to love and glorify God with all of our hearts, minds and souls. There is truly no greater gift than knowing that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and that he loves us more than we could ever imagine. All of us belong to Jesus. Therefore we are priceless. No matter what anyone else tells you, in God's eyes we are all priceless.

I think it always feels nice to be valued and God does exactly that. God doesn't simply accept us; He goes as far as valuing us as his children and I think the MJ example was significant. Compared to God, even legends like MJ don't mean a smidgen and to think that used shoes would carry a monetary value of 7000, how much more would we be worth.

But from this devo I also wanted to bring up another point.
As God's children, everyone is valuable and should be treated that way. It's never a bad thing to tolerate other people, however different they may be, but wouldn't it be better if we went a step above and accepted and valued other people as brothers and sisters? Rev. John Kim (from bridgeway ahaha) gave a sermon illustrating this feeling. He told a story about his childhood where he was not completely valued where he lived, instead being tolerated, but now with his wife, the feeling is different. The difference between being included at a table and being invited to a table is profound. That being said, we should all aim to include others at our "tables" the way God included us in his.

The first thing that came to mind when I read this devo was Jesus' parable about the rich man and the beggar named Lazarus!
For those who aren't familiar with it, here's a link to the story:
[Only admins are allowed to see this link]

The rich man had the luxury of living a very good earthly life and all of his money and objects made up his "worth". However, he had nothing in him that seemed worthy to God so he went to hell after he died.
Whereas Lazarus had no money, and not a single type of luxury yet he was considered valuable in the eyes of the Lord and went to heaven. Now Lazarus was the one to live the good life and the rich man was in the position of the beggar.
Since Jesus died for you that means he bought you your freedom. Don't take advantage of it! God maybe able to give you lots of mercy and grace on earth  but that all changes once you die.
Remember, you are valuable to God so don't let the worthless things take control of your life!

What we might consider valuable is not the same as what God considers valuable, and if God is willing to sacrifice his own Son to die in our stead and to carry the burden of our sin, we must be pretty valuable to Him.

But the one thing that really stuck out to me in this devo was that we were bought and paid for, and therefore belong to Christ.
Meaning that we don't really own our lives; which is a good reason to take care of yourself, as harming yourself is actually in a sense damaging God's (valuable) property. It also means that how we live should be determined by how God wants us to live instead of how we would like to.

I love how this devo points out the difference between monetary value and your value as a person.  While physical objects can be categorized by price, we are all God's masterpieces.  Because we were created by Him, our value can not be measured in price, rather we are priceless to Him and to one another.  In my own life I see examples of this everyday.  Just yesterday while getting my haircut I saw a homeless man walking in the streets.  What would society think about his "value"? He had very little material possessions, and would be considered not very valuable in monetary terms.  But the encouraging truth from this devo points out that we are ALL valuable because we are of our God.

I see it this way- God paid a high price (sending down his only child to be tortured, all for people who treated him like dirt) to 'buy' our salvation so that we could all be His children. Try to think about this situation if it was applied to your own life. It's like if you know a dirty beggar who steals from you again and again even though you care for and feed him. Imagine that this beggar is going to be executed and you step up and volunteer your son to die for him instead. If your son was always obedient, kind and loving to everyone- doesn't it seem like an unfair trade when you sacrifice the son for the sinful, wicked beggar? That beggar is made valuable because of how much you paid to keep him alive. Since you gave up someone you care about for him- you would think that this beggar would be eternally grateful for the life he was given that was not rightfully his. Then imagine that after your son was tortured and murdered just to save that beggars butt- that the same beggar gets up, curses your name and starts to steal, lie and cheat again. That's essentially what we're doing to God when we forget about him, push him aside and live our lives as if he never did anything for us. Living like this is wasting God's gift to us and nullifying all of the horrible pain and humiliation that Jesus suffered through on our behalf. We are all valuable because Christ literally went through hell to save us. He gave up so much for us and yet as soon as we are inconvenienced by our faith we tend to drift away and try to ignore God and his plans for us. Basically what I'm saying is we need to remember what God has paid for us and act accordingly. The next time you want to go to that party or hang out with some people instead of going to church or spending time with God, think to yourself- compared to how God watched his son die to save us, is this really a lot to give up for God? I promise you, no matter what you think is more important than the Lord, it will always be nothing compared to what he has done to prove his love for us.

God sees so much value, worth and potential in us, that we may not be able to see, but is clearly proven through the sacrifice that Christ made for us when He died for us. We so often let our value, and worth be determined by those whose opinion should matter the least, we also let our value be determined by superficial means as well. Our self-worth and value soon becomes determined by standards that are unrealistic, and artificial.
Our value is shown ONLY through The One who knows our true worth and value. God has paid a high and incomprehensible price for us, we are worth so much to Him. I think the worth God sees in us is not the same "surface level" value we may see in a $10,000 baseball card, but something more.
Our value is shown through The Almighty God who sent His Only Son to die for us, our value is shown through the sacrifice He has made, our value is not determined by what we did but what Jesus has done.
God has made a sacrifice so that we may become His, not of the world.
Our value has been shown through His sacrifice.

2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
Colossians 3:2-3