Inestimable Value
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Matthew 10:29-31 (NIV)
Our lives are hugely affected by how much we perceive our worth to be. For example, we work on our jobs for more than just compensation. We work on them because we feel our work to be a statement of our value; we want to be compensated for both our labor and our worth.
We tend to engage relationships and nurture connections where we are most valued, and we drift from the connections where we are not. We don't mind the pull on our lives when it comes from people who value us. Contrastingly, we feel stress when we are pulled on by people who we know really don’t care about us. Two people can call you, both needing the same thing. For the one who values you, you’re honored to do everything you can to come through for them. But for the one who makes you feel used, the result is lack of enthusiasm, to say the least. There's a different side of you that emerges when you feel valued versus when you don't.
Here is what Jesus wants you to know: when it comes to your relationship with Him, He thinks you are worth so much. If God would care about a lowly sparrow, then how much more are you valued by Him?
Understanding this truth means you can't have an anemic outlook on your life. You can’t settle for less than living in God's imaginative purposes for you. You can't go around comparing yourself to other people and feeling like you keep coming up short. Not when you know how much Jesus has placed value in your life.
Every day, He wants to show you off and let the world know what a miracle really looks like. You’re worth too much to be doubtful and timid. You’re worth too much to be walking around like you have no options or opportunities. You are worth so much that you need to know how to protect your treasure and attract people to your life who discern your value and interact with you accordingly.
Jesus finds inestimable value in you, and you will never fully fathom the enormity of His love for you. Live in light of that truth!
A Resurrected Savior
“God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”
2 Corinthians 9:8 (NIV)
Christ is able to provide and sustain and protect without anything other than the counsel of His own will. His work in us is unto an eternal end and will find total completion, with no mistakes and no defects. He knew exactly and precisely when, where, and to whom you would be born. He knew the hills you would have to climb, the mountains you would have to scale, the valleys you would have to walk through, all of the experiences that would be attached to your life, and the circumstances you would be required to survive.
All things were created by Him and in Him dwells the fullness of God. Every human alive can be made totally complete in Him. All wisdom and revelation are hidden in Him. Everything is under His authority. All our sins have been forgiven by Him. He is the firstborn of all creation, able to do immeasurably more than we could ever imagine. He existed before creation itself. He was the I AM long before Abraham came into being. He needs no motivating and requires no human intervention. He is consistent in His provisions and never changes in His steadfast love. He is always prayer-answering, always way-making, always blessing-giving, always grace-providing, always mercy-extending, always need-supplying. He never runs out, and never runs away. He is complete in and of Himself.
And this truth of His all-sufficiency must become your conviction. His all-sufficiency is always brought to bear on your human circumstances. It’s the reason you pray and worship. It's why you approach His throne with boldness and walk in authority. Whenever you think in a restricted and limited way and give into negative thoughts and anxiety-driven imaginations, please hear the apostle Paul when he says that there is available for you enough grace to abound in every good work. Christ’s all-sufficiency is more than enough to cover the demands of your life today.
A Resurrected Savior
“Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
Romans 6:4 (NIV)
The story is told of an African Muslim who became a Christian and his friends asked him, “Why have you become a Christian?” He answered, “Well, it’s like this. Suppose you were going down the road and suddenly the road forked in two directions, and you didn’t know which way to go. There at the fork in the road were two men, one dead and one alive. Who would you ask which way to go?”
Personally, I’m going with the One who is alive—the One who is the very object of my Christian hope. At the bend in that road is a risen Savior who guarantees my reality by the power of His own resurrection.
We need to have faith and conviction that He has given us the ability to appropriate that resurrection power in our own lives until our faith makes us whole. Jesus is a resurrected Savior, and we literally live in the power of His resurrection. Because of that resurrection power, we are able to live our lives for His glory and work to establish His will on Earth as it is in Heaven.
The question each one of us has to ask ourselves when facing obstacles and fears and worries and opposition is, “What do you believe?” Do you believe in Jesus and the power of His resurrection?
If you want to live your life with greater spiritual power, then you need to feed your belief in Jesus a heavier diet. Death could not hold Him down. He is the living King. He is seated in majesty. He is reigning. Do you truly believe these truths?
I believe in Jesus, and I want to know Him in the power of His resurrection. I don’t just want to know Him as a healer, a sustainer, a provider, or a prayer-answering defender. I want to know Him in the power of His resurrection so that my belief, which accesses that power, can help me be a witness to the world, an example of His amazing grace, and a demonstration of His providence.
Strength in Pain
We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
Romans 5:4 (NIV)
The culture says that we should seek pleasure and avoid pain at every opportunity. But there is strength in pain.
Our very salvation is secured from the heavy cost of pain in that God gave up His very Son, who gave up His very life. The pain of being misunderstood, the pain of being disbelieved, the pain of being misrepresented, the pain of being denied and betrayed, the pain of crucifixion itself—all these were the high costs for human redemption.
That’s why you can’t ever let anybody downplay the weight of our faith in difficult times. Don’t let folks in this culture make you believe that being a Christian is passive. The culture would say that loving your enemy is a passive response, but that’s because the culture wants only to embrace the pain-free emotion of rendering hate for hate.
Part of the reason the culture is trying to downplay the love ethic that is taught to us in Scripture is because it doesn’t take any emotional strength for you to respond to hate by giving hate. You’re not displaying strength when you match ignorance with ignorance, or you go guttural when guttural greets you. But it takes a whole lot of strength to love your enemies. It takes a whole lot of strength to be nice to people who you know have been wicked in your life. It takes all whole lot of strength to stay in the middle of a difficult place and know that those circling around you are always trying to plot your demise.
And yet God says that no weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every lying tongue shall be brought to condemnation.
Brothers and sisters, don’t go down the discount aisle of pleasure, but go down the full-price aisle of pain, because that’s where strength is.
Power
I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection...
Philippians 3:10 (NIV)
Paul the apostle says in his letter to the church at Philippi that he really only has one aim in life, and it is this: to know Christ in the power of His resurrection. He speaks of his desire to know the fellowship of Christ’s suffering as well, but today I want this particular clause to really hit and settle in your life: that it is possible to know Christ “in the power of His resurrection.”
I’m talking about life-altering, kingdom-expanding, justice-creating power that you have because of your relationship with Jesus Christ. The Bible speaks of being “strong in the Lord and the power of His might” and being “more than a conqueror.” It is a gift-possessing, conversation-changing, enemy-resisting kind of power. Jesus called it authority. And it was given with such grace and abundance that, according the Jesus’s words, you can tread over threats and bind in the natural what you bind in the spiritual.
I join with Paul in stating that I want to know Christ in the power of His resurrection. Do you?
Here is the great revelation and takeaway: this power is available to you and me. You have power in your life by your faith. Resurrection power. The same power witnessed by those who experienced a resurrected Christ.
God knows you and I need to hear this. We need to not just hear it, but become convicted of its truth, so that we don't become minimized by our circumstances, deflated by our experiences, halted in our paths, and adversely affected by what we think are our limitations.
You live with power.
The eternal significance of Jesus's resurrection means we have too much power to be halted by restrictions. We have too much power to be drained by an uphill climb or influenced by self-centered people. We have too much power to be limited because of negative influencers in our lives. We have power.
Child of God, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to you. What are you going to do with it today?
