Tag: value
Do you like to use coupons? Some people make it into a sport all its own. I don’t go hunting for them, but when they show up in my mailbox from my favorite store for my most-purchased items, that’s a game-changer. It’s amazing how these little slips of paper can save so much money!
Let’s say I have a coupon for $2.00 off a pound of coffee. How much is that coupon worth?
Well, the paper and ink are nearly worthless. According to the teensy-weensy fine-print, a coupon is worth approximately 1/100 of $0.01 – a hundredth of a penny! Good enough to catch a piece of used gum. Not much more. And yet this worthless piece of paper will somehow save me $2.00. How? An exchange must be made. I must surrender it for the coupon to be redeemed.
A redeemed coupon – worthless when it’s stuck at the bottom of my messy purse – is exponentially bumped in value upon surrender.
Is there anything in your life experience that you look back on and think, “That was worthless”? Loss. Heartache. A bad choice. Illness. Tragedy. Just as worthless as the drops of ink are on that slip of torn paper.
What if there was a value to be discovered only through redemption? What might happen if you took that worthless thing and laid it down once and for all in nail-scarred hands?
My coupon worth 1/100 of a penny is valued at $2.00 only upon surrender. Its value increases 20,000 times through surrender! Imagine the exponential return of value upon something we call worthless when placed in the hands of the only One who is capable of redeeming!
In 2006, I was diagnosed with a chronic illness that would shake everything I understood about my own health. It would threaten a shortened lifespan by 10-20 years. It would daily threaten to take my very life. It would interfere with clarity of thought and convenience in living. It would steal finances and sleep and the loveliness of ignorance of such a reality. Worthless…right? What a waste!
Two years later, on my knees in a messy puddle of tears, I handed this worthless mess over to Jesus. I heard simply, “I have healed you.” What could that mean? I still face the physical facts every day that seek to convince me of the inherent worthlessness of this reality. But through that surrender, I have experienced the most surprising redemption.
Death threatens daily. God has redeemed me with fulness of life, recognizing even more the value of the lived moment.
Fear threatens to smother. God has filled me with a peace beyond what makes sense that my body is most secure when surrendered to Him.
Brain fog and fatigue threaten my calling to communicate. God redeems by using the very thing which threatens to be a powerful testimony of His goodness.
People look and wonder at why He hasn’t healed me yet and I look at them and say, “He already has. And He continues to do so.”
A worthless, torn slip of paper surrendered to the hands of One with authority to redeem can reveal a miracle. Within each so-called worthless thing is a hidden, exponential value.
What worthless situation is God asking you to surrender today?
Everyone needs a healing touch, whether in a physical, soulful, or spiritual way. While there can be frustration in facing a chronic issue, hope can be yours in the waiting. For more, get your copy of Chronic Healing today!
Wanted Person
We’ve all felt it…in one way or another…that feeling of being unwanted. Of being denied our own value…our own personhood. When another person’s opinion of us defined our worth.
Picked last for the team…
Shunned from the established clique…
Forgotten on a birthday…
But what about those whose very being, their very self is denied?
The child about to age out of foster care because no family wants them enough to be a forever home.
The spouse cheated on and abandoned through divorce.
The baby considered not even “human”, chopped and vacuumed for the sake of “choice”, obviously not theirs.
The elderly sitting lonely surrounded by white walls, without visitors, forgotten.
We only have our personhood because of the “wanting” of another. This…this is true. But, we’ve lost sight of who “another” is. It’s not merely another human. He’s much more than that. His love is so deep and so profound that He reached across hopelessness and despair to find you. His “wanting” never lacks, never fails. In fact, your heart only beats because He wants you in His family, forever.
He picks you first. His arms are open, welcoming. He remembers your birthday every time because He set it on the calendar in the first place. He is your forever family. He is your faithful spouse. He treasures and receives every child as His own. He sees the wise sitting in halls and dances over them in love. He invites…always invites.
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” 1 John 4:9
Who you are matters. Even if the entire world rejects you, there is One who never will. He didn’t come to set us straight and make us into perfectly behaving little robots. He came to take our death and replace it with His life. He came to be the Source we can always trust in, which will never run out, Who will never fail.
He loves you. He loves YOU. That is all. That is all that matters. That is all that lasts.
Photo Source: Darla Hueske via Flickr
“Man does not know its worth, and it is not found in the land of the living.” http://bible.us/59/job.28.13.esv
At every job I have had and at my current employer, there are a lot of people who compare their salaries and their wages to others around them. they get frustrated if their wages do not compare to those they work with.
I am sure in this day of reality TV if you haven’t seen or heard this attitude at your own job site, you have heard of talk like this somewhere. “I can’t believe he makes that or she makes that and I only make this and I do more than they do, or I have a higher education. You yourself may have even said those words, I know at one point I have and I still momentarily struggle when Satan tries to tell me those lies, that my net worth is how much I am worth or that others don’t see my value because there is someone else at the company who makes more than I do.
Please let me give you something to think about, what is the heart behind that thought? Is it that they or I or you entitled to a higher wage or are owed that because of something that they’ve done or maybe something they have achieved? Or is it because they find their value in the wages they make and when this person makes less than someone else the feel that they are, in the eyes of their employer at least, a lesser person.
This is where a very popular scripture comes into play. It is normally used to tell others of how to come to into a relationship with God, but it also sets a value, a worth, a measurement of how important we are in a world that tells us otherwise.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” http://bible.us/59/jhn.3.16-17.esv
God loves us so much, and He doesn’t want to condemn or tear us down He sent His own spiritually and heavenly Son to live on the earth, going what we go through and then some to save us, to free us, to even out the balance sheet of our net worth. He did that because we are valuable not only to Him but each other and we need to go to Him to find out how much we are worth.
I hope and pray that you find freedom through Christ to release you of the bondage that Satan attempts to keep you in. Remember the bondage Satan tries to hinder you with is a lame attempt at holding on to a war he has already lost. Are you going to let him keep you from being free, from achieving everything our incredible Lord and Savior created you to be. I pray bondage be broken from you and freedom be released in you in Jesus Name.
The Expendables?
With the new Expendables 2 movie out, I felt God prompting me tonight to ask the question, “Are you expendable?” Do you feel used, abused, worthless, unappreciated, helpless, hopeless, devalued, unloved, exposed, fearful, derailed from your purpose? This could be at work, at home, at church, with your friends and family, or with your so-called friends and family. Oops did that slip out?
Now I don’t claim to have seen nor can guarantee that I will ever see either Expendables or Expendables 2, but I have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of people who Satan has tried to disarm by calling them so. He has whispered things like, “You’re gonna be fired today”, “You better work late to show your boss how valuable you are”, “You’re stuck at the bottom and will never move up the ladder”, “All you will ever be is a diaper changing, dish washing, laundering cook and you’re not even good at that.”
I think you see the pattern, but what God gave me tonight is that there are other jobs if you get fired, time with your family and God is much more important than impressing your boss, the bottom rung isn’t a bad place (Jesus washed the feet of the disciples and didn’t complain) maybe He’s got you there for a reason, and think about those diapers (I’m not sure whether Jesus wore Pampers or Huggies, but Mary had to change them).
Your value is not based on the position you hold, the garbage you have to deal with, the people under you, the money you make (or don’t make), the debt you are in, the size of your retirement account, the house or car you have. Your value as a person is so great or that God would trade His Son for you. All you have to do is accept that.
God created us to be incredible, not expendable.
His desire is that we blossom within His love, developing, growing closer to Him, becoming more like Him. This is a process and He gives us a little at a time to let us grow into the person and child He has created and designed us to be, we must be patient.
We are not expendable, we are not unloved. We are children of the Most High, Creator of all, saved by the blood of Jesus. Valued as such, we are more than conquerors and no one can take that away from us.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:35-39 ESV