Saturday, June 20, 2015

Worthy




Growing up in the Church you hear people talk about the idea of worthiness quite a bit. Usually the message is something like, “We can’t earn God’s love (true), and we don’t deserve it (Nowhere in Scripture). But by his amazing grace, he died for us while we were still his enemies, living in sin (true). And now we are saved. Isn’t God so great?!” The underlying implication is that you are not worthy of God's love or sacrifice. And this is usually where we're left, with a guilt and a vague sense of unworthiness lingering in our chest.


This oversimplified understanding of our Heavenly Father’s plans, purposes, and character are a sad, weak representation of reality. It is true that we didn’t earn God’s love, he stepped out first and loved us while we were still warring and simpering against him. He first loved us. He decided we were worth saving. He sent his Son to pave the way for us to become his sons and daughters and extend the invitation to us. He made creatures worth loving and fighting for. Worth sailing off into a dark stormy night where immense loneliness, profound suffering, and imminent death awaited him; because we are worth it. He called us worthy when he stepped out of Heaven and took his great leap into our broken and bent reality. He did this to pick us up, piece by piece, if only we let him, to place us in the fire of his love and melt us down to be formed into something new and beautiful, more glorious than we can imagine. Creatures, as C.S. Lewis writes, so glorious that mere centuries from now lower creatures would be inclined to bow down and worship; though that would be to mis-take a great thing for the fountain and source of all that is good and great.


Worthy of his love? Yes, you are. Not because of your great efforts, accomplishments, or strivings. There is no room for pride to rightfully fill your chest. You did nothing. It was all given to you. We are worthy simply because our Maker, who is our Father, our Dad, made us worthy. So stop undervaluing God’s art. And stop taking credit what what was given to you. You are not giving him or your self “more glory” by speaking degradingly of what God has made, from either direction; too high or too low. That is to merely settle for a lie from the Devil. Speak against the lie and agree with the truth, you are worthy of God’s love.


He, made you: Worthy.




    

No comments:

Post a Comment