Living Loved - Important!

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved... Colossians 3:12

People are incredibly important to God. You are incredibly important to God! In God’s eyes you are of great value, worth and importance. In life we can allow our mistakes, negative words from other people and poor self image to frame how we see ourselves and how we think God sees us. People can get in such dark places that they believe that they are not loved and the only way to get out of that situation is to take their own life. They don’t realise that they are so incredibly important to God and are loved enormously!

Society says that we should have a good self-image but maybe that is not the best place to start... Perhaps instead of looking to ourselves for value, worth and good image we rather start with God and develop a God-image of ourselves. Here are 3 ways that God sees you:

1.       Chosen

When God chose you it was not like some school yard sport selection where the best players got picked first and the lesser ones picked last. God handcrafted and handpicked you to have life and to also know Him. In Genesis 1:26 God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness...” For the previous 5 days God had created many things for His prized creation. He created humans on the 6^th day and what set them apart from all the rest of creation was that they were created in the image of their creator.

You have the finger print of God stamped on you which makes you an image bearer of God! This gives you great worth, value and importance! Creation has a common design but only one group represents God in image... humanity.

Not only that, God wants to have a relationship with all of his prized creation including you and me. We usually make time for the people that are most important to us so we can spend time with them. Well you are so important to God that He has cleared His entire schedule for you so that He can spend time with you!

2.       Holy

In the Old Testament we hear statements from God like “I am the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy” – Leviticus 11:45

God sees us as holy because of what Jesus did on the cross for us. When we receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour we exchange our unrighteousness for His righteousness and our sinful lives for His sinless life. So when we stand before God He sees us as sinless and forgiven. However if we truly receive the love of God and receive Jesus as both lord and saviour then our lives should reflect it. To be holy in its simplest form is to be dedicated and devoted to God. Our lives should reflect God’s Holiness and not be characterised by sin. For us to be holy is not to be in sinless perfection like God but it is a heartfelt commitment and motivation to repent and turn from everything the Bible says is sin. With God’s help and our desire to remove sin from our lives we will see God graciously move in our lives.

3.       Dearly loved

God has such great love for you and me. He knows about us intimately and even after sin entered the human equation He mounted a rescue mission motivated by love to deal with the sin issue in our lives.

He knows things about you like how many hairs there are on your head (Matthew 10:30), He knew of you before you were born (Jeremiah 1:5), and He has great plans for you! (Jeremiah 1:11). God knows all our dreams, passions and desires while also aware of our pains, hurts and fears. God knows you intimately and wants you to know Him intimately as well!

So much so that He sent His son Jesus to live a sinless perfect life and die on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead. Yes Jesus loves you that much that He died for you and so yes you are also very valuable and very important to God!

 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

Wholehearted!

Numbers 14:24 - But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.

Caleb is an incredible example of faith and commitment to God. His wholehearted devotion towards God meant that God allowed only him and Joshua to enter into the ‘Promised Land’ from their generation. While everyone else rebelled against God Caleb held onto faith in the midst of a faithless generation. There is so much packed into this small verse that should inspire us to also be wholehearted in our generation.

1.       Caleb was God’s servant

Caleb did not serve himself he served God. He truly understood what Jesus said in the garden many years later to God, “not my will, but yours be done”. Many people serve themselves but God’s high calling for us is to serve Him and serve others. As we do that we ourselves will be blessed.

2.       Caleb had a different Spirit

God sets Caleb apart from the rest when He says that Caleb had a different spirit about him. Different means that something or someone does not conform to the standard or the norm; it can be positive or negative, and in this instance it is a very positive thing. While the rest of the Israelites subscribed to some sort of moderated faith where they would pick and choose their moments to have faith, Caleb did not. In His spirit he was confident and certain that what God said He would follow through with. This belief in all situations meant that Caleb’s faith set him apart from everyone else. While Caleb stood amongst a crowd of doubters, he still chose to believe in his God rather than popular opinion.

3.       Caleb followed God wholeheartedly

We all have a strong desire that our physical heart works and functions well. When it is working well we can do a lot of things. However if our hearts were to work at half capacity then we would find ourselves severely limited physically or in very big trouble health wise. So when we follow God in anything less than with our whole heart we can find that spiritually things don’t go so well. To be strong in the spirit is to follow God wholeheartedly by obeying Him in every area of our lives. Choose today to be like Caleb and be wholehearted in your commitment to God!

4.       He received the promise!

Caleb had such great faith and despite all the doubters around him and the very real obstacles he faced, he held on like his life depended upon it. He held on by faith until he saw it become a reality. When we follow God wholeheartedly and have faith in Him it not only pleases Him but He will come through!

5.       Caleb passed on an Inheritance

This wholehearted faith that Caleb had in God was not just about him. His great faith and devotion to God had an enormous impact on his family for generations. What an amazing legacy Caleb passed on to his family! He not only showed them how to serve God wholeheartedly but also passed on the land that he inherited. He passed on physical blessings but more importantly spiritual anointing and blessings.

 

Ask God to give you a ‘different spirit’ like Caleb and seek after God wholeheartedly and you will find Him moving in your life like never before!

Ask, Seek, Knock

Matthew 7:7, 8  “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

 In Matthew Jesus gives us an incredible invitation to come to Him boldly and with a promised response! If we ask, it will be given. If we seek, we will find. If we knock, the door will open!

So are we doing these things? Are we bringing our faith prayers to God believing that He will answer and come through?

Yesterday I took one of our young people out to teach them the importance of actively seeking God. We went up the Port Hills and stood at the base of one of the peaks. The question was “What are you prepared to do to do to get into the presence of God? Are we asking, seeking and knocking?”  After all, didn’t Moses climb Mount Sinai while he was in his 80’s so that he could get into the presence of God? And he climbed that mountain several times! We can now come boldly into the presence of God because of what Jesus did, and not because of our own good deeds - we don’t need to earn our way into His presence but this illustrates how we are to be hungry, passionate and deliberate in seeking after God.

We then climbed to the top of the hill and as I walked away for 30mins to allow this young man to spend time alone with God, I meditated on this passage.

Ask – What are you trusting God for? We can think about what we would like and we can even talk about what we are believing God for but do we actually ask? James 4:2b says ‘You do not have because you do not ask God’ so we must actually ask Him! Sometimes we don’t ask because we think we always need to be super spiritual in our requests. Of course we don’t want to get into ‘gimme’ prayers where we treat God like our own personal genie, but we also need to remember that our God is not a stingy God. So let’s ask for greater spiritual depth and all those important things but also the other things you are trusting for too, because you are important to God.

Seek – What an incredible part of scripture this is. The creator of the universe is saying to you that if you seek Him then you will find Him! This means that He is not going to play hide and seek with you. If you actively seek Him He will meet you there. How amazing is this?! James puts it this way ‘Draw near to God and He will draw near to you’. Make time for God and seek Him. Never let yourself be too busy for God because he is never too busy for you!

Knock – Sometimes we can come to doors in our lives that seem shut so tight and there is no way through. Well God has the ability to open doors that no one else can open, and shut doors that no one else can shut. So as you seek the one who opens and closes remember that when you knock on God’s door He promises to open it and allow you in.

Keep asking, seeking and Knocking – Greek present imperatives are used here in the original language which makes it slightly difficult to translate into English. (What on earth are you talking about?!) What this basically means is that we can sometimes lose a little bit of understanding in translation. This passage could be better understood by saying ‘Asking and it will be given to you; seeking and you will find; knocking and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who keeps asking receives; the one who keeps seeking finds; and to the one who keeps knocking, the door will be opened.” The emphasis here is to be persistent in your asking, seeking and knocking.

God wants to meet with you  so put time aside to ask Him for what is on your heart, seek Him with everything that is within you and knock until the door opens.