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