Worth

 From Luke 15:19. What am I worthy for? What am I suited for? What is my purpose? Why am I even here? Am I only valuable for my talents, my beliefs, or my performance? Or is there something more basic that gives me value? Is it merely the relationship itself? I know you have heard this before, but listen again, and listen carefully. You can know you are valuable because God made/created you and provided for you everything you need. You were not made valuable because of creation and because of the cross. You were valuable to God and that is why He created you and saved you. His creative energies and his salvation energy revealed His heart toward us. It shows us what He gives Himself to, what he invests in.

He could have been content to create more universes, more trees, more gardens, more seas, or more earthworms, but late on the 6th day He decided to create people, two to be exact with the capacity and natural desire to make more people. Before He created them He made plans to provide for them, body, soul and spirit. He anticipated their needs-our needs, even the need for a savior. His provision was at great personal sacrifice. It involved an elaborate plan spanning thousands of human years which was filled with great frustration. He also chose to coordinate His plan with human counterparts. Since these humans were given free will they often did not cooperate with His plan. He selected the dearest person to Him, His Son to carry out that plan by dying an excruciating death. Why? To provide for us our deepest needs.

From what I read God's focus has always been on us and how He could make fellowship with Himself possible. If the plan could have been simpler I believe God would have made it so. I have to trust that God designed everything in such a way that there would be the purest and most authentic outcome, a true love relationship. Yet we question our worthiness and value, and whether God simply wants us to be sons and daughters, and not hired hands. One of the greatest hindrances to wholeness is our disbelief that we could be THAT valuable to God.

Coming to Yourself

"When he came to his senses...." (Lk.15:17). Literally "but to himself coming." What does that mean? It is a sober place. It is a place of serious reflection It is a place of resolve and decision. Often people live for a long time in a place of self-justification or regret or denial or pain and victimization or self-doubt or fear or complacency. It is a place where people get stuck in terrible situations, cycles of abuse, cycles of addiction, cycles of cynicism, and cycles of anger. "Coming to one's self" is a place to break the cycle and to get on a new path. It is a place of repentance and redemption and transformation. It is a place of hope and new beginnings. It is the fork in the road and the first step to a new, different, and better life. It is freeing and energy-giving. It is bold and daring and risky. You have to get up and get honest. It is a place of seeing and hearing again. It the point when we realize we are trapped but the door to the cell is not locked. The jailer left the key within reach. The angel shows up and gives us strength to walk out.

Sin, poor decisions, taking the wrong turn, doing something stupid leads us into lostness and despair and folly. We wake up for 100 mornings knowing we are in the wrong place but not having the will that day to make a decision. Then when we do, we play a tape and loop it a 1000 times to drown out the choice. It is easier to stay than to go but it is harder and harder every day to stay.

Coming to ourselves means to return to our design and purpose. It means that we know we were created good and for a reason. We have to claw our way back to that reason and hold on like a newborn at her mother's breast. We have to trust that God will meet us at the point of our true self. He will be there to take our hand and to guide us out as long as it takes. In fact He is there before we decide to escape, waiting for us to arrive. So what are you waiting for? Arise and be baptized, washing away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.! (Acts 22:16)