How Precious Are You to God?

The worth of something is based on what someone is willing to pay for it.

Jesus thought you and I were worth the very living blood in His body.  He paid a great price for us because of His love for us.  Just as most parents would go to any length to pay a great ransom price if their child is kidnapped.

EXCEPT that we willingly walk away from God.  BUT—He still is willing to redeem us.

We are told over and over that God loves us and gave the life of His own Son for us to ransom us, to give us new life on earth.  That is a pretty big price.

How is that possible?

The Almighty God who loves the very creatures He created so much that He set His grandness and majesty aside while He squeezed into a humble, human body. He came to the very planet He created to tell His creation how much a relationship with them means to Him.

He loves us and He set out to prove that love with His very life.

God sometimes asks us to do things that frankly do not make one lick of sense.

He asked Peter to pull money they needed for taxes out of the first fish he caught.  Peter had the option to dismiss such foolishness. Of course, he’d already seen Jesus do unbelievable miracles so if Jesus said the money was in the fish, the money was in the fish. Period.  Peter chose to obey and found the money just as Jesus said.

Jesus asked the paralytic man next to the pool in Bethsaida if he wanted to get healed.  The man had been in that state for 38 years!

“Well, get up and walk then,” Jesus said.  “Pick up your bed and walk.”  That’s a pretty huge thing to expect, isn’t it?

Surely the man thought, “You’re kidding, right?”  Wouldn’t we think the same thing?

The man obeyed Jesus and was healed!  I bet that man was never sorry he obeyed.

Jesus asks us to give Him our heart and to follow Him.

Jesus asks us to place our trust in Him when life is a revolving door of obstacles.

Jesus asks us to put our faith in the Kingdom of Heaven, rather than the faux paradise this world offers.

Those are all pretty huge things to ask.

I grew up in a home with a divided mother. On one hand, she felt the responsibility to raise me on her own when my father wanted me aborted.  Something I will always admire and respect her for.  On the other hand, she struggled with giving up herself, raising a child she did not wholeheartedly want.

The coldness and lack of compassion in my childhood home left me starving for love and warmth. As I grew up, I struggled with feelings of emptiness and worthlessness.  My decisions were based on what was going to make me feel wanted, better than I felt.  Of course, all I could ever muster up were temporary fixes.  I tried smoking pot and drinking to ease the empty heaviness weighing me down in my teens.

Even after confessing my sins to Jesus, and inviting Him into my heart at the age of nineteen; I did not connect my extreme neediness, the hollow pit in my soul, with the necessity for Jesus to fill my needs.

All along, Jesus was there for me just like He is for you, I fumbled around in the darkness of the world looking for things to fulfill my strong yearning for love. I genuinely didn’t know any better.

Decades later, I was to finally recognize the fact that what I needed all along had been there all the time, and it wasn’t a what, but a Whom.

That very Jesus I invited into my heart as a young girl. The one I kept on the back burner while I used boxes of duct tape to keep my shattered heart in one piece.

Finally one day years back, I realized I had just about tried all the world had to offer and still felt just as empty and expendable as ever.

All I had left was to really give God a chance.

“Wow!” I smacked myself on the forehead.

The very love I walked miles on this earth to find was near me the whole time.  He was already in my heart.  Once I relinquished myself to Him, I felt a wave of relief.  I found my niche, and it was much grander than I could have imagined!

It came down to recognizing who I am in Who He is.

My eyes were opened for the first time.

I was a throw away to my father, partially accepted by my mother, BUT one hundred percent loved and chosen by God!

Did you know that you also are one hundred percent loved and chosen by God?

No matter what anyone has said to you.  No matter what the world has thrown at you.  No matter what you think of yourself.

God chooses you!  Today and Every day. Nothing you can do will change His mind.

So He asks you something today.  Can you come to Him?  Will you?

You don’t even have to leave the place you are at.  He is as close as your frailest prayer.

Through thick and thin God has stuck life out with me.  I have never been sorry I surrendered myself to Him.  Only sorry I waited so long.

John 15:13  Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Really, what more can we expect?

Will you come to Him today?  Ask Him to forgive your transgressions, to come into your heart, to give you the strength to follow Him.  He loves you so.

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By ~ Elizabeth Yalian 2013 ©http://hiseyeisonthissparrow.com.