God is big, and wonderful, and glorious and everything God does is big, wonderful and glorious, and God made you, so you have value. A painting by a master painter is inherently worth more than a painting by someone with no artistic talent. God is a master creator and He created you and you have value.
You do not act like God is big by lying on the ground weeping and confessing that you are a worm. You need to value yourself. It’s hard sometimes to do this as the world does not value people! So, we gravitate to forming our worth based on our behaviour. We take a long time to get something right, we feel that we are useless. We fail at something, or make a mistake, we feel unloved and small and inferior. I remember a couple of times while learning to drive, I thought I would never master it. It, if I was not careful, could have seriously stopped me valuing myself, and I had to pull myself together after some of my lessons and remind myself how loved I was!
Listen to me – your value is a reflection of the ability of your Maker, not a reflection of what tasks you can and cannot do well! A lot of people decide they are useless and worthless at school as they fail to do some academic task well. You are graded and marked and compared to your peers, and sometimes even ridiculed if you fail. You play sports and are laughed at if you kick the ball the wrong way, or fail to make a pass. You finish some of your school days feeling rejected, dejected and an outsider.
This is a common experience to most people – so you stop trying, stop leaving your comfort zone, you stop trying new things, you stop dreaming and stop being creative. It’s so sad when this happens to people, but there is a a remedy.
Also realize this – not only are you not a reflection of your ability to perform certain tasks, you are not a reflection of who other people say you are. When I started in ministry, I knew from an encounter with Jesus that what I was doing would change the world. But when I told people that, their general reaction was to laugh and mock. I was told at Bible College my goals were unrealistic, I have been told all the reason why I cannot plant churches all over Europe, Africa and Asia. I have met some people who, some in kindness, and others out of spite and jealousy, want to assault my sense of self-value, and stop me dreaming big. (The kind people want to ensure I don’t get disappointed, and the spiteful people want to ensure they don’t get disappointed that someone like me excels! But listen, that kindness never gets results, it is ultimately not kind to tell someone to dream small or settle. Even if someone launches out into something they cannot handle yet, by trying they develop and learn, they will especially learn that God loves them!
God does love you and He wants you to succeed, but He also knows that at times you will fail. You will fail to believe, fail to speak faith, fail to act in faith, and even then He still loves you. God loves those who try and fail. God is pleased when you try and fail, but those who draw back and don’t even try – that’s what does not please Him (see Hebrews 10.38).
Your sense of self-worth is not in your actions or ability, and it certainly is not in the opinions of others. Learn to realize how big God is and realize how big what He wants to do in your life is by stopping caring about your past success rate, stop caring about the opinions of others, stop caring about looking like an idiot, and just spend enough time with God that listening to Him will be the easiest thing to do in the world. That doing what He says is the easiest thing in the world.
Some of you reading this blog post are sick, and you know that Jesus has healed you at the cross, but you have never spoke healing or acted healed because you care more about your past, or what other people think, than God’s Word. Don’t stay sick because you are scared of the opinions of others! Learn to value yourself the way God values you!
You see if you LIMIT you then you LIMIT what God can do through you. One of the most common ways people limit God is they decide, based on their past experience, based on the opinion of others, what God can do through them. They limit how many miracles they can see, they limit what kinds of healings they can see, they limit what kind of ministry they have, they limit how much money they can receive. Not based on the Word of God, so nothing to do with faith, but based on what they see about themselves and what they hear others say about themselves and the fear of losing face – the timidity of the concern of the opinions of others.
I challenge you all today to read the Bible again, especially the gospels and start to see yourself doing the works of Jesus. Stop limiting what God can do through you and you will stop limiting God. Selah.
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