Not too long ago, a man called asking me if i thought he was a failure. It was absolutely heart breaking to me, not for my sake, but for his. Through my eyes, i didn’t see a failure, i saw someone with so much potential, so many options, such incredible life and hope…yes, i saw a man who’d gotten his feet tangled in his shorts but was also in the middle of God’s process of restoration…. but from his perspective, he saw only the things he didn’t, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, should have and never got around to.
In his own eyes, he didn’t see himself as anything of value because he felt so bad about how his life had gone, up to that point… all he could hear was the voice of hell whispering doom, rejection, and pending catastrophe. He said he felt like a man nearly out of breath floating in the ocean just waiting on the next giant wave to crash over him. In his eyes he was no better than a smudge on a white wall, not even as good as dust on the window sill.
Through the eyes of grace we behold each other, and when someone asks us a heartbreaking question like i was asked, or tells us what worthless people they are, we need to see them as Jesus sees them… through the eyes of grace, like they are someone worth dying for, someone worth living for, as someone who has possibilities and options, not as a disposable person just wedged in a dark corner, twisted, broken, and blind.
Because of the Blood of Jesus, God believes in you. Jesus Christ, the son of God thought you, yes you, even if you don’t believe in God, He gave Himself a ransom for you that you would not have to live abandoned, rejected, isolated, and alone…. bound in darkness, chained in chaos. It was the heart of the Father to send the Son to offer freedom to anyone who would have it, and in light of that, i call the gospel of John the book of “whom so ever”. Yes, it requires a choice, sometimes even a repetitive choice when in the face of temptation, but the Lord says in Psalm 50:15, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you…”
Even if it sounds too good to be true, it is still true. It is more than a fact, it’s the truth. Facts only state the circumstances, but truth has heart and intent in it, and God’s truth for you is that He believes in you.
After i’ve set in a dark room, with more than a few who feel life is dim, and their breaths are numbered, i want you to know, before you turn out the lights hoping to find some answers, God sees you as so much more than your circumstances have dictated to you. Today’s world isn’t interested in if you are offended or if you even survive. We need something to grip to when we are so sure we’ve lost our anchor point, God believes in you, even when you don’t believe in yourself.
i listened to some old songs this week… across several of them an inspiring theme began to emerge which the Lord used to speak to me about my own life and how i’ve navigated it. i imagined myself driving on the road of life, traveling through beautiful and even some barren places… i have truly driven in the cool of the intoxicating evening, and had some terrible near catastrophes which the Lord, in His mercy, somehow got me past but not unscathed. Some would call them battle scars, i would probably call them the scars of not paying attention, or marks of arrogance when i thought i was uncatchable and immortal. i also realized, the road of life is a beautiful thing, but also a very dangerous road to travel… do you ever think about why, metaphorically, why so many believers look like cars stalled on the side of the road… some with their hood up, some with flat tires, some just off a cliff crashed at the bottom?… others look exhausted from the heat of the day sitting on the shoulder of the road, hot, skinny, and thirsty.
Life can be tough to navigate, and i think there are more than a few believers who are already in the rocks.
The question these days is often, “What do we believe about God?” But I want to turn the issue around and ask: “What does God believe about us?”
That question is more important than we might imagine because what God believes about us, influences how He acts toward us. Belief and action are two sides of the same process and not separate entities. We act as we do because of what we believe. In the same way… how people see us is how they act toward us, and how God acts toward us depends upon what God believes about us. So what does God believe about us as people?
Psalm 8:3-4, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him…?” That verse is a great place to start the journey of where do we fit into the vastness of creation in God’s eyes.
The genesis of all creation is endless and enormous and the Lord our God made it all. Even so, though God’s handiwork is cosmic and majestic, His attention is wholly on us. That is what so captivated the psalmist. While God’s vastness contrasts with mankind’s seeming insignificance, the clear implication is that God does take the time and effort to look our way – and even be intricately involved in our lives. i suppose many people, somewhere in their heart of hearts, truly feel pretty inconsequential when they view themselves in comparison to the universe.
We have all stood under the stars and wondered about our place in everything? My friends, we are not an accidental by-product of an accidental evolutionary process. And we are not some-thing, we are some-one. We are a deliberate creation by God – however He did that, and He didn’t do it all just to be entertained. God believes in you, even when you don’t believe in yourself, God believes in you.
A million years ago or so i knew a fellow who believed the world around him and everyone in it was a mere projection of his own mind. Yea… he believed that. To him, as he turned his head, whatever went out of his field of vision ceased to exist and only what he could see was what was relevant. To me, that’s incredibly self-centered… talk about a one-world vision, but he actually believed he, personally WAS his own beginning and end, so eventually, the fellow had some real mental challenges because he even doubted if he, himself existed. The very idea of God was very perplexing to Him, and he was constantly bewildered and perplexed by all the evidence. But drip by drip, like water on a stone, the influence of a world without Christ, constantly invaded his thinking, to the point that, one day, he chose to enact a permanent solution to his confusion when, really, his was only a temporary problem.
When you doubt your own existence, God believes in you, and even when you are bewildered and surrounded by all the doubters, God still believes in you.
We are someone in God’s eyes. But in your own eyes, how do you see yourself?
In Luke 22, Jesus said Peter would deny Him three times when the rooster crowed, and that’s exactly what happened. Peter was crushed, just crushed. Scripture doesn’t say this, and again as pertaining to sound doctrine, we can’t create sound doctrine from a platform of silence, but i think in this case we can pretty well guess Peter was very persuaded that his lamp of faith was burning so dim it was unrecognizable. i believe he thought to himself that he was just out, and his chances for redemption were so slim considering he had denied Jesus right in front of all those witnesses. But, regardless of Peter’s view of himself, how God saw Peter was more important.
God went on to call Peter back from his downward spiral, assuring him he was not irredeemable, nor was he un-useable. God did NOT tell Peter he was too damaged to ever be used again. Can you imagine, when you’ve really blown it, and someone in leadership tells you that you’re just too messed up for God to use anymore? That, THAT is one of the cruelest things someone can tell you when you are broken and exhausted. With religious people and many church organizations, isn’t it interesting how quickly others determine someone to be “too damaged” for God to ever use again? What a shame for someone to pass out such brutal counsel. If God didn’t say someone is “too damaged”, who are you do decide such a thing? Show me someone… anyone whom Jesus didn’t die for and i will lay my Bible down. God believes in you….and even when you don’t believe in yourself, just like Peter, God believes in you.
Peter was enthusiastic, strong-willed, impulsive, and, at times, some would say “brash”… i might even call him sort of aggressive too. Peter showed himself to maybe even be abrupt to the point of being indiscrete. It was Peter who left the boat to walk on the water, took his eyes off Jesus and began to sink. It was Peter who presumed it a good idea to take Jesus aside and rebuke Him in Matthew 16:22…in vs 23 Jesus quickly corrected Peter’s attitude. It was Peter who decided he just HAD to talk when Jesus was speaking to Elijah representing the prophets and Moses representing the law…that’s when the Lord spoke from Heaven, my paraphrase here, telling Peter to stop talking and listen. It was Peter who drew his sword and attacked the servant of the high priest, and was immediately told to put the sword away all together.
But for all his strengths, Peter had several failings in his life. Still, the Lord who chose him continued to mold him into exactly who He intended Peter to be. isee so much of myself in Peter. He seemed like a guy with real persistence and was comfortable in his own skin, but on the other hand it seemed as though, every time he got up he just fell again. Even through all his stuff he dealt with, i draw the conclusion, God believed in Peter, therefore my friend, God believes in you.
i hold that this is true: God believes in us because He believes in Jesus, His son. God is completely able to love us back from the brink of destruction, and He is confident, absolutely confident in His mercy.
Elijah must have felt like the last man standing….it is written in 1 Kings 18:22 “… Elijah said to the people, “I alone am left a prophet of the LORD; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men.”
In 1 Kings 19, Jezebel declared she would have Elijah killed by the next day after the death of the prophets of Baal. Verse 3 says, “… he arose and ran for his life, and went to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he prayed that he might die, and said, “It is enough! Now, LORD, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers!”” Notice, God did not go along with Elijah’s request.
When you think you’re all alone in the endeavor God has given you, and even if you’ve come to the end of the road and your own vanishing point is in sight, God believes in you and is on your side.
If we are not sure what to do when we find ourselves in challenging circumstances, God expects us to pray, and ask Him for help and for the wisdom we need. God loves to help, …. James 1:5-6, “If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves.”
By the power of Jesus Christ in our lives, God believes we are capable of trusting him — that he loves to help us, that we can be bold in our asking for assistance and that we can believe — without reservations — God is there for us even when the trouble is not removed from our lives. And speaking of trouble, how many of us feel we are floating along a river and the water has gotten so low, we’re often stuck on the rocks? We pray and pray that the Lord would remove the rocks, yet there we are, still stuck on the rocks. How about rather than pray God would remove the rocks, be creative and ask Him to raise the level of the river. God believes in you, even when you don’t believe in yourself.
God believes in us. He acts with amazing mercy, understanding, and compassion… with generous forgiveness and in constant love toward us. James 1:18, “God brought us to life using the true Word [that is, Jesus the Lord], showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.” You and i are someone, not a something. We were made a little lower than the angels, not a little higher than the animals. There is a precedence set in scripture as how we should see ourselves and how God see us. We are the crown of all He has made and THAT is who we are in God’s eyes! i pray we loosen our religious belts a bit and believe this to be so — in your eyes and mine.
There was a movie named Flatliners that was about a bunch of med students who wanted to know if there was life after death. They were confident they could bring someone back from death, so they medically caused each other to die for a short period of time, resuscitated the person, who then told of their experience after their death. At one point in the movie, the main character is going to flatline himself, one last time in hopes of righting an old wrong. He’s talking to one of the other med students on the phone who begs him to stop, please stop, saying “the old wrongs don’t matter”… wherewith the main character disagrees saying “everything matters.”
That was a secular movie but in the lives of every person everywhere, everything matters if anything matters at all. Our lives are a summation from front to back, and if we are washed in the blood of Jesus we are washed clean of our sin and get to avoid the catastrophic apex of the results of our wrongs.
For so many of us, we have done things in secret of which we are so ashamed of we are afraid we might die, maybe even wish we could die… yet for others we can’t seem to get life right no matter how hard we try… those folks think to themselves they’ve been bad so long, they only know how to be bad, and yes, i’ve met a few like that. There was a man i knew who had been incarcerated so many times, being incarcerated was all he knew. He actually did get out of prison and made a real try at being clean and sober, no longer acting out and being a criminal. He called one day and told me the sky was too big and there was too much air to breath… he said he’d been wrong in all his thinking for so long, he had no other skills to survive other than stealing and doing drugs… he just didn’t know how to be anything other than scandalous and corrupt. Now, honestly, i think that was a total cop out so he could just do what he wanted to do, but on the other hand, i also think there was some real truth in it all. He was ashamed of his life in general, so ashamed of everything he’d done he just couldn’t look himself in the mirror any more. He shaved his head so he didn’t have to see himself, always wore t-shirts so he didn’t have to worry about how he looked…all to avoid seeing the most loathsome person he knew… himself.
i want you, the listener, to hear me… i know many of you have been really hurt and told that you’ll never make it, but God believes in you. You’ve been told you were no good and a nobody by people who were important to you… know that God believes in you. You may have gotten it in your head you are worthless and unsaveable, God believes in you. If you’re that child who ran away from home because of abuse or you feared for your life, God believes in you and is on your side. If your child is on drugs and you feel helpless, the Lord is there, you are not alone, God believes in you. When you can’t go another step, nowhere to live, nothing left to eat, and no one wants you around, God believes in you. When you come to the Lord with your broken heart in your hand, silent tears on your face which is buried in the pillow, it is Jesus who comforts the broken hearted…He will open the door to you and welcome you in to a place of rest in Him….God believes in you. When the enemy has you surrounded, and your chances of survival are oh so thin, God believes in you. And like Jesus who was deceived by Judas, betrayed with a kiss, and your friends have abandoned you only to turn your face to another fist, there is hope in Christ, God believes in you. Think about it.
Regardless of how things went in the garden of Eden, or in the garden of Gethsemane before Jesus was tried and crucified, our God, good God that he is, didn’t wash his hands of us, even though He had every right to. In the end He didn’t say, “What a bunch of sorry people. i don’t want any part of them!” Instead, he made things right, indeed, even better than before, because He believes in us, he still thinks the best of us, and he longs for us to trust him back. For those who find Jesus as Savior and Lord, this is the greatest story ever told. And for those who do not, refusing to come home, God believes in you.
From a worldly perspective, we might say Jesus dying for our sins was a reckless gamble, but i say it was an outrageous act of love and trust, like when a father hands his son the keys to all he’s got, saying “Enjoy yourself!”
Knowing what we would do, and knowing how much it would cost him to repair the damage, God went ahead with His plan of redemption for mankind anyway. Why? Because he loves us and believes in us and calls to us all to stop running and come home. God believes in you!
God is bigger and stronger than you or I can imagine and it would be the easiest thing in the world for him to make us do whatever he liked….it would be no trouble at all, but where would the choice be for everyone to choose freedom or choose judgment. Who wants to be a slave or a robot?… that’s not how love works. Love doesn’t seek to control or coerce. Love yields, and the greater the Yielder, the greater the love.1 Corinthians 13:4-8, “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.” God is love, and love believes in you. Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning.
Drive carefully this week, take time to listen to people, they all have a story to tell. Be strong and courageous, and i’ll talk to you next time. Amen!