Proving Our Value. (With a little help from Andrew Jackson)

The other night our pastor shared this example with us….

He held up a nice, clean twenty dollar bill and asked who would want it.  Of course most people said they would.

You don’t have to ask me twice .

Then, he took the perfectly good Andrew Jackson and crinkled it up in his hands.  Not just a little.  He crinkled it up tightly.  Into a little ball.   Then, he asked the same question.  Even after the seemingly senseless torture, most would still be happy to take a crinkled up twenty.   Next, our passionate pastor took the 20-spot and he threw it on the ground and stepped on it.  Hard.

He picked up the crushed, crinkled, abused twenty dollar bill and asked who would still want it.

Most everyone would take it.  Even after all the bill had gone through – being handled unfairly, balled up, stepped on, and abused – most people would still take it.  Why?  Why would someone want a twenty dollar bill that is dirty, wrinkled up, and ugly?

Because it never lost it’s value.

No matter what it had been through or what it currently looked like, it was still a twenty dollar bill and still was valuable.   It was created as a twenty dollar bill and was assigned value by it’s creator.  No matter what the bill went through, the value remained the same.  Even in it’s current state it is still valuable.  And you know what?

So are you.

Sometimes we feel like we’ve been crushed and abused.  We feel like we have nothing to give.  We feel like we have reached the end of our rope.  Even when we feel all of those things, God still sees our value.  He knew us when we were in our mother’s womb and created us for a specific purpose.  And because He created us, our value is determined by Him.  Even when our life seems to be stuck to the bottom of the world’s shoe, He sees the image of what He created us for in the first place.

When we see ourselves as worthless, He sees us as priceless.

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Biblical Back-up

Jeremiah 1:5a “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee…..”

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith Jehovah, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope in your latter end.”

Psalms 29:11 “The Lord will give strength unto his people; the Lord will bless his people with peace.”

Habakkuk 3:19a “The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights….”