One of the questions people spend their lives trying to answer is: Am I wanted? We often try to answer it with what we do (I know I did). We try to do what we think everyone else wants from us, and if we do them well, they’ll want us. We try to do what we think God wants from us, and maybe if we do it well, He’ll want us. The Cross shows us we are already wanted. Jesus didn’t want to go to the Cross. He endured the Cross because He wanted us.
Self-Worth
Brennan Manning
Lord, when I feel that what I’m doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.
Bill Johnson
I am always careful around people who constantly berate themselves, because at my expense they might fulfill the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). If they criticize themselves, they will probably criticize me.
Nancy Cobb
Do you feel inept, unqualified, or just not up to it? God understands your feelings, your doubts, your fears. He also knows your heart, and can work mightily in one that’s yielded to Him. You are a diamond – a diamond in the rough – a diamond in the making. Place yourself in the hands of the Master Jeweler, Jesus Christ. Allow Him to chisel you, mould you, and refine you.
A.W. Tozer
When the Lord lays His hand upon a man, that man ceases at once to be ordinary. He immediately becomes extraordinary, and his life takes on cosmic significance. The angels in heaven take notice of him and go forth to become his ministers (Hebrews 1:14). Though the man had before been only one of the faceless multitude, a mere cipher in the universe, an invisible dust grain blown across endless wastes–now he gets a face and a name and a place in the scheme of meaningful things. Christ knows His own sheep “by name.”… There are no unknown Christians, no insignificant sons of God. Each one signifies, each is a “sign” drawing the attention of the Triune God day and night upon him. The faceless man has a face, the nameless man a name, when Jesus picks him out of the multitude and calls him to Himself.
Alister McGrath
The great paradox of faith is that we find our perfect freedom only when become slaves – slaves to God…In the ancient world, slaves judged their self-worth in relation to the importance of their masters. The greater the social status of a master, the greater the esteem of the slave. Christians are slaves of the greatest and kindest master of all.
Katherine Walden
Stop! Right now! Take a deep breath in and exhale. Remind yourself that you are loved, you are cherished, you have value. Remind yourself that nothing that anyone does or thinks or says to you will diminish that value. Remind yourself that every person you meet today is loved by God just as much as you are and is worthy of respect and is worthy of being seen as a person of value. Now continue to make decisions today based on those truths.
Calvin Miller
We humans are a hungry lot. We are driven by a craving to know who we are. Yet who we are is embedded in the heart of a holy God. Unless we seek for ourselves in the epicentre of God’s grace, we will be forever condemned to walk the arid edges of self-understanding.
Ron Hutchcraft
When Jesus died on the cross, He was giving “all He had” to pay the price for all the wrong things you’ve ever done. In your heart, for just a moment, would you walk up that hill the Bible calls Skull Hill and stand quietly at the foot of that cross where the Son of God is pouring out His life for you. Look at Him dying for you! You are not worthless! But you’ll never know how valuable you are until you give yourself to the One who died to buy you back. Which you could do right now, right where you are.