Self Worth....

I'm going to take a brief diversion from my current pattern of blogs to do a specific one.  I often struggle with self worth issues, but what brings me to writing today is the frequent encounters I have had with Christian people struggling with low perceptions of their own self worth.  The issue springs from their perception of what the Christian life should "look like," and their own interpretation that since their lives and choices don't perfectly reflect this idealized image, they must be terrible people of whom God is ashamed.  However, because they don't want people to know they're not perfect, they often hide behind this "perfect image" they create of their lives, never letting people know that they are dying inside.

If you are one of those people who thinks that you have to be this perfect person for God to love you or use your life to help other people... throw that thought right out of your head.  First of all, if you think because you aren't perfect, God is raising the hammer, waiting to crush you or that He doesn't love you, check these examples from the Bible about how you're dead wrong:

1. King David - Had a group of men called his "Mighty Men" that supported him before he was king, when King Saul was trying to kill him.  They were essentially his closest group of friends and body guards.  One of these "Mighty Men" was Uriah.  While Uriah was off fighting a war for David, David slept with and impregnated Uriah's wife, Bathsheba.  To cover it up, David called Uriah home from war so that he would sleep with Bathsheba and cover up that she was unfaithful while he was gone.  Uriah could not bear to enjoy the comforts of wife and home while his men were off fighting, however.  So, David sent him back to the war, carrying a sealed message that told David's general to ensure Uriah died in the war.  Uriah, honorable to the end, never read the message and was killed in the battle when the front line pulled back and left him alone at the front.  Despite this evil behavior, however, God still would say this about David:

• Samuel 13:14 - God called David "a man after his own heart," knowing what he would do with Bathsheba in the future.
• 1 Samuel 7:11a-13 - "'The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever."
• We see this fulfilled in Jesus, Himself, who was directly descended from King David (Matthew 1:1).  God used an adulterer, murderer, and liar to bring about the salvation of the entire world.

2. The Women of Jesus' Bloodline - Genealogy in Jewish society was always traced through the men, that was why if you didn't know who your father was, you were an outcast in Jewish society.  You essentially had no identity.  However, when Matthew wrote his account of the Gospel, he included five women in the genealogy.  They were so significant that Matthew listed them, even though technically women had no status in Jewish society.  Yet look at the background of these women:

• Tamar - Genesis 38: In Jewish society, if a man died before his wife could give him a son, the next-in-line in the family was supposed to marry her and have a son in the name of the brother who died.  Sounds awful for the woman, but in actuality, this was to her benefit.  If a woman had no sons and no husband, she had no one to take care of her and ensure she survived.  Women couldn't just go out and get a job in Jewish society.  Now, Tamar was married to one of  Judah's sons, and he died.  Then, the next son died, leaving Judah with one son.  Judah was afraid to marry his last son to her, so he sent her away, never intending to allow her to marry and essentially leaving her without a future.  When Judah's wife died later, Judah went on a trip, so Tamar disguised herself and sat on the side of the road he would take.  When he came by, he did not recognize her, thinking she was a prostitute, and wanted to sleep with her, promising to pay her later for it with a young goat.  She made him give her his seal and staff as a guarantee and did the deed.  Later on, when it was discovered she was pregnant, the people wanted to burn her for adultery.  She saved her life by producing the seal and staff of Judah, causing him to say "She is more righteous than I, since I would not give her my son" (verse 26).  In other words, her actions, though scandalous, caused him to keep Jewish law.
• Ruth - Book of Ruth: Ruth was a non-Jewish woman who married a Jewish man that later died.  Her mother-in-law's other son and husband also died, but instead of going back to her homeland, Ruth stayed to take care of her mother-in-law, Naomi.  Every day she would take left-over grain from the field of one of her dead husband's kinsmen, Boaz.  He thought she was beautiful when he saw her, and made sure there was always enough grain left for her to take care of herself and Naomi, and he also ensured she would not be bothered by any of the men that worked the field.  Though Boaz liked her so much, and he was related closely to her dead husband so that he was qualified to marry her, he did not act on anything.  So, with Naomi's encouragement, Ruth cleaned up, dressed up, put on her perfume, and went over to Boaz's after he had a party and went to sleep drunk in the grain barn.  There, she laid down at his feet, and when he awoke and found her there, she told him to cover her with the corner of his blanket, and he asked her to stay until morning.  Now, this would have been absolutely scandalous at the time.  Women were not supposed to talk to men outside their family, much less visit them alone, while they're drunk, and spend the night with them.  It would have been grounds for stoning, except that Boaz protected her identity, and in the end, married her.  She, too, was an ancestor of the savior.
• Rahab - Joshua 2: Rahab was not Jewish and was actually living in Jericho when it was attacked by the Israelites after they left Egypt.  Furthermore, she was a prostitute who owned her own brothel in the city.  In Joshua 2, she sheltered the spies from Israel that had snuck into the city and helped them escape without being discovered by the authorities in Jericho.  While doing this, she told the spies, in verses 9 and 11, "I know that the LORD has given this land to you...  the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below."  Despite all that her life had been about up to that point, faith in the one true God was still placed in her heart, and her and all her family were the only ones spared when the walls of Jericho collapsed and the Israelites overthrew it.  Now, what is even more amazing to understand is we know that as a prostitute, she was no virgin when she came into the faith.  For her occupation, she would have been an outcast in Jewish society.  However, her life before was not taken into account once she joined the Jewish nation.  She was given a new life, and in that new life was married to a Jewish man and became the ancestor of Jesus.

I could go on about Jesus' bloodline, how Bathsheba was also listed, though she cheated on her husband by sleeping with King David while her husband was at war; or how Mary was also listed, though most of her friends and family would have believed her and Joseph had conceived Jesus outside of marriage, for in Jewish society, a Jewish man claimed a child as his own blood if he married a pregnant woman.  I could go on about other chosen servants of God: Samson, a man who visited pagan brothels, married pagan women, and regularly broke Jewish law, though he was the spiritual leader of Israel; Solomon, king of Israel, who had 700 wives and 300 concubines, many of whom were pagan, though it was against the direct command of God to marry outside the faith.

The point I'm trying to make is this: God does not call perfect people to serve him.  The Christian life is not defined by perfection.  As Paul says in Romans 7:15&21-23(NIV), "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do... So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members."  In short, the Christian life is defined by struggle with sin.  You go through life in faith, you sin, you are forgiven, you keep walking, make a good decision, turn around and make another bad one, you are forgiven, God picks you up off the ground and gets you moving again.  Repeat.  But there's the catch right there: GOD picks you up; GOD gets you moving again.  What does Paul say after crying about how he cannot do good?  Romans 7:24b-25a(NIV), "Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

YOU have worth, not matter what you've done, no matter how imperfect your life is.  God has written the pages of His faithfulness to His people through the lives of imperfect, corrupt people.  He continues to write that story through YOU.