Not worth fighting for....

I sit in a coffee shop; I listen to the music of a softly played piano coming in over the speakers; I watch people come and go, their footprints an invisible pathway into a thousand doors, a thousand conversations, a thousand roads... These roads trail into lives, into stories of lives that will never be told to the world at large but irrevocably shape us all.  One set of footprints follows a man with long, gray hair, big boots, rough hands.  He sits alone.  He reads.  He crosses his arms and hunches over as though he might somehow protect himself from prying eyes that would trace back along his path to an empty house echoing an empty heart.  Another set follows a young couple, rings on their fingers so fresh their skin has yet to take the shape of the promises they made.  They laugh.  They scroll through their smartphones.  They sit in confident conversation, sunlight streaming into large windows, a whisper of the hope they have as they start this journey together.  Theirs is not the only story.  

As I watch these stories... I wonder what pasts shape the people I see.  I wonder what the future holds and how much that unknown past will shape the future they allow themselves to have.  I wonder how many of them walk this road unsure of their own value, unknowing of how precious and unique and priceless they are.  I wonder how many of them fit these statistics:

50% of American youth will experience the divorce of their parents.

40% of American youth will grow up without a father figure.

How many of them walk this life overshadowed by fatherlessness, whether conciously or unconciously attempting to fill a void that should have been brimming over with love and affirmation?  How many of them unconciously believe the lie: your own father didn't think you were worth fighting for, so why should anyone else?  

But we all have a Father who thought we were fighting for.  We all have a Father whose face isn't turned away, His back the only fading memory we have of what should have been a breaker against the storms of our lives.  We have a Father who doesn't look at us with disappointment or shame or rejection on His face.  Rather, our Father looks at us with compassion, with love, with hope, with sorrow for us and the pain we are experiencing.  This Father is a Father of courage, who in the face of hardship didn't pack His bags to walk out, but to storm into our lives.  In the midst of Hell, He chased after us as we stood in a howling storm, screaming to be heard above the tempest.  As the hurricane grew in power, He cast Himself over us, shutting out the wind and the rain and the debris, taking the abuse, taking the pain, taking the death that storm intended for us.  

And in the silence afterward, in the brokenness of His body that continued to sheild us even in death... His eyes opened, and they looked into ours...and there was not accusation and blame.  There was... there IS... LIFE everlasting and LOVE neverending and HOPE never failing and PURPOSE and MEANING and BEAUTY and all those things we believed life could be when we were young and small and soft and sheltered.

Who is this Father, who would give up all things that we may have all things?  Who is this Father who will never deny us, never walk away, never quit, never be content to leave us where we are and wash His hands of us?

He is known in His Son... the Son who sheltered us in the storm.  The Son who looks on us with His Father's eyes... our Father's eyes.  His son, Jesus the Christ.  Jesus the Messiah.  Jesus, our Immanuel.  Jesus, the Light of the World.  Jesus, the Son of God.  Jesus, the Son of man.  Jesus, the Lion of Judah.  Jesus, the Beginning and the End.  Jesus, the Alpha and Omega.  Jesus, the First and the Last.  Jesus... who has made Himself known to us so we could know His Father.  Our Father.  The Creator of the Universe and the lover of our souls.

"God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins." - 1 John 4:9-10(NRSV) 

Dying to succeed....

When I was in high school - no... let's be honest - WHENEVER I was in school, I was one of those students.  You can pinpoint them a mile away: the walking-as-fast-as-I-can-without-running footsteps from class to class, the high-pitched anxiety voice at finals week, the dark circles under the eyes from studying into the night and getting up early, the has-no-social-life-because-over-committed schedule, and the over-analytical critique of every bit of homework or test returned with anything below an "A" written at the top.  That was me.  I remember lying in bed at night, unable to sleep because of my anxiety over a project that was coming due or an upcoming concert or sporting event that I wasn't convinced was perfected yet.  High school was even worse, as I climbed the "ladder of success" in the academic, music, and athletic worlds into which I immersed myself.  Looking back, I am admittedly proud of my accomplishments... but there's also a sense that I lost focus of those things that really matter, sometimes.

Now, what can I mean by that, you might wonder.  From the list above, it sounds like I was prioritizing all the right things.  It wasn't like I was spending time getting high or drunk or skipping classes to slum around town with friends.  But I've become more and more convinced that you can be doing "all the right things" and still be "missing the mark" of what really matters.  School, whether it was sports, music or academics, consumed my life back then.  I lost sleep over those things.  Those things were the focus of my life.  Yet, if we read Matthew 6:21&24(NIV):

 “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also... No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."

What does this passage have to do with school is probably your next question.  The word "money" in this passage is actually a Greek word that more directly translates "treasure."  The concept, then, is that you cannot serve both God and that which you treasure most highly.  When I was in high school and even college, as I said, my life REVOLVED around school and the success I felt I needed in order to move forward and be successful in life.  I was devoted to it.  I gave most of my time to it, my focus to it... even my health at times.  I was convinced that my future depended on my performance in school.  Do you see where I'm going?  I was trusting in academic/musical/athletic success to secure for myself a good future.  I should have been trusting God with that future, the God who died and lives for me, the God who created all things and is responsible for the continuation of all life in this universe, the God who has worked throughout history and every day in order to ensure that I will live eternally with Him. But I was trusting in myself, my success, and my hard work to take care of my future.  Within my own heart, I had dethroned the "King of Kings and Lord of Lords" (1 Timothy 6:15) and seated myself as Lord.

Now, I am not saying academic, musical, or athletic success are in-and-of-themselves bad things.  I'm not saying you shouldn't seek to do well in those God-pleasing pursuits you have committed to.  I am saying that we so easily put our trust in those things, in our ability to be successful in them because we so often buy into the expectations of this world that say we must be successful in these things to have a good life.  Remember that it is in God that we "live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28a) and it is Christ that "was given authority, glory and sovereign power"(Daniel 7:14a) over all times and peoples.  Rather than fretting over the things of this world, simply do what you are able, and remember this passage, which has been central in my faith walk since I was young:

 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?   Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?  So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

-Matthew 6:25-34(NIV)

You are not a waste...

I was in Japan when I first realized it: I ask nothing of my body compared to what it's capable of.  What brought on this revelation: watching a "parkour" competition on television.  Parkour, also known as urban running or free running, is essentially where a person goes directly from point A to point B in an urban setting - literally.  I mean they are jumping fences, climbing buildings, leaping rooftops, and everything in between.  In the competition I was watching, there were competitors from all around the world, competing on a fabricated course.  There were various stages to the competition, each with a different course to run.  In order to move from one stage to the other, you had to complete the entire course, without falling "off course," like into the water or off a platform or anything.  What lead me to my realization was that one part of the competition required someone to run across a platform to leap up between two suspended, plexiglass walls.  There was nothing to "land on" between these walls, so the competitor had to open his hands, palm out, as soon as he or she got between the walls, and hold themselves in between the walls through the sheer pressure of their hands against the walls.  They then had to climb inside the walls, again only through the pressure of their hands, to get up onto the next platform of the course.  It was incredible that people were actually capable of doing that.

Incidentally, it is also in Japan that I began to realize my "issue," at least the "issue" I believed I had.  I had the sudden belief that I am not particularly "gifted," at least in a specific sense.  Sure, I'm pretty good at a fair number of things.  But am I spectacularly good at any one thing: I didn't think so.  Back in school, I had good grades, sure... but it wasn't effortless.  I had to work hard to make it happen.  I was pretty good at sports; I was pretty fast and fairly strong.  But I was never God's gift to the athletic world.  As I took inventory, I couldn't really think of anything that people would say, "Man, they're sure impressive at ____."  

About a year or so ago, this thought process unexpectedly surfaced again.  I met this extremely gifted person at athletics.  They had walked on to their college track team and were immediately the fastest sprinter on the team, even though they had never trained for sprinting in their lives.  With the right training, they could have made a name for themselves as an NCAA athlete.  They could start a sport they had never played before, and within a day, be proficient at it to the level that you would never know they had not done it before.  They could watch someone proficient at a physical activity, and very shortly teach themselves how to do that activity.  Even the things I considered myself fairly good at, they could do better without even having attempted to be proficient at it.  What was worse, this person wasn't stupid, either!  They were extremely intelligent, to the point that they sometimes talked over my head without realizing it.  Standing in that light... it was difficult to find any giftedness in myself.  Even those things that I would consider my "gifts," didn't seem that great compared to their's.

I bring this up because I think this is an issue that, in some way, most of us humans struggle with.  As our own worst critics, it is hard to see the value in ourselves, especially compared to someone who has these amazing abilities we admire... and even covet.  When I turn to God about this, though... He definitely has a different view on the issue.

The first passage is one that convicts me, for it reminds me who I am and Who God is:

"But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, 'Why have you made me like this?' Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?" - Romans 9:20-21(NRSV)

I am only a human being, crafted by God, whose entire life depends on God and who only lives for maybe a century.  Who am I to question what God has given me, when He can see the full measure of Time and knows how important my gifts, no matter how small they appear, really are?  Isn't He worthy of trust, if He is all knowing and all good, as we believe?

But God does not leave us with, "Why do you question me, though I have your highest good and the highest good of all humanity at heart?"  He also gives us this passage:

"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.  Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.  If the foot would say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body.  And if the ear would say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?  But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.   If all were a single member, where would the body be?  As it is, there are many members, yet one body.  The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'  On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable." - 1 Corinthians 12:12-22(NSRV)

What does this mean?  We, as Christians, are members of the body of Christ.  And we each are valuable to that body.  We were given different gifts, as a body has different parts, and each part has a necessary function without which the body would be incomplete.  Even people who have gifts that seem "undesirable" are "indispensable," just as the bowels may seem unpleasant, but are absolutely necessary for the survival of a human being.

Even more simply:

"YOUR GIFTS ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THEM!"

God has given you your gifts for a reason, and that reason was to be a blessing to the rest of the Christian community, as well as the rest of the world, through your usage of those gifts in the name of Christ.  Maybe you're not a good speaker.  So what!  It's our culture that's telling you to be ashamed of that.  God has an important calling for you!  Maybe you suck at sports.  So what!  Use the gifts you have because each one of us uniquely and specifically impacts the lives of the people we meet.

And finally, remember this:

 "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,  your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." - Psalm 139:13-16(NIV) 

You are a wonderful, incredible work of God.  And we know God does "all things for the good of those who love him" (Romans 8:28a).  When God made you, He knew your gifts were for the "good of those who love him," both yourself and others.  Take comfort, then.  You are not a waste.

What we refuse to believe...

The word "love" appears approximately 551 in the NIV translation of the Bible.  If I look up the word "love" in a Bible search, I find verses like these:

• "In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed.  In your strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling." - Exodus 15:13(NIV)
• "And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, 'The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin." - Exodus 34:6-7a(NIV)
• "In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.” - Numbers 14:19(NIV)
• "But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery." - Deuteronomy 7:8(NIV)
• "If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, “Let us follow other gods” (gods you have not known) “and let us worship them,” you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer.  The Lord your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul." - Deuteronomy 13:1-3(NIV)
• "Let the beloved of the LORD rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the LORD loves rests between his shoulders." - Deuteronomy 33:12b(NIV)
• "Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever." - 1 Chronicles 16:34(NIV)
• "But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation." - Psalm 13:5(NIV)
• "The unfailing love of the Most High he will not be shaken." - Psalm 21:7b(NIV)
• "Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies." - Psalm 36:5(NIV)
• "For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths of the grave." - Psalm 86:13(NIV)
• "Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you." - Isaiah 54:10(NIV)
• "Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail." - Lamentations 3:22(NIV)
• "The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” - Zephaniah 3:17(NIV)
• “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." - John 3:16-17(NIV)
• “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." - John 13:34(NIV)
• "If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you." -John 15:9(NIV)
•  ^"I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.  Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.^{" - John 17:23-24(NIV)}
• ^"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." - Romans 5:8(NIV)
• "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 8:35&37-39(NIV)
• "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." - Galatians 2:20(NIV)

There are so many more passages.  Passages that fill me up no matter where I am in my life.  I think you see the point:

GOD LOVES YOU!!!

There is nothing - ABSOLUTELY nothing - that can stop, change, reverse, compromise, undo, damage, destroy, halt, or any other synonym that!  Don't you know that when God was sitting around, doing whatever God did before He created this place, He was fully, completely, intimately, and totally aware of the exact depths of your worst possible thoughts and actions?  Don't you know He saw the lies you would tell, the people you would have sex with, the drugs you would do, the tests you would cheat on, the laws you would break, the love you would deny others, the horrible, corrupt, evil things you would do over and over and over again, even though you knew, deep down, that you shouldn't??  YES!  God SAW those things!  And you know what???

HE STILL CREATED YOU!!!!

JESUS STILL CAME!!!

AND HE STILL DIED!!!

Why?

BECAUSE YOU ARE WORTH IT!

I leave you with one last passage.  One that has meant so much to me.  It is Ephesians 3:16-19(NIV), and my prayer for you today:

"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

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.

Job 17-20...

The last few chapters of Job have been a series of discussions between Job and his friends.  Their names are: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.  In Job 2, the passage recounts that they heard all of the horrible things that had happened to Job, and in verse 11(ESV), the author writes "They made an appointment together to come to show him[Job] sympathy and comfort him."  In the following chapters, they offer their "comfort" to Job.  That comfort essentially comes down to them pointing out that God only punishes the sinful, that the righteous are protected by God and prosper.  In other words, they were telling Job that he had brought God's wrath on himself, that he deserved the death of his children and the loss of his wealth for some hidden, evil deed he had committed or was committing.  They went on to say he needed to stop being arrogant and blaming God and repent of the sin that was bringing God's wrath upon him.

The first thing that came into my mind was this: these are Job's friends.  They are among the people that are supposed to love him most.  In our society, friends often play a central role in our lives and decision making.  Starting in middle school and moving on into high school and college, youth and young adults are in a stage of development where they are turning to others for affirmation and support, rather than their parents.  Though the severity of this peer-focus I think has diminished somewhat as I've gotten older, I'm not convinced it's faded entirely.

In Job's society, the opinion of your family and friends was even more important than it is, today.  How can I justify that statement?  While I am not saying that somehow, emotionally, ancient people valued their friends and family more than we are capable of today, I am saying that the necessity of family and friend support was much greater.  There were no "inalienable rights" back then.  You couldn't just travel as you wished and expect not to be treated poorly.  In ancient societies, your family was your protection.  A person without family or friends was the victim, and usually slave, of any stronger man that came along and wanted to abuse them.  Job, having lost all his children (who would have supported him in his older years), and having lost all of his wealth, which would have bought him security in his old age as well, could not afford to alienate his friends.

Yet Job, knowing that his friends were giving him poor advice, did not meekly go along with them, though they were all he really had left in the world.  Instead, he stated boldly to them "miserable comforters are you all" (Job 16:1b) and that he "shall not find a wise man among you" (Job 17:10b).

Who, rather, did he turn to for truth and understanding?  After going through a list of all those who had once loved him, but now can't stand him, Job says in 19:25-26(ESV), "I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God."  Job's hope was in God and in His redemption.

This brings to mind 1 John 4:1-2(ESV) "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.  By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God."  Just as Job knew to turn to God and His promises for truth, we can turn to the message of Jesus revealed in the Bible to help us understand all the sorts of "advice" that are given to us in our day-to-day lives.  Our culture may tell us we need to be thin, we need to be trendy, we need to have the newest and best technology, we need to be wealthy, we need to be liked, we need to be well-known to be thought a "good person," but as Job turned to his creator for truth and affirmation in the face of what his friends told him... so we, too, can turn to God to learn our true value, "We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:37-39)