Know Your Value (John 3:16)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIBDjPiPFhA

Know your value. Know your value and your value isn’t based on your looks, your money, your accomplishments, your friends, your grades. Your value is based on being a child of God. Your value is based on being a child of God. Love raises self-esteem. Love gives you that good feeling on the inside, that you are good, that you can do good things, that you deserve good things and the energy to succeed. Love raises self-esteem. Love raises self-esteem then when you have high self-esteem you can’t stand not having certain things and this creates an ambition within you to work to get those things. Just the mere thought of God’s love says a lot about your value. It says a lot about your value, It says a lot about how much God values you, if he is willing to give his Son for your soul to be saved (John 3:16). That says a lot about your value for God to sacrifice his son for you. His son. That’s priceless, that’s limitless. That’s the light that shines in the darkness that the darkness can never extingquish (John 1:5). Slavery can’t extingquish it, prison can’t extinguish it, the ghetto can’t extingquish it, neither war nor heartbreak nor a fallen world can extingquish man’s value. Know your value. When you’re around people that love you, like your family there’s usually a lot of affection and love and you feel valued. It’s easy to FEEL your value, to know your value in your bones. However, many people walk in lies and trickery (Ephesians 4:14). They put people down in order to give themselves value; they make themselves seem more and you seem less and this is because they don’t know their value. You can’t devalue someone if they are your equal. Putting people down is a classic way of gaining authority over them by means of deception, but when you understand things you understand that put downs are like throwing mud, throwing dirt upon a great treasure. Feelings lie. Feelings of shame can be very deceiving and tiring, but know your value. When you know your value you can keep reaching and working, even in the dark, until your glory be found. When you know your value, when you get mistreated you think “you can’t disrespect me because I know my value and I know I am better than you treat me. And If I stay faithful you will see it.” When you know your value you can make a mistake and you know deep in your bones that you can do better. Know your value. When you know your value you can be scarred and still know the world is yours. Know your value. Material things, respect are just reminders of the glory of the spirit of man; for pride in all the things in the world, when measured in perspective, is vanity because it will all vanish like vapors (James 1:11) but the love of God last forever. It all starts within, know your value and that comes from knowing the sacrifice God made for you. Sometimes I just like to listen to the old negro spirituals, to listen to the chants of slaves and hear the desire for freedom, to hear the desire for the respect they deserve, the desire to respect their value. Hearing that passion is inspiring, it gives you a passion to be all that you can be. Know your value, that’s one of the greatest things to be learned from study. In fact, it may be the greatest lesson to learn because that’s how you gain sacrificial love, Agape love, the ability to do right when the world does you wrong, the ability to love when you don’t get love in return, the ability to not need love the World’s love because you gain strength from God’s love (1 Corinthians 13). Your value was confirmed by God’s love. Know your value. I am what I am and I will be what I am until I die and that’s a child of God.