Everyday Encounter with God

Pastor Sylvia's Encounters with God in the Midst of Everyday Life

 

God Made You and Loves You

After 17 years Husband and I are retiring from leadership at the Bald Hill Community Church. Our faithful body of believers has meet at the Bald Hill Fire Station for almost 20 years. We will continue as their fire chaplains.

In three parts I’m going to share my final sermon with you. These are the real-life applications of scripture that Husband and I hope we have taught our members over the years.

First: God made you and God loves you.

You may think that He could have done a better job when you look at your life challenges, your defective body, your imperfect face, and your less-than-godly disposition. Why can’t we all look like Miss or Mr. America, behave like Sister Theresa of Calcutta, and have Max Lucado’s stunning insight into the disposition of God?

Here’s the answer: God didn’t want you and me to be anyone other than who He created us to be.  He thinks we’re dandy just the way we are. Each of us is perfectly crafted for our specific life, a journey He planned for us from the beginning of time.

I imagine God as an artist who used every color in the Crayola Ultimate Collection of 152. In God’s hands I do not resemble a wildly scribbled drawing easily replicated by any child in kindergarten. He sees a piece of art that exceeds the detail of a Rembrandt, has the soft, gentle colors of a Monet, with occasional splashes of Andy Warhol humor.  

I will never be replicated by the Master. And never will you. Never.

Listen to what David wrote in Psalm 109:

“God, investigate my life;
    get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
    even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
    I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
    before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
    then up ahead and you’re there, too—
    your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
    I can’t take it all in!

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
    you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
    Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
    I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
    you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
    how I was sculpted from nothing into something.

“Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;   

   all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
    before I’d even lived one day.

Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful!
    God, I’ll never comprehend them!
I couldn’t even begin to count them—
    any more than I could count the sand of the sea.

“Oh, let me rise in the morning and live always with you!”

The Message

In God’s eyes you and I are perfect and He loves every squiggly line and seemingly reckless color that exceeds our borders.

When life is happening, the one thing you can always count on is God’s abiding love. You can’t out run it, can’t hide from it, and can’t out-sin it. Arrogance might try to convince you that you have the power to alter God’s feelings towards you. You can’t. You’re just not that powerful.

God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love.

Next week is Part 2 – “Why were you created?”