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?”