Precious To God

Are you of value? Do you think very little of yourself and find you often compare yourself unfavourably to others? Do you find it hard to accept praise and encouragement? Then you are not alone, as many people find themselves thinking like this.

We can look at a huge variety of items for sale and attach very different valuations on them, but in the end the value is really down to how much someone is prepared to pay to own it.

Do you ever watch television programmes such as ‘Antiques Roadshow’, or read stories about incredible finds? Sometimes people have had an item in their house for many years. They didn’t think it was worth much, but decided to take it along to the ‘Antiques Roadshow’ out of interest. One such story involved a lady who had an old dress sleeve and its support, which she had kept in a box for years. She had no idea of its worth, if any. It wasn’t something she would want to put on display. Out of curiosity she took it along to be valued. To her amazement it turned out to be a sixteenth century Tudor sleeve made of ivory, silk and satin. It was valued at a minimum of a hundred thousand pounds.

So, back to the question, “Are you of value?” If you say you are, “How much are you worth?” As I said earlier, it goes back to how much someone is prepared to pay to own something – in this case, you!  The verse at the beginning tells us that the One we can trust to know our true worth says that you are ‘precious’. The word means something that is costly, deeply treasured, truly beloved, and dear to another’s heart (in this case, God’s heart).

We now need to ask how much you are worth to God. The answer is staggering. Not a hundred thousand pounds, a million pounds, a billion pounds or even a trillion pounds!  The value that God the Father places upon you as an individual, regardless of how you feel about yourself, is that He was prepared to give up His one and only Son for you. Not even a straight swap – you for Him. The cost went infinitely beyond that. The price to be paid for you to belong to God forever was that Jesus would have to become man, be despised and rejected by people, betrayed, wrongly judged, whipped, nailed to a cross and left to die. All for you and for me.

Please don’t ever think yourself of no value or worthless, since God the Father was prepared to send His Son for you and for Jesus to willingly bear your shame, your punishment on His body, just to reclaim you as His beloved son or daughter.

How much are you worth? Dear reader, you are utterly priceless.