God’s Blessings to you on this Memorial Day, Dear Friends,
Did you ever take Economics while in college? If you did, you’ll remember that Economics 101 says that the value of a thing is determined by what it will bring. In other words, if you want to know what something is worth, just find out how much people are willing to pay for it. You can list your house for however much money you want to list it for, but you’ll find out how much it’s really worth when somebody closes it with a certain amount of money. That’s what determines the value of something — what people are actually willing to pay for it.
Now, think of this: the next five, or the next ten people you see are so valuable to your heavenly Father that he sent his Son to die on their behalf. You are surrounded today by people of immeasurable worth. How do you treat people like that? What do you do, when you’re in the presence of someone that important? How do you respond when you’re in the presence of somebody who is that valuable to someone you love as much as your heavenly Father?
Every person, everyone you lay your eyes on, is somebody for whom your Savior died. The reason there are people today who have been kicked around or bumped around by the church is because some Christians lost sight of this. They’ve forgotten that Christian are called to view everybody who crosses our path through this lens.
If we are really who God has called us to be, then we would remember, every day of our life, that everyone we lay eyes on is someone for whom Christ died. They have immeasurable value to our heavenly Father, and consequently, they should have value ascribed to them by us, by the nature of the fact that they are so important to God. John writes to us about how we are to relate to others based on this incredible truth, and here’s what he said: “This is how God showed his love among us” (and “us” means everybody, us, we, the world). “He sent his one and only Son into the world, that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9).
Then he added, “Since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11). John is saying, “If God loves them that much, because God paid such a high price to bring them into relationship with him, the least we can do is to love them, too. You ought to love them!”
You are so important to God. And God wants me to treat you based on how important you are to him. I wish this life-changing truth could frame all our encounters with everyone we meet. It should be the frame of reference and the context for every single relationship. You see, at the cross, God declared the immeasurable value that each of us have. And through the Scripture, we are called to this standard. You’ve never been eyeball to eyeball with anybody who didn’t matter to God.
Everyone you lay your eyes on is someone for whom your Savior died,
Bruce Jones, Pastor
Imagine Church
