Worthy

"I deserve!"

You've heard it, haven't you?  Someone is talking about  the unfairness of life, of marriage, of their work and the words, "I deserve....." come out of their mouths.

This declaration is imbedded in each of us.  We all feel a sense of worth, feelings of value and somehow, somewhere in our lives we have learned we should get certain things from life, from our partners, from others....and when it doesn't happen we proclaim our worth. 

But where did we get this perceived worth that gives us the right to claim we deserve anything?  How did that happen?

Worth, that sense of deserving something in this life could not come from evolution.  If evolution is our origin we deserve nothing.  Evolution gives us no source of worth, purpose, meaning or value.  To be honest, evolution is the most demeaning explanation for the origin of the grand creatures we are.  It leaves us as no more than animals and so we act like animals.  

I see it every day in my counseling office.

Where does this sense of worth come from? How did we get it?  It came from a grand designer who built into us an awareness of three things-  we were made for a purpose, we are loved by the one who made us, and finally, because of his love we have value, we have worth.

The most familiar verse in the bible describes it best, but let me paraphrase it a bit,

God loves you so much that he gave the most important thing he had to purchase you back from death. He gave his only son to die and pay the price for you.  Because of that alone you have more worth than you will ever know to the one who made you.  

How do I know I have worth?  God showed me...with blood, tears, pain, suffering and death that I'm valuable to him.  I have worth because of his love for me. I have worth because of him.  It's his love that set my value.

If you take God out of the picture, if there is no God, then my worth is only self-proclaimed and must be fought for..."I deserve!", but if I'm loved by my maker then I have worth because he gave it to me.  He showed me that he would do anything to save me....

....and he did!