Misplaced Value

Good Evening my brothers and sisters in Christ. We’ve made it through the week. I pray you’ve spent your time living intentionally and with purpose. This week I found myself torn between a few areas I wanted to cover in this post. I felt inspired to completely change what I originally was going to write about this evening. In the realm of sudden inspiration, I pray that whoever this is for you are also inspired. Blessings.

What makes you feel good? Is it winning a game? A promotion? Is it when he or she expresses their admiration for you? Where do you seek validation? For me, I sought validation in relationships. My relationships were the places I found value. How I made people feel made me feel worthy. It made me feel important. Needed. Desired.

So you can imagine when my relationships diminished I lost a part of me. Why would this person leave me? I gave them all of me. I would spend days and nights crying, depressed, mourning the death of where I once placed my value. Not realizing I was searching for a person to introduce me to the beauty God created in me. Isn’t it amazing we will spend our entire lives looking for love, peace, validation, and stability in everyone and everything except Jesus Christ? We will pass up opportunities because we don’t have a title associated with our name. Even though God is the one who opened the door for the opportunity regardless of our lack of a title. Why are we so consumed with the approval of others? Why do we thirst for acceptance from people when God has already accepted us?

I can remember the times I cried out to God asking Him why no one loved me. It wasn’t until I grew in my relationship with Jesus when I understood it wasn’t the fact that people didn’t love me. It was the fact no one loved me as God did. That was the “Aha Moment.” All those years I was looking for my value in relationships I was really limiting my value. As much as we might love someone. No one can see into you as God can. No one knows your innermost thoughts as God does. No one feels the depths of your pain like God. No one knows your desire’s like God does. Most importantly, no one knows how wonderfully you were made like the one who made you. We will love, but we will never feel love the way God loves us.

I spent most of my adult life misplacing my value. Searching for fulfillment in relationships, alcohol, jobs, and school. Never finding what I was really searching for until I found God. When I found Him I found myself. I found I was stronger than I thought I was. I found I didn’t have to return to the people or things which hurt me. I found I could forgive myself for my past ignorance. I found peace. For the first time in my life, I found value within myself and no one had to give it to me. I was good enough all by myself.

This week I challenge you to write down where you’ve placed your value. Is it in titles, accomplishments, designer labels, relationships? After you’ve written them down I want you to ask God to show you how to find your value in Him. Blessings.

“For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.”

Psalm 139:13-16