Who Is This Man?Sample

How Does Jesus View You?

We are obsessed with worth. We want to know the worth of everything. If we want to know the worth of a car, for instance, we can find it in a source called the Blue Book. I suspect it’s called this because if we really want the car and we find out how much it costs, we will feel blue! Strangely enough, some cars are worth more over time while many of them immediately lose value as soon as they’re driven from the dealership.

Other items have worth that transcends their monetary value. When one of our daughters was tiny, she had one doll she loved above all others; a doll that initially belonged to her sister. She loved that doll so much, she commandeered her and we had to buy her sister another one. She called her doll Baby Tweezers. That doll got loved so much that her dress fell apart, and all she had was her little plastic head and limbs and squishy soft inner body. She then was renamed “Naked Baby Tweezers.” She was not loved for her beauty. She set a new standard for ugly. She was loved: “Because.” Just “because.”

We could never throw out Baby Tweezers. Our daughter loved Baby Tweezers—and we loved our daughter. Baby Tweezers has “bestowed worth.”

We all know this kind of love: Get a pet, live in a house twenty years, raise your kids there. You come to love it — not because it’s more excellent; just “because.”

The reason every person has great worth, for Jesus, is that every person is loved by God. Each person has what might be called “bestowed worth.” It does not depend on our station in life, our income, ancestry, achievements or fame. We matter so much to God because we’re his children—simply “because.” Jesus said that even sparrows don’t fall to the ground without God noticing and keeping count, that even the hairs of our heads are numbered by our Father.

As his child, your bestowed worth can never change.