-value-

Where do you get your value from? Where do I get my value from?

.resume?
.weight?
.what your parents say about you?
.grades?
.whether or not that stranger smiled at you?
.what you're wearing?
.completion of tasks?
.what's on your left ring finger?
.compliments?
.possessions?

Whatever value you write on the garage sale tag you've attach to your soul - is that value transient or permanent?
What conditions are there on your worth?
.performance, consistency, appearance, attention, improvement, polished-ness?

And where do we get all of this? Who teaches us that good grades=>valuable human being, or that attention=>wonderful person? And why do we make our self concepts so lazily dependent on the very same lies that shred and cripple us on the inside?

Tonight I was having trouble with a few items on that first list, so I needed to go back to the truth that Father has shown me. After months/years of not understanding this, this is where I've landed...

I am valuable because the One True God made me, loves me unconditionally and unfailingly, offered full redemption to me through His Son, and promises to never forsake me. He values and has compassion on ALL He has created.

{ALL = failures, widows, Asians, untalented, poor, Africans, men, illiterate, women, unemployed, Europeans, criminal, Americans, unattractive, abnormal, exile = ALL}

And, nothing we can do can make Him love us more OR less. Therefore, your value is not negotiable. And neither is mine. God loves unfailingly. period.

"The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The Lord is good to all; He has compassion on all he has made." Psalm 145:8-9