My Favorite Bible Verse

“Yahweh your God is there with you, the warrior-Saviour. He will rejoice over you with happy song, he will renew you by his love, he will dance with shouts of joy for you” (Zephaniah 3:17).

That is my favorite verse ever. If I had a top 50 list of Bible verses, this one would be #1 with a bullet.

I still remember where I was when I first heard it and it really sank in. I was on a Union University Baptist Student Union retreat back in ’92 and Chris Rice was teaching that weekend.

I still remember being in awe of a God who was actually crazy about me. It was too good to be true. It is still too good to be true, but it is still true nonetheless.

God delights in me? God rejoices over me? God does a happy dance with loud singing over me? How can that be? It doesn’t always feel true, but it is true, and this verse is proof positive of that fact.

Read that verse in every translation you can get your hands on. It says the same thing. Meditate on it and let the fact sink in that your God delights in you. Your God doesn’t just love you out of an obligatory “I love people because I’m God and I have to love people” kind of way. No. He is crazy in love with you.

Not because you’re good enough or pretty enough or smart enough or talented enough or clever enough. He loves you because you’re you, exactly the way he made you to be.

I know this isn’t an original thought. It’s been said before (and said better) by many others. I’m just faithfully passing along to you the wisdom passed along to me by so many others through so many years.

I hope you wake up tomorrow morning and the very first thought in your head is “My Abba is very fond of me.” I hope that in your head you throw a day-long celebration over the fact that your God wants you and likes you and chose you and loves you very much.

It may not be new information, but all of us need to be reminded from time to time of these things. I know I do.

 

Are You a 10?

This morning on my favorite radio show, they were all participating in a beauty contest of sorts. It had to do with an iphone app that rated you on physical appearance on a scale from 1-10.

That reminded me of a time at band camp. A girl had a notebook in which she rated all the guys from 1-10. It got confiscated by one of the guys, who proceeded to read the list out loud.

I remember thinking something like, “Please don’t let it be a negative number. Anything but a negative number.”

I think my rating was a 5 or a 6.

How do you rate yourself? Probably if you’re like most people you will probably rate yourself too low. After all, you’re the one who sees that reflection staring back at 5  in the morning after 3 hours of sleep.

You probably have a list of things you wish you could change about your appearance. You may not even like the way you look and mirrors may be something you avoid like the bubonic plague.

But God thinks you’re a 10. Honest. For three reasons.

1) He created you with His own hands exactly the way He wanted you to be. You are His masterpiece.

2) He bought you back with the highest price possible– the life of His own dear Son. He didn’t consider even that too high a price to pay for you.

3) When He sees you, He sees the finished product of what you will be. He sees Jesus in you and is very pleased.

He doesn’t just love the Final you. He loves the Work-in-Progress you. He loves the you that feels invisible sometimes, the you that screws up a lot and says the wrong thing too many times.

You may not think much of you, but God does. He thinks you’re beautiful and dazzling and radiant.

He still thinks you’re to die for.

 

 

 

Yet Another Blog About Marriage from the Perpetually Single Guy

I have to admit something. I’m a bit disturbed.

Maybe I shouldn’t be. Maybe a little envy is creeping in, but I get disturbed by the way people on facebook are describing the ones that they will very probably end up marrying.

The descriptions are things like “tall” or “hot” or some other physical attribute. I know attraction is important, but is it the most important thing?

This is the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with and walk through all the seasons and storms of life with. It won’t matter if he’s got six-pack abs when you’re dealing with the loss of a family member. It won’t matter how “hot” he is when you’re struggling to make ends meet and wondering which bill will be left unpaid this month.

The most important thing, the first thing you should be able to say about your potential spouse, is what kind of character he or she has. Is he kind? Is she considerate? How does he treat strangers? How does she talk about her family and friends when they’re not around?

Again, I admit that I am probably making something out of nothing, but I have to get this out in the open so it won’t hang around in my brain and keep me from sleeping tonight.

Mostly, I see a generation that is obsessed with having the perfect weddings, but not nearly ready enough to have successful, impacting marriages. So much of what passes for dating these days is “pretending to be married and practicing for divorce,” as I heard it put once.

One last thing. There’s no prize for how fast you move from dating to being engaged to being married. Take your time and learn everything you can about the other person.

I may be eternally single and date-less, but I do know this: if you try to make a relationship fulfill what only God was meant to fulfill, it will fail miserably.

I have a lot to learn about this, as well as many other areas, but I do know that God is still good and He is still eternally patient with me.

The moral? Take all this with a grain of salt and read it with grace. But keep your eyes open and your mind intact. Love isn’t something you fall into; it’s something that you must choose again each day, something you must work at, something that may at times be very hard, but at all times will be worth it.

Ansel Adams and Mixed-Up Values

I went to an estate sale today, which would make the second estate sale I’ve been to in my life. I got some really good deals, one on an Ansel Adams coffee-table book.

A guy there told me the story about a lady who knew Ansel Adams personally and had several of his original prints. She had a yard sale one time and sold several of them for practically nothing. She basically gave them away.

It would be easy to look down on someone who does something like that. But if I’m honest, I do that everyday. I treasure those things that won’t last and I treat as worthless those things that are priceless.

Culture does the same. We are told to spend our lives pursuing things. We are told our happiness depends on more stuff, on things like titles after your name and having your name on the right list. After all, haven’t you heard the refrain “He who dies with the most toys wins”?

At the same time, we see the sacred profaned and the priceless treated as worthless. Young girls are told their bodies are meant for sex and if they really love someone, they won’t deny him. Young boys are told that sex is an act, nothing more, with no consequences.

We are selling our God-given birthrights for cheap. We sacrifice our integrity, our beliefs, and our convictions for a promotion or a better job, for a relationship, for a bigger house or better car. This society doesn’t put much value in a human soul.

God says that you are priceless. As one of my favorite illustrations goes, if the God who made you could pick you up and turn you upside down to show you where He signed you, then you would know your true worth.

You are worth more than a career. Or a relationship. Or a house. Or a car. You are infinitely valuable because God made you with His own hands and then redeemed you with His own blood. He thought you were worth dying for. Literally.

Sometimes, I honestly have a hard time believing I have value or meaning. The voices in the dark whisper to me that the world would be better off without me and that no one needs or wants me.

But if I listen, the Voice of Truth tells me a different story. It says that God knows my name and loves me and has plans for me beyond my wildest imaginations or dreams.

I hope you will listen to that same Voice that says good things about you and calls you Beloved. The One who says you were worth every bit of shame and pain and scars and blood spent for you on the Cross.