For God so loved the world… – John 3:16, KJV

I recently watched a video in which a forensic artist interviewed about a half a dozen women, one at a time, without looking at any of their faces. He asked the women questions about their appearances, much like he would ask eyewitnesses to describe crime suspects, and he created renderings of them based on how they saw themselves. Next, he asked the same questions of a handful of people who had met the models earlier, and he created new sketches based on their answers. When the models were shown the two drawings side-by-side, their shock was universal. In each case, their own descriptions resulted in renderings of mediocre beauty, whereas the drawings born from the descriptions of others displayed tremendous beauty.

Have you ever heard the saying, “You are your own worst critic”? This was certainly true for the half a dozen or so women featured in the video (watch it by clicking here), and this is also true for a great number of those who claim the name of Christ. It is very easy to lose sight of our worth to Christ, especially when the Enemy attacks with accusations of worthlessness on the heels of some spiritual battle we have just lost. If we are not careful, we will allow such accusations to throw us into a state of depressed inaction, making us of little use to our God. But we should never allow our current levels of righteousness/sinfulness or usefulness/uselessness to cloud the reality that it is God Himself, not us, who gives us our worth. God so loved the world that He gave us Christ crucified because of and in spite of our sinfulness and our uselessness. Our worth doesn’t fluctuate based on our performance or on what we think of ourselves. Our worth is constant because it is based on the constant of God’s love for us.

Surely, the more we obey God, the more pleasing we are to Him, and the more He will reward us both here and in glory. But your worth and mine are just the same. We were both worth Christ dying for us, not because we earned His love, but because He loved us when we were unloveable.

Never forget that God loved you sooooooo much…