Transcript below
In the past couple months, I’ve been so blessed, so blessed to have the Lord working in my life on so many levels. And it’s been hard. It’s been so hard, but it’s been so good. And I want to share with you one of the latest things he’s been doing. The Lord has been challenging me to ask myself this question, Kim, who gets to define who you are? Who gets to tell you your value? Who are you allowing to control how you think about yourself? Well, truth is, I did some hard thinking about that and some praying and asked God to show me. Because you know, sometimes God has to show us stuff because we’re so inside the problem or inside the issue, we can’t see it for ourselves. So he’s been doing this. He’s really revealed that I have been deriving my greatest worth from things like my job, and things like my relationships with people, and even relationships with people that aren’t following Christ. That I’ve been deriving my greatest value from this culture and how I look, the things that I have, my bank account, you know, my abilities, even my ministry, writing devotionals. And the fact is, those things are temporal. Those things will change, even our family, you know, I mean, we’re all going to die and we have to figure out if that’s good enough. Are those things enough for us to be all that we are supposed to be, all that we are made to be?
You see, God created us with a supernatural purpose, and we know it. We know we were created for greatness. And in Romans Chapter One, the Bible says that God placed the knowledge of himself within each person. And I don’t want to get off on that subject, but that’s actually a subject for a different discussion. But read Romans Chapter One beginning about verse 16, and read through the end of the chapter. It is remarkable how God cares so much about us, that he not only created us in his image, but he created us for his glory. And with a knowledge, a deep knowledge of him, and that we, and so we know, innately, that we were created for something greater than this world. So anyway, that’s a side note, but I want to go back to who gets to define our worth and who is really qualified to define who we are. What gives us the deepest sense of our value?
I want to start by reading Psalms 139. Literally Psalms 139 is one of the most beautiful passages in the entire Bible. I think it is anyway, it tells us who we are. And how we were made by God. It says, I’m just going to read some excerpts, It says, oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know, my sitting down, my rising up. You understand my thoughts all the way from far off. And I’m going to ad-lib here a little bit. You comprehend my path. You know when I lay down. You know all of my ways. There’s not one word that I speak, but Lord, you know every word. And I am taking some liberty here with God’s Word. So you have to read it yourself to find out what it really says. You have hedged me from behind and before, you’ve laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. For you formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works. And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed. And in your book, they were all written, the days fashioned for me as when, as yet there were none of them. How precious are your thoughts to me? Oh God. How great is the sum of them?
Isn’t that beautiful? I don’t know anyone else who can say that about me. Can you? I mean, and of course you know, if you don’t believe in the Bible, that God’s a gentleman. He doesn’t make anyone believe. He doesn’t make anyone love him either. And that’s the whole idea. You see, the Bible says in First John Four that God is love. In other words, he is love and he never runs out of himself. He is the essence of love and love, according to the Bible, is selflessness, complete selflessness. And you know, when we are in God, in Christ, we become more like him. What it means to be in Christ is, when we are in Christ, it means we are born again. We have been born into the family of God.
And if you watch any of our Bible concepts videos, then you know that we talk about who God is, who we are, and human anxiety. We talk about, you know, how we reconcile ourselves to God through the gift of salvation. And, you know, our soul and our spirit, when they’re born again, we become in Christ. That means we’re in love. And the problem is that a lot of us, when we’re born again, and I’m exhibit A here, we forget who we are because we keep one foot in the world and one foot in Christianity. And that doesn’t work. It never ever works.
And Jesus said it doesn’t work, he said, you’re either for me or against me. You’re not both. And so when Christians like myself become lost in the world, In other words, we are letting the world influence us, the world defines us, the world tells us who we should be. You need to be a great trial lawyer. You need to be beautiful. You need to be able to hike 15 miles. You need to write these devotionals.
I mean, seriously, even Christian work can become an idol. It can become our God. God needs to be our God. Because when he is our God, he’s the one who formed us. He’s the one who wrote a story for us before we were born. Don’t you want to know what God’s story for you is? Oh my gosh. You know, if you believe he created everything that you see outside your window, then he’s got an extraordinary story for you. I mean, nobody can make someone like you except God. I get it. There are scientists who say, oh, well, this creation thing isn’t scientific. Well, I, you know, we all have faith in something and you know, you have faith in your science. I have faith in my God. And because the fact is, faith is just saying something that happened that we weren’t there to see happen. Right? Well, you know, none of us were around to see the creation of the world. But if your faith in science leads you to live a certain way and believe a certain way, that is your prerogative. Like I said, God is a gentleman. He doesn’t force us to love him. He doesn’t force us to accept his wonderful, beautiful gift of salvation.
But man, when you do, when your soul and spirit are born again, then you are enabled. You are enabled to become everything you were created to be. And as a born again Christian, you know, we have zero excuses to get stuck in believing we’re something less than God created us to be. This is the wonderful, wonderful gift that we have. And you know, Jesus said, that the proof that we belong to him is in how we love him and thus how we love each other. And when we’re so stuck trying to be something we were never created to be, because we have let ourselves become misled into thinking that we have to be all these things the world says are important. Then we lose that love because we’re too busy trying to recreate who we are into something we were never intended to be.
And we don’t have any time to love because we’re too caught up in ourselves because The opposite of love is selfishness.
And so, but when we draw near, when the presence of God becomes our greatest passion, like, Lord, I want to know who you are. I want you to change me. I want you to get rid of the stuff that doesn’t belong in my life. When we do that with the greatest passion that we’ve ever pursued anything, then we discover who we are. And guess what? We love who we are. And not because we’re something great, but because God made us something wonderful.
And you know, it’s hard to believe. It’s hard for us to understand that in the, I don’t know, what, 9 billion people on the earth, there’s only one Kim Lowe. There’s only one of you. And that there’s no DNA that matches up to yours. None. Your chain is unique. And it’s, but the DNA chain is so long, I don’t know the science behind this, but I read something, the DNA chain is so long, it takes like more than your lifetime to read it. That God who made that unique person, that he has a unique purpose for, and he has written a story today for you, man, doesn’t that make you want to figure out what he wants to do with your life and give you this amazing divine purpose?
I just want everyone who’s watching this video to know that there is no greater standard than the love of God. There’s no greater love that you could ever experience. And when I say that, you know, a lot of people say, well, I don’t feel like God loves me. Well, what else does he need to do? I mean, look outside. Look what he did on the cross. You know, he’s done everything and all you need to do is surrender to him for salvation. Repent, turn to him, return to him, you know, and he’s waiting. He wants you to be reconciled with him for the relationship. And then once you are born again, you know, that doesn’t stop. I mean,you’re always his child. You know, our genetics are in Christ, right? And that can’t change. My son, my daughters, they’re always going to be my children. They’re born to me, right? They have my genetics.
But where we make the difference, where we learn to live in the security and value of knowing who we are, is in that daily surrender to Christ. You know, take the time to study his word. Take the time. Join a church. Be active in the church. Be contributing. Live in obedience, pray. You know, do the things that Christ said and don’t do the things he said not to do. You know, the rich young ruler, which many of y’all know the story in the New Testament, came to Jesus and said, what do I have to do, you know, to be born again? He wanted eternal life, right? And it was interesting. Jesus recited the commandments, the ones that involve him and other people. You know, the last, I think it’s the last six commandments. You know, don’t steal, don’t murder, obey your parents, all these things, right? And the rich young ruler was like, yeah, I’ve done all those things. And Jesus said, okay, all right. Sell everything you have and come follow me. See, the one thing that the rich young ruler hadn’t done, was he hadn’t loved the Lord more than he loved his money. And I think that’s where we all get stuck. We kind of live mostly moral lives. You know, we do most of the 10 commandments that are in the last part, right? That deals with our relationships to each other. Because it makes our life better, right? And that’s easier.
But the true, true, proof that we are really sold out and that we are really having a deep, meaningful relationship with Christ is when we love him more than we love our job. Which means we think about him, we talk about him, we do things that he wants us to do more than we do anything else. When we love Him more than we love our money, our ambition, our friends, our family. You know, Jesus said if you, he used the word hate, don’t hate your family, then you aren’t my follower.
Well, he didn’t mean you have to hate your family. What he’s saying is, don’t make your family your God. And he, because he knows that when we make him the Lord of our life, then we can love our family better. We can do our job better, we can be all that we need to be for His glory. And we know who we are. And there is nothing like it. There’s nothing more powerful than walking into a room with the knowledge and the confidence that God is your defender and protector, and that he has this plan. You are on the team. You have a mission, and it’s the best mission ever.
So I would encourage you if you’re really hurting and, and don’t know who you are, Oh, God has a plan for you. He has written your days for you. And I would encourage you, first of all, make sure you know him as your Lord and Savior. And secondly, pursue him with all of your heart, soul and mind. He is looking for you. He truly, as the Bible said, the Lord roams the earth, searching, searching. He’s searching for a relationship with you. He truly is. But it involves surrender, daily surrender. So I hope this has been helpful for you. It certainly has been for me. God is just teaching me what it looks like to know my value is in him and him alone. Okay?
We would love to hear your thoughts about this devotional. Did God speak to you or challenge your daily walk with him? Or is there a topic that you would like Kimberly to cover or expound on? Please share with us in the comments below.
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