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To God, You Are Special
by Grantley Morris
God’s smile is upon you. You light up his face
as much as anyone has ever lit up a lover’s face.
Most of us imagine that in God’s eyes we are just one of millions.
We know most people don’t think we are important and so we assume
God thinks of us in a similar way. But then, again, God is not like
‘most people.’ We feel that God has favorites and we think we’re a fair
way down the list, but we are about to see this is one way where feelings
do not correspond to reality. To God, you are special.
Four reasons why God favors no one over you
1. God’s Son shed his last drop of blood for you. God loves you with his whole heart. He loves you with every speck of his enormous love. That means no matter how much he loves others, he couldn’t possibly love anyone else more than he loves you.
A woman wrote about the above paragraph:
I had wanted to say, “God loves me with his whole heart? Come off it! It’s a wonder he loves me at all! Grantley, you exaggerate too much!” But the Lord silenced me with John 17:23:
I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
I can’t get round it; I can’t burrow under it or climb over it. So the only thing I can do is go through it, absorbing it as I go. Christ is in me – and God loves me as much as he loves Christ. And no way can God’s love for Christ be half-hearted. I went to sleep snuggling into that verse last night.
Scripture makes no promise that you will always feel loved, nor that circumstances will always make it obvious that you are loved. God simply promises that you are loved. No suffering or tragedy will ever separate you from God’s love (Romans 8:35-39). A snap-shot in time proves nothing. Only eternity’s movies can adequately portray the infinitude of God’s love for you.
The more you love someone the more important that person is to you. So the fact that God loves you with his whole heart means you are more important to God than you could ever imagine.
2. Before God forgave us we were all spiritually dead. Scripture affirms that every person on this planet was dead in their sin. You can’t get any deader than dead. God couldn’t say, I prefer her because she’s a little less dead than him.
But through Christ we can be forgiven. When God looks at a forgiven person, he can’t find one sin. When you are forgiven, God can’t find a person on the entire planet, more forgiven than you.
So without Christ we were all equally dead in our sin and in Christ we are all equally forgiven.
3. God is all-powerful. That means he doesn’t need some people more than others.
If God could only use young people, or strong people, or rich people, or famous people, or educated people, then God must be so weak that he needs human strength; so poor that he needs us to give him a few dollars; so foolish that he needs human education.
4. The Lord loves using small and seemingly unimportant things. 1 Corinthians 1:26 says, ‘Look at what you were before God called you. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many of you had great influence. Not many of you came from important families. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and he chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose what this world thinks is unimportant and what this world looks down on and thinks is nothing in order to bring to nothing what the world thinks is important. God did this,’ the Bible continues, ‘so that no one could boast in his presence.’
In the Bible, the book of Jonah seems small and insignificant. It’s only 2-3 pages long. I often feel like that: small and insignificant. I have often felt so useless that I would have committed suicide if I wasn’t worried about having to face God afterwards. But the Bible would be very much poorer without this tiny book. And the Kingdom of God would be much poorer without you. In this tiny book we see God using a storm, a whale, a heartless, rebellious, moody man, a plant, and a grub. Are you less gifted than a grub? Then God can do mighty things through you. If God could use a storm and a plant and a grub, God is smart enough to use you. God is so powerful he can use anything to do his work.
No Christian is too old, too poor, too uneducated, too stupid, too sick to be gloriously used of God. We can’t explore this in depth here.
Do you believe there is nothing God cannot do? Do you believe God could bring a dead person back to life? Do you believe God could bring a dead person back to life through your prayers? Those words ‘through your prayers’ don’t suddenly make God weak. Do you believe God can save thousands of souls? Then you must also believe God can save thousands of souls through you.
Either God can do the impossible through you, or he isn’t God.
Keep telling yourself, ‘There is nothing God cannot do through me.’
Heaven stands on tip toe waiting to see the astounding things you will achieve for the glory of God.
No one is more important to God than you are: Bible proofs
In the book of Galatians 2:6-9, Paul speaks of Peter, James and John. If anyone could claim to be have a special place in God’s heart it was these men. When Jesus walked this planet they seemed his closest friends. Later they were called the pillars of the church. Without pillars the whole building collapses. Yet Paul wrote of these men, ‘whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God shows personal favoritism to no one.’ Paul was speaking about Peter, the man honored by millions as the first pope. Even his shadow healed people. Paul was speaking about the leaders of the church, the greatest saints, when divinely inspired to write, ‘whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God shows personal favoritism to no one.’ Tell yourself, ‘The Bible says I am as important to God as Peter, James and John.’
One day the disciples told Jesus that his mother wanted to speak with him. Jesus replied, ‘Who is my mother? Anyone who does God’s will is my mother’ (Luke 8:20-21).
So anyone who obeys God has as much right to speak with Jesus, as Mary has. Anyone who does God’s will has the same place in Jesus’ heart as his own mother.
Another time when Jesus was preaching, a woman shouted, ‘Blessed is the woman who gave you birth.’ Yet instead of agreeing with her, Jesus said Blessed rather is the person who obeys God (Luke 11:27-28).
Jesus was born only once. So only one woman could have the privilege of giving birth to the Messiah. That was Mary’s unique blessing. But spiritually, we are all equally blessed. In Ephesians 1:3 the Bible says each of us have been lavished every spiritual blessing. How could it be otherwise? If Christ died (ie gave his all) for sinners, what would he possibly withhold from them now that they are cleansed and made God’s precious children? As Scripture points out, since you are so dear to God that he gave his only Son for you – the most costly gift in the universe – there can be nothing he won’t give you (Romans 8:32, see also 1 Corinthians 3:21-22).
Tell yourself, ‘I am as spiritually blessed as anyone.’
You have a special place in God’s heart
From the age of four, I loved helping my grandpa lay cement paths. Almost anyone could do a better job than a little child, but that was irrelevant. I was irreplaceable. I had a special place in grandpa’s heart.
And you have a special place in God’s heart. To him you are irreplaceable. The Almighty needs the help of no one. Yet the Father’s joy could never be complete without your contribution.
My grandpa wanted me to share in his work. Not because he needed me, but because I was special to him. And God wants you to share in his work. Think about that for a minute – God’s work is the most important work in the universe. God has something of divine importance; something of eternal significance that he wants you to help him with. Wow! You are important!
To God, you are special. I used to think yeah, yeah God loves me, but he loves everyone. To him I’m just one of millions of Christians. God has his favorites and I’m not one of them. I thought I was being humble thinking this way. But what I was really doing was accusing God of imperfect love. In fact, I was calling God a liar. God says he loves you. So to believe that you are unimportant to God is to believe that God is a liar. There is nothing humble about calling the holy Lord a liar! It’s sin.
God is the most important person in the universe. So if you are important to him, you are important! There is nothing humble about telling the all-wise God that he’s wrong. This is serious.
How dare I go up to the glorious Lord who shed his life’s blood for me and tell him, ‘I’m not special to you.’ Dare I go to the cross where I deserved to hang, look into my Savior’s bleeding face, and accuse him of loving others more? He died for me! What more dare I demand he do before I accept the fact that I’m special to him! I need to feel as bad about that sin as if I were guilty of murder.
It’s said that a pirate killed a man. He was so horrified by what he had done that he couldn’t sleep properly for weeks. But he kept killing. He got to the point where he could kill a man, use the corpse as a pillow and sleep soundly all night. We are like that. We have committed the sin of wrong thinking so often that our consciences have become as hard as concrete. For other sins our consciences have might still be soft but to the sin of doubt and small thinking, we are hardened.
Lepers lose fingers, toes, sometimes noses. It was always thought the disease did this. But a brilliant medical missionary began to question this. Dr Paul Brand noticed that lepers would go to bed whole and wake up without a finger. No one could ever find a trace of the missing finger. He eventually discovered that the fingers were being chewed off and carried away by rats! However could this happen? It’s because lepers lose feeling. And that’s our problem. We have lost feeling in part of our conscience. And then the devil – that fat rat – begins to chew us and instead of shooing him away, we don’t even realize what he’s doing. We desperately need God to make our consciences sensitive.
by Grantley Morris
God’s smile is upon you. You light up his face
as much as anyone has ever lit up a lover’s face.
Most of us imagine that in God’s eyes we are just one of millions.
We know most people don’t think we are important and so we assume
God thinks of us in a similar way. But then, again, God is not like
‘most people.’ We feel that God has favorites and we think we’re a fair
way down the list, but we are about to see this is one way where feelings
do not correspond to reality. To God, you are special.
Four reasons why God favors no one over you
1. God’s Son shed his last drop of blood for you. God loves you with his whole heart. He loves you with every speck of his enormous love. That means no matter how much he loves others, he couldn’t possibly love anyone else more than he loves you.
A woman wrote about the above paragraph:
I had wanted to say, “God loves me with his whole heart? Come off it! It’s a wonder he loves me at all! Grantley, you exaggerate too much!” But the Lord silenced me with John 17:23:
I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
I can’t get round it; I can’t burrow under it or climb over it. So the only thing I can do is go through it, absorbing it as I go. Christ is in me – and God loves me as much as he loves Christ. And no way can God’s love for Christ be half-hearted. I went to sleep snuggling into that verse last night.
Scripture makes no promise that you will always feel loved, nor that circumstances will always make it obvious that you are loved. God simply promises that you are loved. No suffering or tragedy will ever separate you from God’s love (Romans 8:35-39). A snap-shot in time proves nothing. Only eternity’s movies can adequately portray the infinitude of God’s love for you.
The more you love someone the more important that person is to you. So the fact that God loves you with his whole heart means you are more important to God than you could ever imagine.
2. Before God forgave us we were all spiritually dead. Scripture affirms that every person on this planet was dead in their sin. You can’t get any deader than dead. God couldn’t say, I prefer her because she’s a little less dead than him.
But through Christ we can be forgiven. When God looks at a forgiven person, he can’t find one sin. When you are forgiven, God can’t find a person on the entire planet, more forgiven than you.
So without Christ we were all equally dead in our sin and in Christ we are all equally forgiven.
3. God is all-powerful. That means he doesn’t need some people more than others.
If God could only use young people, or strong people, or rich people, or famous people, or educated people, then God must be so weak that he needs human strength; so poor that he needs us to give him a few dollars; so foolish that he needs human education.
4. The Lord loves using small and seemingly unimportant things. 1 Corinthians 1:26 says, ‘Look at what you were before God called you. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many of you had great influence. Not many of you came from important families. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and he chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose what this world thinks is unimportant and what this world looks down on and thinks is nothing in order to bring to nothing what the world thinks is important. God did this,’ the Bible continues, ‘so that no one could boast in his presence.’
In the Bible, the book of Jonah seems small and insignificant. It’s only 2-3 pages long. I often feel like that: small and insignificant. I have often felt so useless that I would have committed suicide if I wasn’t worried about having to face God afterwards. But the Bible would be very much poorer without this tiny book. And the Kingdom of God would be much poorer without you. In this tiny book we see God using a storm, a whale, a heartless, rebellious, moody man, a plant, and a grub. Are you less gifted than a grub? Then God can do mighty things through you. If God could use a storm and a plant and a grub, God is smart enough to use you. God is so powerful he can use anything to do his work.
No Christian is too old, too poor, too uneducated, too stupid, too sick to be gloriously used of God. We can’t explore this in depth here.
Do you believe there is nothing God cannot do? Do you believe God could bring a dead person back to life? Do you believe God could bring a dead person back to life through your prayers? Those words ‘through your prayers’ don’t suddenly make God weak. Do you believe God can save thousands of souls? Then you must also believe God can save thousands of souls through you.
Either God can do the impossible through you, or he isn’t God.
Keep telling yourself, ‘There is nothing God cannot do through me.’
Heaven stands on tip toe waiting to see the astounding things you will achieve for the glory of God.
No one is more important to God than you are: Bible proofs
In the book of Galatians 2:6-9, Paul speaks of Peter, James and John. If anyone could claim to be have a special place in God’s heart it was these men. When Jesus walked this planet they seemed his closest friends. Later they were called the pillars of the church. Without pillars the whole building collapses. Yet Paul wrote of these men, ‘whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God shows personal favoritism to no one.’ Paul was speaking about Peter, the man honored by millions as the first pope. Even his shadow healed people. Paul was speaking about the leaders of the church, the greatest saints, when divinely inspired to write, ‘whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God shows personal favoritism to no one.’ Tell yourself, ‘The Bible says I am as important to God as Peter, James and John.’
One day the disciples told Jesus that his mother wanted to speak with him. Jesus replied, ‘Who is my mother? Anyone who does God’s will is my mother’ (Luke 8:20-21).
So anyone who obeys God has as much right to speak with Jesus, as Mary has. Anyone who does God’s will has the same place in Jesus’ heart as his own mother.
Another time when Jesus was preaching, a woman shouted, ‘Blessed is the woman who gave you birth.’ Yet instead of agreeing with her, Jesus said Blessed rather is the person who obeys God (Luke 11:27-28).
Jesus was born only once. So only one woman could have the privilege of giving birth to the Messiah. That was Mary’s unique blessing. But spiritually, we are all equally blessed. In Ephesians 1:3 the Bible says each of us have been lavished every spiritual blessing. How could it be otherwise? If Christ died (ie gave his all) for sinners, what would he possibly withhold from them now that they are cleansed and made God’s precious children? As Scripture points out, since you are so dear to God that he gave his only Son for you – the most costly gift in the universe – there can be nothing he won’t give you (Romans 8:32, see also 1 Corinthians 3:21-22).
Tell yourself, ‘I am as spiritually blessed as anyone.’
You have a special place in God’s heart
From the age of four, I loved helping my grandpa lay cement paths. Almost anyone could do a better job than a little child, but that was irrelevant. I was irreplaceable. I had a special place in grandpa’s heart.
And you have a special place in God’s heart. To him you are irreplaceable. The Almighty needs the help of no one. Yet the Father’s joy could never be complete without your contribution.
My grandpa wanted me to share in his work. Not because he needed me, but because I was special to him. And God wants you to share in his work. Think about that for a minute – God’s work is the most important work in the universe. God has something of divine importance; something of eternal significance that he wants you to help him with. Wow! You are important!
To God, you are special. I used to think yeah, yeah God loves me, but he loves everyone. To him I’m just one of millions of Christians. God has his favorites and I’m not one of them. I thought I was being humble thinking this way. But what I was really doing was accusing God of imperfect love. In fact, I was calling God a liar. God says he loves you. So to believe that you are unimportant to God is to believe that God is a liar. There is nothing humble about calling the holy Lord a liar! It’s sin.
God is the most important person in the universe. So if you are important to him, you are important! There is nothing humble about telling the all-wise God that he’s wrong. This is serious.
How dare I go up to the glorious Lord who shed his life’s blood for me and tell him, ‘I’m not special to you.’ Dare I go to the cross where I deserved to hang, look into my Savior’s bleeding face, and accuse him of loving others more? He died for me! What more dare I demand he do before I accept the fact that I’m special to him! I need to feel as bad about that sin as if I were guilty of murder.
It’s said that a pirate killed a man. He was so horrified by what he had done that he couldn’t sleep properly for weeks. But he kept killing. He got to the point where he could kill a man, use the corpse as a pillow and sleep soundly all night. We are like that. We have committed the sin of wrong thinking so often that our consciences have become as hard as concrete. For other sins our consciences have might still be soft but to the sin of doubt and small thinking, we are hardened.
Lepers lose fingers, toes, sometimes noses. It was always thought the disease did this. But a brilliant medical missionary began to question this. Dr Paul Brand noticed that lepers would go to bed whole and wake up without a finger. No one could ever find a trace of the missing finger. He eventually discovered that the fingers were being chewed off and carried away by rats! However could this happen? It’s because lepers lose feeling. And that’s our problem. We have lost feeling in part of our conscience. And then the devil – that fat rat – begins to chew us and instead of shooing him away, we don’t even realize what he’s doing. We desperately need God to make our consciences sensitive.
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