LOVED
Loved. If you listen to pop songs a disproportionate amount of them are about this four letter word. We all want it, we all need it, we fall in it, we lose it (which makes for the best songs). But what is it? Have you ever longed to be appreciated for who you are and not just what you do or the way you look? Why does it seem that we all have this longing? Could it be that love is what we were created for?
The Bible talks about how God full of love created people to share His love with them and so they could share love with each other. Could this be why the need to be loved is universal? What is love? 1 John 3:16 says: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”
Another passage (Romans 5:8) says this: “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” God loves sacrificially. He appreciates you for who you are and longs to reveal his love to you. You are loved.
VALUED
Valued. What gives you value? In our culture value is given to people based on their looks, gifts, or talents. Models are highly valued, football players are highly valued, celebrities are highly valued. What about you? How valuable are you? Where does value come from? Who decides? Around the world people have different views on this and the ideas they hold have far reaching consequences. Evolution assumes a natural inequality. Lack of understanding value has brought about 27,000,000 slaves in our world today. In various places all over the world your value is determined by your gender. If you are a girl you do not have a right to live. This is called gendercide.
Where does value come from and who decides? The Bible says that God made men and women in His image to share His love with people and adopt them into his family. He gave everyone intrinsic non- debatable value. We all know this in our hearts and can see clearly that anytime peopleʼs intrinsic value is ignored it brings nothing but suffering and death. Even when people walked away from God, forgot their value and started hurting themselves and
others, Jesus came into the world to lay down His life for ours to remind us how valuable we are and that God still wants us. You are valued.
WANTED
Wanted. A word that produces longing in our hearts. What would you give to be wanted - not just tolerated? Maybe your parents did not want you and would tell you that you were an accident or that you should have never been born. That type of rejection is one that impacts us all of our lives, makes us insecure, and makes it difficult to belong.
What if there was someone that truly wanted to be with you and appreciated you simply because you are you. The Bible says that God made you for adoption into his family. Ephesians 1:5 says: “Because of his love he had already decided to adopt us through Jesus Christ. He freely chose to do this.” It does not matter who you are or where you have been. You are wanted.