Have you ever struggled with your sense of value? Do you feel like you’re worth less (or perhaps completely worthless) because of your chronic illness? Do you question what you can offer to the world, to a special someone, or to God Himself with your limited capacities?
I know I have. Lots of times.
It’s easy to do. It’s easy to end another day of doing absolutely nothing and feel like I’m absolutely nothing. It’s easy to stumble home from another, cut-short social outing and wish I had more to give to my friends, family, and others. It’s easy to look at myself in the mirror–let alone compared to others–and believe the voice that tells me I’m not beautiful, I’m not strong, I’m not whole, and therefore I’m not good enough.
My sister, if you’ve thought, said, or believed these same things, know that you are not alone. We’re all in this battle together, in the valley of chronic illness, and one of the first areas to fall beneath Satan’s attacks is our sense of value. (I say “sense of value” and not “value” because our value itself doesn’t change with our health or other circumstances. But more on that later.)
Before I get into the rest, I’d like to ask you a few questions to get you thinking:
- I feel most valuable (confident, secure, appreciated, full) when ___________.
- I believe I’m valuable because ____________.
- I feel my value is lost (I’m no good, a terrible human being, empty, useless, rejected) when ___________.
Take a few minutes to think through your answers. Be honest with yourself, and don’t be afraid to ask the Holy Spirit for help. It might take some time to dig through emotions, responses, ideas, and thoughts to discover the roots of these answers.
I’ve been thinking through these same questions, so since I asked, I’ll answer.
- I feel most valuable when I accomplish things, whether for myself or for other people, and when people appreciate me.
- I believe I’m valuable because God made me and chose to love me (my answer based on spiritual truth) and because God has given me a lot of experiences, abilities, and traits as a creative, passionate, and curious human being (my answer based on feelings and my own perception).
- I feel my value is lost when I’m sick, when I can’t function well (best) or do anything (worst), when I disappoint people (or think I disappoint people), and when I can’t meet my own expectations.
More than once God has had to do some open-heart surgery to show me that I’m finding my value in the wrong places: in my actions and accomplishments, in the words of other people, in temporal or material things that are easily swept away.
Recently, through both positive and negative experiences, I’ve been challenged to examine again how I define my value and where I find it. I’d love to share some of the truths God has used to confront and encourage my heart.
One of the passages God brought to me was Matthew 10:29-31:
Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
God makes it clear that His children have value, immense value. Priceless value. But what gives us this value?
Let’s start from the ground up.
1. You are valuable because God made you
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Genesis 1:26-27, 2:7
First, as a human being, you are created in God’s image. You are gifted with the likeness of the Almighty Creator Himself. Your capacities to think, rationalize, understand, imagine, create, relate, and communicate are what make you like God, what set you apart from the rest of God’s world.
As the crown of God’s creation–given abilities, authority, and free will that not even the angels have–you are special.
What is man that You are mindful of him,
Psalm 8:4-5
And the son of man that You visit him?
For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
Second, as an individual, you are created in God’s plan.
For You formed my inward parts;
Psalm 139:13-16
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 all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.
As this passage demonstrates, every human being is a work of art, an on-purpose creation of God’s hands. You are never an accident, never a mistake, and never a burden. You are precious because you ARE.
These verses also make it clear that God doesn’t just want you for who you are; before you were, He wanted you to be.
Let me say that again.
Before you were, He wanted you to be.
So He made you.
I hope this thought will move you as much as it moved me.
God wanted me to be, so He made me–inside and outside, both the “who” and the “what” I am. And yes, that includes my health issues. Psalm 119:73 has been a recent source of encouragement with this truth:
Your hands have made me and fashioned me.
Sometimes I act like my health issues are a surprise to God, like He made me one way and now I’m another way and He’s looking at me scratching His head (as I do) wondering what happened between the tidy product He designed and the mess He’s got now.
Nope. First of all, I was not physically perfect when or even before I was born. Thanks to genetics, circumstances, and the overall curse of the Fall on mankind and the world, my body was knit together with faults, weaknesses, dysfunctions, and mysteries. Yes, still a remarkable work of divine art, but not perfect by any means.
But God made me. He shaped me in my mother’s womb, physical faults and all. Does this mean God makes faulty products? Can perfect God create imperfect things and people? While His creation was perfect before the Fall, it isn’t now.
The earth He used to make Adam was perfect, but the materials He’s had to work with since then are not. I like to think of it as perfect God using imperfect clay to shape an imperfect person in a perfect plan.
So we see we’re not just humans originally created in God’s image, but also individuals uniquely created in God’s plan–His perfect plan, which includes our imperfections.
2. You are valuable because God redeemed you
If you’re a daughter of God, having made the choice at some point in your life to trust in Jesus and through Him receive God’s gift of salvation, you have experienced God’s love in a personal and profound way that speaks of your immense value to Him.
Walk with me through some well-known Bible verses that point out this truth. Put your name in each blank and let the impact sink deep.
For God so loved _______ that He gave His only begotten Son, that [if you believe] in Him [you] should not perish but have everlasting life.
John 3:16
For when [you] were still without strength, in due time Christ died for __________.
Romans 5:6
But God demonstrates His own love toward _________, in that while [you] were still [a sinner], Christ died for [you].
Romans 5:8
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for _________.”
Mark 10:45
. . . that Christ died for our _________’s according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures
I Corinthians 15:3-4
Surely He has borne ________’s griefs
Isaiah 53:4-6
And carried [your] sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for _______’s transgressions,
He was bruised for [your] iniquities;
The chastisement for [your] peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes [you] are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of _________.
Knowing that ________ [was] not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.
I Peter 1:18-19
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when _______ [was] dead in trespasses, made [you] alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised [you] up together, and made [you] sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward [you] in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:4-7
We are valuable not just because God made us but also because God redeemed us. He spent the lifeblood of His treasured, only Son to bring us into a restored relationship with Him.
You may not feel you’re worth such a sacrifice, worth such love, but as these verses (and many more) make clear, in God’s eyes, you are. You are worth the death of Jesus. You are worth the immense cost He paid to make you His daughter. Because He loves you.
This love means you are valuable, even in your chronic illness.
When was the last time you thought about what it means to be made in God’s image? What about the fact that God’s hands shaped you? Or the miracle that Jesus’s lifeblood purchased your freedom from sin and your adoption into God’s family? Do you see yourself as valuable in light of these Scripture truths?
The Valley 