Saturday, April 30, 2016

Saturday, April 30, 2016
By Keesha Sullivan

How does God see us? What are we worth to Him? God sees us as beautiful for we were made in His heavenly image. We are his treasured possession, the apple of His eye, His sons and daughters. We have a heavenly Father that sees us for our true worth because He is our Creator and He is perfect. God doesn't make mistakes.

I think the very first sentence of scripture that we read for today's reading spoke to how God viewed Jephthah. The verse said, "Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior" (Judges 11:1). The second sentence of scripture revealed how the world saw Jephthah."His father was Gilead; his mother was a prostitute" (Judges 11:1). As I read through the scripture for today, I felt sad for Jephthah. Much of his identity as well as our own identity unfortunately comes from the world and how others perceive us. Very little of it often times comes from the way our heavenly Father views us.

Because Jephthah's mother was a prostitute, his brothers and his earthly father saw Jephthah as worthless and rejected him. They told him, in so many words, "You are not part of us and you won't get a dime of our father's inheritance because you are just the son of a prostitute." Jephthah's father and brothers did not realize that they were talking about God's son whom he had knit together in his mother's womb. They didn't know that God had always had a plan for Jephthah, even before he was born, to prosper him and not to harm him. They didn't know that God loved him and that is why He made him. All they saw was what they could with their earthly lenses. They saw a "nobody."

The truth is "nobody is a nobody." God doesn't make mistakes. In fact, God used Jephthah, the son of a prostitute, to free the Israelites from the Ammonites. It says in the scripture from today, "Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah...Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the Lord gave them into his hands" (Judges 11:29, 32).

God doesn't see us the way that the world sees us. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts and His ways are higher than our ways. God saw Jephthah's true identity, and He sees us. We are worth far more to our heavenly Father than we could ever begin to fathom. It is time for us as sons and daughters to throw away the lenses that the world has used to identify us and to see ourselves through God's eyes.

Lord, thank You for making us. Thank You for loving us. Thank You for desiring to see great things for us, O God. Please help us today and every day to see ourselves through Your eyes. Help us to remember our worth and that You want to do great and mighty things with us. We love You so much, and we are so incredibly grateful to have You in our lives. Please bless us this day with new perspective and new lenses for ourselves as well as our fellow brothers and sisters around us. In Jesus's name, we pray. Amen!