MATT FOUND A PENNY. The other day, we were walking across the parking lot from the gym and Matt picked up a penny. It was all scratched and old, probably had been driven over by cars many times. It looked pretty beat up, yet it still has value. I understand no one wants an old beat up penny, in this economy there is not much you can buy with it anymore. Back in my days, you could get penny candy from the bottom rack in a convenience store. Yet, a ran over penny still has value. No matter what you have gone through, or what you have done, nor what others have thought about you determines your value. God made you. He determines your value. But how do you see yourself? Like that old beat up penny? Broken and worthless?
How you see yourself in the Lord will determine how much you can do. I’ve been reading the book of Joshua, great book by the way. Caleb was 85 years old when he was allowed to enter the Promised land because he wholly followed the Lord, he knew the strength of His God and what he could accomplish with the Lord on His side. Unlike the other scorning Israelites who saw themselves as grasshoppers; Caleb saw himself as conqueror in the Lord.
“So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke that day. For you heard then how the [giantlike] Anakim were there and that the cities were great and fortified; if the Lord will be with me, I shall drive them out just as the Lord said.”
Joshua 14:12
At 85 he was ready and willing to take down the giants in order to receive his inheritance. Contrast with Joshua 17:16 where the two tribes of Joseph were whining about having to battle the Canaanites who had “chariots of iron” for their inheritance. “Waaaa, we can’t defeat them, they are too strong!” What was the difference?
Both Caleb and the children of Joseph had seen God’s miraculous powers and both had experienced His overwhelming victories time and time again. Both had seen the sun stand still. Both had seen the walls of Jericho come crashing down. But Caleb knew God, and believed God’s Word concerning the Promised land and his ability in the Lord to receive the land. Caleb wholly followed God, even through 40 years of wilderness living, waiting for God to fulfill the promise. I’ll say it again, it’s one thing to believe in God and another thing to believe God and take Him at His Word. How you see yourself through the lens of Scripture will either make you a victor or a victim. You are more than a conqueror or you can continue to see yourself as a marred, driven over and used penny.
So I ask you, do you believe God? Do you believe what His Word says? Do you believe what His Word says about you and about what you can do through the power of His Spirit? See, either you believe you can do all things through Him who gives you strength; OR you don’t. You are either a new creation and all the old things, the brokenness, the sin and the pain are under the blood of the Lamb; or you still hold on to your past and what’s been done to you with fierceness. How you see yourself in the Lord matters. God makes all things new and calls those things that be not as though they are. He sees value in you and determines what He will make you into. However, you have to come into agreement with that plan.
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