I think most believers have a sense that they are not prejudice against others. They reason that they don’t have any feelings that people of other races are less important than people of their own race and are even cordial and welcoming when people of a different skin color or ethnic background attend their church. On these grounds most of us argue that we are not prejudice people. The problem here is that we are defining the state of being prejudice in its most strict sense and are missing the point of gospel inclusiveness. more »
Previously I wrote about the high value that God places on each of us, how he knows us intimately, cares for us deeply and guides our lives lovingly. Today I want to comment on how our understanding of the high value placed on us by God should influence the way we treat others. If you think about it, you will agree that God’s great love and care is not singularly focused on you. God is such a being that he can focus the full power of his knowledge, wisdom, sovereignty and love on every person equally and at the same time. So, it stands to reason that if God love and values you infinitely, then he loves and values every other person in his creation infinitely. Remember what David said, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made”? This is true of every person. If that is so, then how should we treat other people? more »
Sometimes I don’t feel very valuable. Sometimes I have pity parties for myself at which I tell myself that no one needs me, I’m not important and that if I am remembered by anyone at all, it is not for long, and I will soon be forgotten. How about you? Do you ever get this feeling that you are alone and worthless and nobody loves you? I think most honest people will admit that they have felt a low sense of value about themselves at one point or another in their lives. I want to show you why the perception is really an errant one.
In Psalm 139 we learn that God knows all the intimate details about us from before the point of conception in our mother’s womb to and beyond the point of passing from this life. There is not a thing that God does not know about us. He knows when we go to bed; he knows when we get up in the morning. He knows the words that we will speak before we even think them. As Jonah painfully discovered, there is nowhere that we can go that God is not there before us, behind us and even right next to us. God knows us so well that his knowledge includes all the events of every day of our lives, and this knowledge existed in God well before we were even considered a faint possibility in any other mind or heart. more »
