Devotions that Resonate Truth

Welcome back for the second half of my short story, The Prince's Bride, where we find out what happens to Sophia after she finds that a disease has begun spreading over her hands and arms.

I'm excited to share something a bit different today - the first part of the short story I wrote for my daughter, Sophia. I wanted to write a fun and exciting fictional story that resonates the truth of the gospel and all that is ours in Jesus, so that she could come back to these pictures of the truth that are hers, no matter what hardships come her way. I hope it does the same for you, too. Enjoy and come back next time for the second half!

 
In Junior High and High School we begin asking ourselves the lifelong question, “What is my net worth, as a human?” We continue to ask ourselves this question and the only difference between a middle-aged person and a high schooler is that we picked something many years ago to hang our worth on. Now we’re either trying to convince ourselves that we’ve done well enough and we have value or we see that area fading and crumbling and we begin to feel worthless.
Well, if we try to measure our worth, what are our options, where do we go? The first, of course, is money and stuff. Even Proverbs 14:10 tells us that “The poor is disliked even by his neighbor but the rich has many friends.” So we look at what we’ve piled up and look at each other’s clothes and purchases and other things that money gives and, if we’re honest, we measure some people of higher worth or lower worth than others, including ourselves. But the question is – is that number what you’re worth? If you lose your money or possessions is your worth gone? Are all the poor of the world worthless? Well, of course not.
The other area we look at, which is insanely popular, is our physical bodies, and we measure our worth that way. Things like beauty and attractiveness but also strength or fitness, sports or artistic ability – something physical that we have is where we try to hang our worth. But is that really what you’re worth? I mean think after all that everyone, in the end, gets old, gets weak, gets sick, gets less attractive. So do we all lose our worth as we pass our physical prime? 
Something else we often hear, even from Olympians, who are both attractive and successful on the world’s highest stage, is that none of that was worth as much as the family that I have. So maybe your worth is tied up in the relationships that you have. But as an example, let’s say some cool guy wants you as his girlfriend and that gives you a sense of worth. But what happens when he breaks up with you? Are you suddenly worth less as a human? You know, we often think we are, which is why, when our human relationships of any kind crumble, it hits us so hard – because we thought that’s where our worth was and our meaning in life.
So, with these three examples and any others we look at of things in this world that we would use to measure our worth, we see that they are all false. It’s not the truth. You could take anything else you could come up with and look at people with a lot or a little and see – that cannot measure human value.
I want to give you two real measures of your net worth, according to God’s word. 
The first one is this – God created you with immeasurable value, because you were made in his image. We’re told that in Genesis 1, right at the very beginning of the bible. After God makes all the other animals and things that were just earthly, he then made something different. Something eternal, something creative – and that creativity can take many different forms, a relational being with feelings, and it was moral – able to choose to do what is right or to do what is wrong. And when God created that and placed that incredible, valuable being on this earth, you can see why nothing around here we can pile up or look to, to measure your worth!
So when I look around, maybe in a busy place, and I see all levels of wealth or lack thereof, all levels of physical beauty or lack thereof, and even the close relationships that you can observe, here is something that’s helped me. I picture a glowing ball as the eternal soul, just as a picture in my mind. This is residing – but is hidden – in every decaying body, all the decaying clothing, all the decaying wealth, all the broken relationships. The soul is the only thing that will last and is made in the image of God, that’s incredible value all around. And the rest, the trappings on the outside, is just dust on the scale of worth. So that’s the first one.
The second place to look and measure your value is this – God purchased you at an immeasurable cost, which was the life of Jesus. So here’s what I want you to think about. God makes each of us with infinite value, in his image. We then rebel against him, just as the first humans did, and we say, “No, I value the things on this earth more than you. I want to find my life, my worth, here.” When we do this, we explode our relationship with God. It’s broken, and there’s an enormous crack in our souls. Now, God could have left us there, he could have said, “Fine. Go for it.” But God looks at all our glowing eternal souls, that are chained to anchors of sin, dragging us to the bottom of hell, by our own choice. He graciously unhooks the chain of each person who will believe in him and in his love, and he hooks those chains to his perfect son, Jesus, instead of us. And Jesus is dragged down instead.
This is how God put it in 1 Peter 1:18-20 (NLT),For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake.
So, when you catch yourself measuring your net worth, I encourage you to go ahead and measure. But remember – it can’t be measured by anything in this world! Instead, see the eternal image of God stamped on you, hiding inside. Who cares what happens to the rest! And remember that Jesus – freely to you – but at immeasurable cost to himself, paid to ransom and heal that soul. 
Now you’re ready to answer my question – what is your net worth?

 
Psalm 73:23-26
Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
   you hold my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
   and afterward you will receive me to glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
   And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
   but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
This psalm’s aim is to encourage and strengthen God’s followers when life is crumbling around them, even though they are being obedient to God. Meanwhile, wicked people all around seem to do great, even though they have rejected God and are doing whatever they want. It reminds us that regardless of a person’s circumstances today, the faithful and the unbeliever are on two separate paths. 
It doesn’t matter how good the view is on the path, if the path is going away from God and its end is eternal suffering. In the same way, if your path goes through dark, scary sections, but is the path to eternal life with God, and if he is always near you as you walk, you can have strength to keep taking one step at a time. This is true for believers in Christ.
The psalm pictures this as God continually holding my right hand, speaking his good guidance into my ear as I walk. My favorite part is the last verse because it isn’t trying to sugar-coat life, this isn’t just a feel-good, “everything is going to be alright” song. The author admits that our flesh and our heart may fail.
Heart here, in Hebrew, means your inner person, including your mind and will and soul. So, there may be times when everything on our inside fails and everything on our outside, our physical bodies, fails. What could possibly keep us going when that happens, and not just trudging forward bitterly, but walking with humble thankfulness?
Well, we still believe that God is there walking with us toward an eternity with him. He is our strength when we don’t have any and our portion forever. My portion forever – why does that change my perspective on my life? Here’s a silly picture that helps me and I hope will help you, too.
Let’s say you sit down to dinner at a banquet. The servers are bringing out the meals and you see the person on your right get a large plate with the world’s finest nigiri sushi, some expertly seared and cooked rib eye, and all the fixings. The person next to them has a huge bowl of various ice creams melting over a thick brownie and drizzled with caramel and hot fudge. As your plate is lowered in front of you, your mouth watering, you see a small pile of mushy, overcooked peas and sliced liver. What do you feel? I would feel loss, anger, and unfairness well up within me. But then you notice something concealed under the unappetizing veggies. You move them aside with your fork and uncover the Hope Diamond, currently valued at around $300 million dollars. 
With guarded hope, you ask the server if he’s sure this is your plate. “Yes, we are handed a plate carefully prepared for each person,” he replies. “That is your portion.” In growing shock and wonder you look from side to side. There’s no denying that the steak, sushi, and dessert still look mouth-watering, and you’ll only eat the peas and liver if you have to. But the anger about what you’ve been served has melted away and is replaced with joy and thankfulness, along with a sense of being unworthy of being given such a generous portion, which will change your life forever.
This is why the psalmist can unabashedly speak of unfairness and tragic loss in this life without losing hope. He knows that God himself is the strength of his heart and his portion forever. If Jesus is both your Lord and Savior, the same is true for you. So as you stare down at what you've been served for life today, don't forget to look under the veggies and find hope there.

 
Mark 8:1-2, 6-9In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat, [Jesus] called his disciples to him and said to them, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat.”
And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and they set them before the crowd. And they had a few small fish. And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them. And they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. And there were about four thousand people.
Luke 22:19And [Jesus] took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
We’ve all been at a BBQ or a party, super hungry and surrounded by other starving people. Our eyes settle on the one thing that we really want to eat. It’s sitting there in the open, with no protection from these greedy people. We ask ourselves, “Is there enough for me?” Will there be any tender, juicy, smoky brisket left on the plate by the time it comes around to me? Or will it be gone?
Is there enough for me?
God knows that hunger is universal. It’s something we can all relate to. Many in the world, sadly, know hunger on a level of suffering far beyond anything you or I even fear. But we all know hunger every day, so God included many events and lessons using food in the bible. One of the most famous is about Jesus taking one person’s lunch to feed a huge multitude.
If you’ve read or heard the story before, the numbers in these verses from Mark 8 may have surprised you. Didn’t Jesus feed five thousand, not four thousand people? And weren’t there twelve baskets left over, not seven? Well, there are actually two different stories. Jesus fed five thousand men, plus women and children, in a Jewish region, and had twelve baskets left over—a clear link to the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles. But the second story takes place in a Gentile region, a non-Jewish region, and there are seven baskets of surplus—the bible’s number of completeness.
So, this is the message from God to a starving world. You are hungry and yet you hesitate as you come to me, wondering, “Is there enough for me?” Well, when thousands of my people came to me, I had plenty to go around, with an extra basket for each tribe! Yes, but I’m not Jewish, I don’t even know where I come from. No problem, a crowd of nobodies from nowhere also followed me and when they were hungry, there was enough for every one of them to be satisfied with more left over than when I started.
How can I take these stories and be sure it applies to you today? And not in the physical sense—like me, you’re probably trying to eat less food! I can confidently tell you that regardless of your spiritual history and spiritual need, when you come to Jesus and ask, “I’m starving, is there enough of you for me?” the answer is “Yes.” Because on the night before he went to the cross to save you from your individual sins, the Bread of Life for the world said, “This is my body, which is given for you,” along with the command that every person who comes to him, in every generation and in every corner of the world, remember that every day of your life there is enough at his table to satisfy all your spiritual hunger and need, no matter how extreme, with infinite grace and goodness and love left over.

 
Revelation 21:3-5a And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” 
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”  John Lennon wrote a beautiful song in 1971, called Imagine. This year that song turns fifty years old and is still massively popular, because it captures two things that are true for every human in the world, no matter what your religious beliefs are. First, we know that the world is broken. People are killing and dying, there is greed and hunger, and there is no peace. It hurts us to see so much pain and crying in the world, and our own hearts and tears add to the mountain of loss. 
The second thing that this song offers is hope. A dream of a brotherhood of man sharing everything, living in peace, and living as one. Our hearts yearn for this dream, and it’s fun to sit back and imagine what that would be like.  
Unfortunately, these are the easy parts. Hundreds of songs and stories and movies capture our hearts with real pain and wonderful dreams. We know these are true and we want everything to be made perfect and beautiful. The hard part in the real world is getting from tears and death to happiness and peace. If we are to have any real hope of getting to the dream when the song ends, we need a real solution.  The best Lennon could conjure up in Imagine was a world with no countries, no religion, no heaven, and no hell. To find hope in this, we would need to heal global divisions to where people all agreed on how to live and didn’t need to be governed. Beyond this, the people would not just have to agree to share one religion, but no religion, that is no system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices... which sounds like a system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices. Finally, to find hope we need to imagine there is no heaven and no hell, just this world. But, if there is a heaven and a hell, we can’t imagine them away or destroy them. 
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling you to stop imagining a better world. In fact, let’s set the bar even higher and imagine an even better world. You may say that I’m a dreamer, but this hope based on words that John was told to write, because God promised they would come true and he wanted to give us hope in words that are trustworthy and true. 
Here is his real and amazing promise - “I am making all things new.” 
The first part is in verse 4. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Do you see the incredible, intimate nature of this promise? He, a real person, Jesus, will wipe away every tear. He is not a far off, impersonal force or essence. Think of what it feels like when someone who loves you, sees you crying and comes near to you, touching your cheek and wiping away your tears. This is to be known and loved. And for Jesus, it’s not just a tender gesture. The tears he wipes away will be your last, because he is accomplishing the impossible for us, permanently fixing the cause of all death, pain, and crying. The cause of these is sin, which is the bible’s word for attitudes and actions that fall short of God’s perfection. Jesus bore the punishment that each of us deserves for our part of the problem, he completed this on the cross in real time two thousand years ago.  
In real time in the future, he will complete the second part. All these broken things we experience will pass away and become former things that don’t exist anymore. Because everything, including you and me, will be made new and will never break or fail or sin again. Imagine that and believe it! 

 
John 15:13-15 NLT
There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.
There are many pictures in the bible that describe our relationship to God and with God. Each of these analogies help us approach God and know how to communicate with him. Here are a few examples–and notice how for each of these, a different picture of God will pop into your mind.
God is your creator.
God is your king. 
God is your judge. 
God is your savior, through Jesus Christ. 
God is your father.
As a father of three, this is one of my favorite pictures. My idea of real fatherhood is far from perfect, as is my ability to be the dad I want to be. Isn’t it interesting that our own experiences and knowledge of kings, judges, and fathers help us know how to relate to God, but they also limit and then twist our relationship with God, based on the earthly limited pictures we have?
The picture that has impacted me most in the last year is one that you may have some hang-ups with, as I have.
God is my friend.
God is your friend.
Part of my trouble with this picture is that he is so high, holy, and different from me, and the concept of friendship sounds so equal, so even. This even caused Aristotle to believe it was impossible for humans to be friends with a god, because friends have things in common and can say, “You, too?” And on our own, we are enemies of God. But as Tim Keller points out, God did two great acts of friendship toward us: he became human, drawing near to us in humility, and second, he gave his life for us, so that in our suffering we can look at Jesus and say, “You, too?”
How would your life look if you actually believed that God wanted to be friends with you? That is what I’ve been asking myself. What if Jesus was here, in the flesh, always available to hang out, to work on projects, ministry, and life together, if he wanted to just spend time with you in the backyard? He doesn’t want to be your buddy, but Jesus offers to be your friend.
Trusting this picture, however limited it is in my mind, changes me for the better.
Time in the Word becomes an opportunity to hear from a dear friend, not a checklist item.
Time in prayer becomes an opportunity to share my deepest thoughts, fears, and thanks with a good friend, not a recitation of wants to a vending machine.
Growing in holiness becomes a secondary habit from hanging out with him and being like him, not an impossible struggle to change myself by force of will.
Hatred of sin (in myself, not just others) and love of good things happens more as my likes become more like my close friend’s, not a guilty secret of my failing.
Suffering is more tolerable, and I can even find joy there, because Jesus is still my friend, and shares the experience with me.
There are more examples of how our lives would change if we valued and took being friends with God seriously. But here’s the bizarre question. What are we waiting for? Are we hoping for a better friend than God? More faithful, helpful, powerful, available, loving, joyful, encouraging, smart, humble, or wise? Friendship is a positive, fun, enriching experience–and our time with God should be the same–he is for us and is patiently waiting for us to be real friends.

 
Romans 6:16-17, 20-22Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.
What wonderful verses, but also convicting and kind of scary verses. We’re going to be slaves to one or the other – to sin or to the Lord and righteousness. The concept makes sense – you're a slave to the one you obey. It doesn’t matter much what label or name you ascribe as your master, the one you claim is most important and in charge of your life. It’s who you obey.
That choice of who we serve is going to yield a certain type of fruit, we’re told. And my question to you is this – it's so easy for our desire to meet our own needs and wants to be the thing that drives us.  For you, it could be any number of things. For me it is often selfishness or laziness or a desire to be loved and appreciated, or to have the material things that I want. And when we choose to serve those, which we’ve all done this week, then we have a question that Paul asks us, and that I ask you today, which is, how is that going? You’ve been serving this master, which is yourself; how’s that working out? 
Is it good? Is it a good master? Are you serving a master who’s giving you a sense of rich blessing and happiness? Or has it actually been a hard master, one we follow because the orders seem right and we obey, but the fruit that we get is death, is pain, to ourselves and pain to the people around us.
Now this is certainly true if you don’t believe in Christ, are not a follower of Jesus – these verses say you are free with regard to righteousness and you are stuck serving yourself and there’s no escaping it. And how is that working out? It’s hard, isn’t it? It’s not all that it promises, it never is. Maybe for a few seconds it seems to be the right choice, but your only hope is to be saved by the good news that you don’t have to remain a slave to yourself and your wants and to sin, but instead you can switch masters. Because you’ve been purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ, paying for every bad thing you’ve ever done and you’re free then, from sin, to serve the Lord and righteousness. 
For those of you who have made this decision and have been living as a believer, look back over your life. What kind of fruit do you see when you serve the Lord and serve righteousness and give up the throne that you like to sit on. Those are hard things to do, it’s hard to get off the throne and get to work. But are you sorry? Has it led to things that you regret and wish you could get back? Of course, the answer as you look back, is “No. I have no regrets each time that I put myself aside and serve the Lord. Instead, I regret when I foolishly put myself back on the throne, though I serve a wonderful master, with hard requests but that lead to eternal life. It’s when I once again serve the wrong master – who I’ve been freed from – that's when I find that my obedience to sin leads to sorrow and death. 
I don’t know where you’re at today on the spectrum.  Maybe it’s been the best week ever - then rejoice with me that you’ve been set free and that you are living the life that only comes from dying to self.
Maybe it’s been the opposite, maybe as you look back your week has been filled with thoughts of self and serving self. I don’t want you to despair, this concept should give you hope, this truth should set you free. If you are a believer in Jesus, then you have been set free indeed by him and you can put that away, you can get off the throne of your heart right now and get to work serving your master for the rest of this week. 
We are promised, not just by Paul, certainly not just by me, but by the word of God itself, that this leads to life, to eternal life. So, maybe that’s a hard sell, but I’ll just remind you again – what does the evidence show you when you choose to serve yourself? Is it coming through on its promises? And if not, then why not give the Lord a try this week? See, as costly as it may be, as difficult in the moment as that may be, what sort of life comes from it. Maybe, just maybe, you can trust him and be led to real life and not the empty shell that you’ve been living.