Teaching about God's Love...and Learning it Myself

Do you find that as you minister to others, God often uses it to grow you more than them?  Such may be the case with our girls retreat this past weekend.  Take a look into my soul…if you dare.

In my brief time of working in the inner city, one thing I have noticed is that consistency is hard to come by.  While the students in my small-town youth group didn’t change that much from year to year, here the faces change a lot from year to year.  This year our group, overall, is much younger than last year’s group, and our retreat ended up consisting of five 6^th graders.  It was good that it ended up this way, but I definitely had to change my mindset.  Last year, the girls in my cabin were all age 14 and up.  They talked about heavy issues, like boyfriends, depression, and cutting.  This year, our girls were all age 11.  They talked about Justin Bieber and pillow pets.

These precious girls, though some come from homes of divorce or absent fathers, still are pretty well-adjusted.  They have been attending church or Living Hope for years, and they seem to be on the right track in life, though they may not fully understand what it is to make their faith their own.  As we taught about the love of God, some truths sank in.  They may not have understood all the implications of this massive reality, but seeds were planted and watered.  Who knows what kind of harvest will come down the road?

It was interesting to watch my own heart through the weekend.  The adjustment from last year to this year was harder than I expected.  Somehow, I was upset that none of the “troubled” girls had come.  As I searched my heart, I found that this frustration was not rooted in holy compassion, but in a wickedly misdirected search for self-worth.  I feel validated in what I do when I’m reaching the hard-to-reach and helping the most troubled of souls.  I need to be needed.

Where was this coming from?  I’ve learned about self-worth before.  I’ve taught on self-worth.  I thought I was done with learning this lesson.  My value is not in what I do, where God has called me, or the results I see.  My value is in being loved, chosen, and adopted by the Glorious Maker of all things.  It has nothing to do with my accomplishments.  But if I fail to remember God’s love for me, I always go back to another method of seeking validation.

“It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of pharaoh king of Egypt.”  Deut. 7:7-8

Why did He set His love on them?  Because He loves them.

Why does He love me?  Because I work with inner-city kids?  NO! 

Because He loves me.

And that will never change.