During our COVID-19 shutdown, Pastor Zekveld plans to provide a personal reflection each weekday.
‘My Worth is Not in What I Own’
When God sent wind and war Job’s way, he lost almost everything: his 500 donkeys, 1,000 oxen, 3,000 camels, 7,000 sheep, many servants, and all his happy family – 7 sons and 3 daughters. Then he lost his health and his wife’s support. You can hardly imagine a greater personal disaster than his.
From riches to rags in one day!
Job was utterly crushed. In his agony and distress, what did he do? He worshiped God and confessed his faith. He said:
Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
Job 1:21
As painful and humiliating as this was for him, if he measured his worth by what he owned, His life would have lost all its value. But Job knew and confessed a reality that was bigger than himself: God.
Even when he lost everything else he knew he still had the LORD His God. He had devoted his whole life to following God and fighting sin. His #1 desire for His family was to see their sins washed away and their lives consecrated to God. He didn’t just have God as a part of His life. God was his life!
What a test for Job’s faith! Did he believe in God because his life was good and he had lots of stuff? Was God good for him only in the good times? Or did he believe in God for God’s own sake, knowing that God was his life and his only true worth, even if he had nothing else?
His confession of faith in disaster proved that though he owned stuff, his stuff never owned him. My farm, my family, my health and my life, are the Lord’s. He has the power and right to give them. He has the power and right to take them. It’s not really my own. My life is His.
When crisis strikes, our faith is put to the test. Do we believe God’s right over our life? Do we accept His ownership of our business? Do we confess that He holds the title to our health and family? Do we join this grieving man in saying, “Blessed be the name of the Lord“?
Or do we take the side of Job’s wife in complaining against the Lord as if God owed her everything? She said to her husband:
Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!
Job 2:10
She put up with God while He gave her wealth and a comfortable life, but cursed Him when hard times came.
Crises are a test of faith – Is my worth in what I own, and I’ll take God with it? Or: Do I find my worth in God, and I’ll accept loss with it? Will I accept God only because good things happen to me, or will I accept God because He is God? And He is right and good no matter what happens to me.
When God strips away from us the things of this earth we enjoy, He is asking us whether we love Him more than these. Have I put my faith in God or in idols?
Hulk Hogan is not my hero but he said it quite well:
In three short months, just like He did with the plagues of Egypt, God has taken away everything we worship.
God is teaching us, ‘You want to worship athletes, I will shut down the stadiums. You want to worship musicians, I will shut down Civic Centers. You want to worship actors, I will shut down theatres. You want to worship money, I will shut down the economy and collapse the stock market. You don’t want to go to church and worship Me, I will make it where you can’t go to church.’
Hulk Hogan
Finding your worth in what you own is a false measurement. It devalues life, and robs us of true stability, peace, joy and self-worth. Finding our worth in the God who made us in His image and then sent His Son to rescue us when we fell into sin and death, is the only true measurement of life.
William Temple wrote:
My worth is what I am worth to God, and that is a marvellous great deal, for Christ died for me.
William Temple
In good times and in bad times, when the LORD gives and when He takes away, hope in God. Then, no matter what happens to your health, wealth and family, you belong to the One Who gave up His Son for you so that you have abundant life with God both now and after you die.
That’s true wealth. It can never lose its value, and neither can you! As the hymn says:
My worth is not in what I own
Not in the strength of flesh and bone
But in the costly wounds of love
At the crossMy worth is not in skill or name
In win or lose, in pride or shame
But in the blood of Christ that flowed
At the crossI rejoice in my Redeemer
Words and Music: Keith and Kristyn Getty, Graham Kendrick - © 2014 Getty Music Publishing
Greatest Treasure,
Wellspring of my soul
I will trust in Him, no other.
My soul is satisfied in Him alone.