Worth

My faith has made me strong enough and humble enough to trust in God whether He walks into my home or not!

Jesus healing the servant of a Centurion (Paolo Veronese)

There is so much Grace given to the humble.

In fact, the centurion, who was not a follower of Christ, not a Jewish man and not even a deeply religious man, is remembered through the millennia because he was a humble man.

He came to Christ and said, “I am not worthy” and because he was able to call himself unworthy, Christ was able to heal his servant…

“A centurion had a slave who was dear to him, who was sick and at the point of death. When he heard of Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and heal his slave...And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to him, saying to him, ‘Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed.’” (Luke 7:1-10).

If Christ were assessing us base don our worthiness we would never succeed.  We would not be worthy of Christ saving us.  We would not be worthy of forgiveness, and we certainly would not be worthy of salvation.

This lack of worth is what the just judge should be assessing us on.  And yet, Christ does not assess us on our worth or our merits, in the same way that I would not assess a little toddler on their merits.  I would not aim to help a small child base don how much they deserved my help through the good things that they had done.  Rather I would assess their need based on their need itself.  It would not be a measure of worth that I would use to assess the worth of a child.  Instead, I would assess them based on their need.

And is not God my Heavenly Father and a more perfect parent than I could ever be?  Is not God Himself capable of assessing my worth and merit based on my need – my true need?  Can I not trust in God to make such an assessment without mucking me about or mixing things up?  The centurion did not say to Christ, come and see how bad everything is before you make a decision because I feel that I must convince you that the situation is dire enough to merit your attention.  Instead, He said, I am not worthy.  Please help me.  My faith has made me strong enough and humble enough to trust in You whether You walk into my home or not!

And I have been thinking about this today.  For it seems that it is only in that moment of humility that I have any chance at all of welcoming Christ into my life and allowing Him to heal all that is broken there…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.