Challenge 44. Blog 32

Fantasies of Grandeur

In July of my twelfth summer, my best friend, Marty, and I happened upon a kidnapping scene in the barn, deep in the back of her family’s farm. Two men had barricaded themselves in one of the cattle stalls, holding hostage two parents and two kids of unknown identity. Scared but trying to be courageous, I distracted the kidnappers while Marty circled around the back. A shootout ensued, during which the kidnappers shot both of us in the arm. But even as her arm bled, Marty cared for an injured child while one of the kidnappers shot at her from behind a hay bale in the loft. The other kidnapper didn’t have a gun, so I cornered him near a feed trough, where eventually disabled him with a well-placed karate chop to the neck. The other kidnapper climbed down from the hayloft and tried to tie Marty up, but she dispatched him with the same karate chop.

Marty hunting criminals

Yes, I’ve just regaled you with a heroic fantasy of my childhood pretend-time with my best friend!

When I was a kid, my first heroes were the brave police officers, paramedics, and doctors of the popular TV shows, Dragnet, Adam 12, and Emergency. My best friend, Marty, totally got it. When I stayed the weekend on her family’s farm, I filled my overnight case with the toy tools of our trades: a cap gun and holster, homemade police badge emblazoned with Sergeant Joe Friday’s number 714, fingerprint kit containing dusting powder made of wheat flour, and a toy medical kit with stethoscope and thermometer.

Marty and I dreamed of becoming police officers, paramedics, or emergency-room doctors, heroically saving people from danger and disease. Today, Marty actually does work as a 911 dispatcher while serving as mayor of our hometown! Sadly, severe near-sightedness eventually dashed my dream of becoming a cop—and yeah, it was a good thing, because I would not have been a good one!

Marty and I loved playing heroes because then we felt special, important, and valuable. But of course, the real world of adulthood beats up on those convictions. Nevertheless, even in adulthood, I persisted in fantasies of grandeur.

From childhood through college, God did indeed bless me with parents and teachers who believed in me, encouraged me, and helped me to explore and grow. I excelled in school—graduating first in my class in both high school and college. I certainly thought I was something special, and that I could do just about anything I wanted to do. In high school, I won the regional science fair competition, and my future in science looked bright. I dreamed of sailing brilliantly through a Ph.D. in chemistry and doing great things for the world as a medical researcher. Who knows, I might even discover the cure for cancer!

But in graduate school, my research director continually chastised me because common laboratory quandaries repeatedly stymied me. After one particularly scathing review, I stumbled out of his office in a daze, numb and growing more light-headed by the second. Just as I reached the threshold of my own lab, a black curtain obscured my vision. Heart racing and head reeling, and all but blinded, my nose popped as I stumbled blindly into the wall and then toppled to the floor. I didn’t lose consciousness, but my body trembled with shock and shame during the ten minutes it took me to be able to walk straight again.

Fortunately, no one witnessed my almost-faint. But you get the point. My dreams were dashed for the first time in my young life. And here’s how I interpreted that climax to a less-than-stellar start in the work of research: I wasn’t as special as I thought. Not to the world of medicine as a researcher. Maybe not even to God. Now what was I going to do

Fast forward almost a quarter-century. I had indeed finished my Ph.D. in chemistry. After a long transition from teaching chemistry at the college level, to becoming a pastor at a large church in Pittsburgh, I finally felt like I was special to God again, important and valuable to Him. But after another five years, not so much. My job changed, work and life got way out of balance, and my health deteriorated to the point that I resigned. This time, I truly felt like I had failed and God had set me on the shelf. Yes, Jesus had died for my sins, and He loved me, but no more and no differently than any of the other 7.9 billion people on the planet. I wasn’t really special to him after all.

The Lie That Most Hinders Life and Calling

The lie that most hinders Christian life and calling is this: “I’m nothing special to God.” After all, there are 7.9 billion people in the world. Why should God think I’m anything special? Wouldn’t it even be prideful or even delusional to think so?

Yes, God sent His Son to save us, and that means that we have the promise of eternal life with Him in heaven. It also means that He gives us joy while we’re still on this planet, and He blesses us in so many ways because of His love and grace. He even gives us the awesome opportunity to receive and fulfill His calling in our lives, so that we make a difference for Him in uniquely personal ways.

And yes, we can even point to times in our lives when God bowled us over with His answers to prayer, His powerful presence, His clear guidance, and even His uniquely personal signs to us exactly at the times that we needed them.

But do we believe that we are uniquely special to God? Or do we believe that He just loves all people in general, but not in the way that good earthly parents uniquely love and value each of their children? Do we really believe we are indeed special to God—not because of what we do, but because of who we are?

Victor is a 24-year-old assistant pastor, gifted in preaching and youthful wisdom. He loves his Christian calling, and many church people tell Victor that he is unusually gifted and wise for someone his age. Humbled and feeling incredibly blessed, he wants to be a lead pastor someday. He prays for God to speak through them so that many people are saved—which is already happening—and he would love to plant many new churches during his lifetime, so that many people in his region, and even worldwide, would come to know and grow in Christ through him.

Victor does indeed believe he is special to God, because He sees God working in powerful ways through him.

Laura has always wanted to discover her uniquely created purpose in God’s Kingdom. But at age 55, she’s almost given up on that dream. Early in life, she stayed home to raise her children, serving at the church in various effective but not-quite-fulfilling roles. After the children left home, she completed her teaching degree, only to discover after a few years that was not as rewarding as she thought it would be. Then she started teaching piano, but that was not fulfilling either. She’s never really been sure God has called her to anything, even though she’s always yearned for that. So, maybe God doesn’t have a specific purpose for her at all. And that makes her very sad.

Laura does not believe that God thinks she is anything special.

Victor’s and Laura’s stories illustrate the common belief that, if we believe we are special—and that’s a big if—we tend to think it’s because of what we do, not because of who we are. Therefore, like Laura, if we don’t think God does awesome things through us, we don’t think we’re special to God. Or, as Victor will eventually experience in the future, if God did awesome things through us in the past, but that’s not happening anymore and we don’t think it will ever happen again, we despair that we’ve lost our special status in God’s eyes.

You Are—And Always Will Be—Uniquely Special to God

Every single one of us is uniquely loved, valued, and special to God, every second of every day. God doesn’t just love us in a general way—like God loves the whole world—but God loves each of us in the special way that the best earthly parents love each of their children. Earthly parents cannot specifically know and love 7.9 billion children in individually unique ways. Earthly parents do not have the ability to be with each of those 7.9 billion children every minute of every day, paying close attention, walking constantly alongside, guiding, laughing, and sharing every joy and concern. But our great God can and does do that! 

No other Bible passage more eloquently and powerfully affirms God’s uniquely personal love for each of us than Psalm 139. This Psalm of David—whom God certainly loved in specifically personal ways—declares God’s incredibly specific knowledge and love for each of us:

• O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. (Psalm 139:1-6)

Furthermore, God promises always to be right there with us during all of our days—good and bad—and to bring us his hope and light in powerfully personal ways even through our darkest nights:

• Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. (Psalm 139:7-12)

God even knew us intimately before He formed us in our mothers’ wombs, and even then He loved us:

• For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. (Psalm 139:13-16)

And here’s something you might never have noticed before, that even God’s thoughts about you are precious—and so numerous that they can’t even be counted:

• How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me! (Psalm 139:17-18)

And finally, God created each one of us as His unique masterpiece. He doesn’t just reign over humanity in general, but He creates each of us for a uniquely personal and ultimately fulfilling relationship with Him:

• We are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Ephesians 2:10)

What Difference Does It Make?

What difference does it make in your Christian life and calling whether you believe that you’re special to God?

What difference does it make whether children know they’re each uniquely special to their parents? Children who know they’re the apples of their parents’ eyes, run eagerly to their parents, soaking up their parents’ love and encouragement. These children rebound more quickly after failing or sinning, because they know their parents will love them no matter what. And therefore, they flourish with humble confidence, boldly venturing out and grow resilience.

So also, when we know that we’re special to God in those same ways, we’ll run joyfully and eagerly into His arms, drinking deeply of His encouragement and love. We’ll recover more quickly from failure and sin, because we know God loves us no matter what, because we are His children, not because of how we perform or what we can do for Him. We can then march forward in joy and fruitfulness, free in the bedrock assurance of God’s love, help, and grace. We live joyfully and freely because God is truly more important to us than His calling on our lives. Our relationship with Him is more important than what we can do for Him.

How to Believe You are Special to God

How can we really get it? How can we be absolutely sure, deep in our hearts, that God really does love and value each of us so specifically and uniquely that our relationship with Him is as unique and solid as with the best of earthly parents—and even more so?

In my own experience, the best way to do that is to start inviting God to have back-and-forth conversations with you. When you start hearing God say transformationally encouraging things to you—things you know you would not have thought of yourself—you’ll be convinced that you are indeed uniquely special to Him.

Please don't assume that it's impossible to talk back and forth with God. What if it's the next level of your relationship with God, but you miss it because you're not willing to try it? Some of the Old Order Amish districts don't believe that it's possible even to know you are saved, and that personal prayer is prideful for anyone other than a bishop or preacher. Many other Christian churches, while not as distanced from God as that, don't actively encourage their people to develop a closely personal relationship with God. 

The first time I read a book about developing a normal, back-and-forth, conversational relationship with God, I balked. What if I unintentionally attributed to God things He did not say—putting words in God's mouth, so to speak. But after reading the theological background written by a reputable Christian leader, I tried it and experienced transformation, hearing things from God that I knew I did not make up because I would never have thought them myself. 

That was when I started believing I really am special to God, because He touched my heart. As a result, that constantly vague sense of anxiety that I'll never measure up went away. I've discovered it's not about measuring up. It's about relationship. And when the relationship is good, I'm confident in my calling, even when I don't feel like I have one, because I know I'm special to God regardless of what I accomplish or don't accomplish.

To learn more about how to grow in your conversational relationship with God, so that you indeed become convinced of how special you are to Him, check out the links below:

• This book at Amazon is the best book I’ve found for learning how to have transformational conversations with God: Questions for Jesus
• Find out how I started believing I’m special to God: How to Pray When You Don’t Feel Like Praying
• See examples of being uniquely loved and valued by God: God Approves of You

Get Started!

God wants to work a miracle in your heart. Start talking with God personally and uniquely, using the questions and drop-down readings of Psalm 139:1-18 below.

Have a uniquely personal conversation with God about Psalm 139:10-18, as prompted in the sections below. After you ask God each question, if you think you hear condemnation, that is not God, because Romans 8:1 says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. But if you think you hear something that sounds like the God of the Bible, it probably is! Reply back to Him, telling Him what you think, and asking Him further questions. He wants to have that kind of uniquely personal and special relationship with you!

• God, I tend to think you focus on what’s not right about me. But when you look at me, what do you see that is good?
• God, show me how you really do value me personally, uniquely, just for who I am. What do you want to say to me about that?

• God, how have you been with me always, even during certain dark times in my past when I felt like you weren’t there or that you didn’t care?
• How do you uniquely want to be with me, talk with me, and help me during my current dark time?

• God, what did you feel as you formed me in my mother’s womb? How did you love me even then?
• God, how do you want to be my Father, in ways that I currently can’t see?

• God, this Psalm says that your thoughts about me are precious, and so numerous that they cannot be counted. That blows my mind! Would you tell me some of your precious thoughts and feelings about me?
• God, please tell me some of the ways that you are with me and for me every day.

• God, how am I your uniquely created, dearly loved masterpiece?
• What else do you want to say to me today?

Community

• Please post your comments, questions, encouragement, etc., below.
• Below, please let me know what topics you'd like for me to write about in future blogs.
• Would you please share this blog on social media or via email using the share buttons at the side or bottom of your screen?