At low points in our lives, we may be tempted to think we don’t really matter to God. The struggles of earthly life can sometimes overwhelm us, eclipsing our fellowship with a heavenly Father who feels so far away. As we study the overwhelming evidence of His infinite care, we’ll discover that God never leaves or forsakes us, and we’ll find security in our true worth as a beloved child of the King. For more messages from Charles Stanley, including this week’s broadcast, go to www.intouch.org/watch
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Dr. Charles Stanley: At a
very low time in my life when
I’d been in the hospital twice
in just a few months, I walked
out on my glassed-in porch and
sat down and thought I would
just take it easy and relax
a little bit and maybe read
something, and so when I did,
I noticed on the chair in front
of me there was a blanket, and
I had just tossed it over there,
but I didn’t see this.
And when I looked at it a second
time, I saw this inscription
that some wonderful lady had
inscribed in this blanket.
It read, “Your messages have
helped me realize that my life
matters to God.”
When I read that, I thought,
Lord, I don’t know what she had
in mind, but that’s exactly
what I needed to hear.
My life matters to God.
And that’s the title of this
message because it is a message
that God wants
all of us to hear.
Our life matters to Him.
You may not feel like you
matter, you may be able to give
lots of evidence that the way
you are treated and the things
that have happened to you and
the misfortune you have
experienced, that certainly,
your life couldn’t
matter to God.
But I want to tell you,
yes, it does.
Difficulty, hardship, pain, and
suffering does not mean that
your life doesn’t matter to God.
Some of the greatest saints that
I’ve ever met, people who have
written the greatest books have
been people who’ve gone through
difficulty, hardship, pain, and
suffering beyond anything you
and I could ever know and never
lost their faith, but realized
that God still loved them and
He cared for ’em.
When I think about that and I
think about this passage of
Scripture that I want us to look
at, it states just that.
Our life matters to God.
You may be able to look at your
life this morning, today, and
say, “Well, I’ve got lots of
evidence that my life doesn’t
matter to God because, if it
did, here’s what would happen,”
and we would choose some
good things in life.
And we would choose maybe more
money, maybe a better marriage,
something about your children or
what you own or where your plans
would lead you.
You may think of a lot of
things, but no matter what the
circumstances are, your life
matters to God.
And “matters” means He’s
concerned about you.
He cares about you.
He’s thinking about you.
And so, when we think about
that, what does it mean that our
life matters to God?
It means all of that, that
He knows us personally
and intimately.
He knows all of our weaknesses.
He knows all of our frailties.
He knows all about our sins.
He knows everything there is to
know about us, and we still
matter to God.
Imagine that.
No matter what you and I face in
life, our Heavenly Father loves
us, cares for us.
We matter to Him.
And no matter what happens, what
He allows us to go through, the
pain we may suffer, He–we
still matter to Him.
That means He’s still caring,
still listening, still loving,
and all of His promises
are still intact.
That is, every promise He’s
made, still there.
And one of those promises, I
will never–underline it, put it
in parentheses and quotation
marks, “I will never leave you
nor forsake you.”
What an awesome, awesome promise
of All Mighty God.
So, that’s what I want us to
talk about, that our life
matters to God.
And I want you to turn, if you
will, to First John,
chapter three.
This is a late time in John’s
life, in those latter years, he
could be anywhere from eighty to
ninety, or whatever it might be.
And he’s written this Epistle to
believers, and I’m going to read
three verses that I want us
to look at for a moment.
The third chapter and
the first verse.
Now, listen to this, “See how
great a love,” not just love,
how great a love, “the Father
has bestowed on us,” that is,
He’s gifted us, He’s expressed
that love, He’s shown that love,
demonstrated that love.
“How great a love the Father
has bestowed on us.”
What makes it great?
“That we would be called
children of God.”
Think about that.
In God’s mind, that’s
something great.
“That we would be called the
children of God, and such
we are.
For this reason the world
doesn’t know us, because it
didn’t know Him.”
And then he says, “Beloved,
now,” not one day later, not in
the future, “now we are
children of God.”
And, I love this, “And it has
not yet appeared what
we will be.”
That is, we know very little
about the awesome future that
God has provided for us.
“We know,” how many times he
says that, “We know that when He
appears, we will be like Him,
because we will see Him just
as He is.”
Here’s an Apostle of the Lord
Jesus Christ speaking with
assurance and authority, having
listened to the Lord Jesus
Christ personally, whether it
was on the boat at sea, or was
up in a mountain somewhere or
just sitting around the fire
talking and listening to Jesus,
“We know we will be like Him,
because we will see Him
just as He is.
And everyone who has this hope
fixed on Him purifies himself,
just as He is pure.”
That is simply this, when you
trust the Lord Jesus Christ as
your Savior, you do so because
you sense that you’ve been
separated from Him.
And you sense also the need
to be one with Him.
And so, what happens?
You trust Him as your Savior
because of what He did
at the cross.
And as a result of that
relationship, it–things change.
You can’t be a child of God and
everything be the same
as it used to be.
You may act sometimes unlike you
ought to be acting, but that
relationship, watch this, that
relationship is not temporary.
It’s not conditional.
It is absolutely permanent.
You are saved once and for all
by the grace of God.
Now, watch this, why has God
made salvation the result of
a fixed relationship?
A decision?
Simply because you and
I matter to Him.
And when you trusted Christ as
your Savior, the Holy Spirit
came into your life to do what?
To absolutely assure you that
for all eternity, you will
belong to God.
You say, “Suppose I sin?
He’s prepared for that.
He has a very strong hand of
discipline, not to destroy, not
to hurt, not to harm, but to
bring us back into the fold.
When God allows us to go through
difficulties and trials and
heartaches and burdens,
what is He doing?
He’s doing it for one of several
reasons, one of which is, what?
To remind us that we
belong to Him.
We’re not acting out who we are.
And to turn our mind and heart
toward Him to change our
thinking about a godly life.
“Everyone who has this hope
fixed of Him purifies himself,
just as He is pure.”
That is, if I’m a child of God,
I’m going to be sensitive to the
way I’m living.
I’m going to be sensitive to
my relationship to Him.
I’m going to be sensitive
to the Word of God.
I want to read the Word of God.
I want to pray.
I want to be obedient to God.
I want to find out what God will
do in my life because I know my
life matters to God.
Think about this, watch this,
you listening?
Say amen.
You may not matter to anybody
else in the billions of people
in this world, but you
matter to God.
And if you’ll think about it,
what difference does it make
that nobody cares for you if you
know that God–that you
matter to God.
That means He knows you.
He’s concerned about you.
He loves you.
He’s going to provide for you,
protect you, watch over you,
care for you.
He’s going to ultimately fulfill
His will for your life.
Why?
Because you matter to God.
Now, with that in mind, I want
us to look at this passage and
think of terms of the evidence
of how God has so worked in our
life that we matter to Him.
And the first evidence is the
great love He has
bestowed upon us.
Think about this, why
did you get saved?
You said, “Well, I went and I
heard this powerful preacher one
day preaching so that it
made me get saved.”
No, that’s not it.
You got saved because you heard
the Truth of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ and God reached down into
your life through His Word,
spoke to your mind and your
heart, your emotions, your whole
being and made you realize that
you were living a life far less,
far less, way down lower than
what He had in mind for you.
And you trusted the Lord Jesus
Christ as your Savior as a
result of hearing His Word, the
conviction of the Holy Spirit to
help you to understand that God
loved you and forgives you,
He transformed your life.
So, it was your salvation.
The second thing that resolved
in all of this is that your
sanctification.
That is, the life, the godly
life that God has provided for
every single one of us, once you
trusted Jesus Christ as your
Savior, the Spirit of God sealed
you as a child of God, came to
indwell us while God sits upon
His throne in the heavens.
His Holy Spirit sits upon the
throne of our heart, guiding us,
leading us, empowering us,
endeavoring to work in our life
the life that represented and
looked something like Jesus.
And so, that’s what
He’s provided.
That is, we matter so much that,
first of all, He saved us.
You think about this, He
didn’t have to save you.
You could’ve just lived your
life without Him,
many people do.
And you could’ve just sort of
managed, but there would come
a time when the Bible says it’s
appointed unto man once to die
and after this, the judgment.
But by His grace and love and
mercy, He sanctified you, set
you apart as unto Him to live
His life in and through you.
The third thing He did was what?
He began to meet your needs.
As a result of being a child of
God, He said He will supply all
of our needs, watch this,
according to His riches
in glory.
Not according to our talents,
ability, and skill and
all the rest.
He’s promised to meet
every need that we have.
Why?
Watch this, because every single
point in this message is because
we matter to Him.
You may not matter
to anybody else.
And over the years, I’ve heard
wives say, “I don’t matter to
my husband anymore.
He used to love me, provide for
me, bring me beautiful things,
he used to do all these things,
but I don’t matter anymore.”
Nothing any woman wants to feel
could be worse than if she loves
her husband to feel she
no longer matters.
And the same thing is true
as–not only of parents
and children.
I don’t matter anymore.
I’ve heard kids say that, I
don’t matter to my dad or
I don’t matter to my mom.
You know, I might as well be
living with somebody else.
Think about this, the fact that
you matter means there’s
a relationship.
There’s a love,
there’s a caring.
There’s a giving.
And that’s what God means.
He’s saying, listen, He saves
us, He sanctifies us, and then
what does He do?
He meets our needs.
“My God shall supply all your
needs, watch this, “according to
His riches in glory.”
Would you ever be able to
exhaust the riches of God?
No.
The only thing that blocks God’s
blessings to you is the fact
you’ve become careless in your
life, indifferent to God, living
in sin, or whatever it might be.
And then I think about the most
important thing here, our
salvation, our sanctification
our needs, and watch what He
did, it–watch at how awesome
God is, it was not enough for
Him to save us, that is, to have
an experience whereby we confess
our sin, repent of our sins,
surrender our life to Him.
Now, think about that
for a moment.
I think about in my own life, if
that’s all I had, that I trusted
Him as my Savior, then to live
the Christian life in this world
till one day I die and go to
heaven, I couldn’t do it.
Neither can you, neither can
you, whoever you are.
That’s why He said to His
Disciples, “Sit down, tarry ye
in the city of Jerusalem until I
send my spirit who will indwell
you and be upon you and
empower you to live out
the Christian life.”
As a result of God caring for us
and meeting our needs, He,
upon our salvation, sent the
Holy Spirit to indwell us.
Think–do you realize
how blessed you are?
You’re indwelt by, listen,
you’re indwelt by Holy God.
The Holy Spirit of God who said
to His Disciples, “You’re not
ready to go preach.
You are not ready to missionize
this world.
You won’t be ready till My
Spirit baptizes you, anoints you
and enables you and equips you
to be the person I’ve created
you to be.”
So, do we matter to God?
Look at this, why?
Because I, we look at it,
salvation, our sanctification,
meets our needs,
and the Holy Spirit.
God had demonstrated His
awesome caring for us, that
we do matter.
Now, think about this, God,
who’s the Sovereign of the
universe, could have said,
“Okay, I’m going to save those
who will trust Me and just
see what they do.”
Well, He knew what we’d do,
we’d just mess up.
We would fail time after time
after time.
That’s why He knew, watch this,
He not only had to reach down
and forgive our sins, He had to
come down Himself and indwell us
and enable us to live out the
live He’d provided for us.
Are we blessed of God
or are we not?
And so, think about this, our
life matters because He’s an
awesome God who loves us
with all of His heart.
The first evidence that our life
matters is all these things
He’s done for us.
Secondly, the second evidence is
that we’re called the children
of God.
Now, do I matter?
Sure, I do.
Think about how you feel
about your children.
You say to your friends,
“This is my son.
This is my daughter.”
You’re proud of them.
You–they matter to you.
Listen, when someone matters to
you, it’s going to affect your
relationship to them, the way
you speak of ’em, what you do
for ’em, how you
relate to them.
When you really are involved in
that person’s life, that they
matter to you, you’re going to
treat ’em a certain way.
And truth of that, for example,
you work somewhere and you see
the boss working in one person’s
life one way and somebody else
the other way.
And how many times have I heard
people say, “Well, I feel like
in my job, I don’t matter.”
And when somebody says, “I don’t
care,” you will never hear God
say to you, watch this, you’ll
never hear God say to you,
“I don’t care.”
That’s not in His terminology.
So, the fact that we matter to
God, we’re called His children,
all these promises and blessings
that we’ve talked about, our
name is written in the
Lamb’s Book of Life.
We belong to Him no matter
what happens.
It still matters to God what
goes on in our life.
The third evidence that our life
matters to God is, listen,
it has not yet appeared
as what it will be.
Look at our present society,
for example.
In my lifetime, it’s worse than
it has ever been.
And think about this for a
moment, how did we get this way?
I’ll tell you, see this Book?
I want you think about how much
time you spend in this Book in
any given day.
See this iPhone?
How much do we spend in that
versus the Word of God?
What a difference.
And so, what’s happened?
Our attention has been drawn
away from God.
And the more little inventions
we find ourselves inventing is
just another way to
draw us away from God.
Am I saying the phone’s
not important?
No.
Are computers important?
Yes.
But when you talk to anybody,
very few people will tell you,
I spend as much time reading the
Word of God for myself as I do
talking to my friends on the
phone about things that don’t
matter at all.
And then, look at all the rest,
think in terms of all the
drunkenness, sports, drugs,
immorality, ungodly counsel,
depression, suicides, shootings.
What’s happened to our society?
I’ll tell you what’s happened,
we own it, but we don’t read it.
We own it, but we
don’t live by it.
We are living in a society that
is totally unaware of who God is
and His Word is becoming less
and less important.
And the world’s providing more
and more things that we can
involve ourselves with that
bring us supposedly pleasure.
I don’t have to tell you about
our society, you know about it.
You know what’s happening, but
you will have to admit, it’s
drifting further and further and
further away from God when, and
we’re excusing it by saying
we are so busy.
There’s so much to do, so many
places to go, and so many things
I need.
It matters to God how much time
we spend with Him.
It matters to God how
we relate to Him.
It matters to God how
we treat other people.
It matters to God how we
think about other people.
It matters to God
what we give Him.
It matters to God every aspect
of our life, God is involved
in every area of our life.
And He’s not trying to cheat us
out of anything.
He wants the best for us.
But look at this, God knows that
the best for us is to follow the
teachings of His precious Word.
“Ask, and it shall be given to
you, seek, and you shall find,
knock, and it shall be
open to you.”
“My God shall supply all of your
needs according to His riches
in glory.”
He gives us His strength.
He helps us to be wise enough to
follow His laws and to follow
His will and purpose and plan
for our life.
And the Bible’s full of
Scriptures of promises of God.
Where have we gone wrong?
Little by little, the world
fills our minds with things that
we used to fill it
with the Word of God.
How many people do you know that
read the Bible every day?
I wonder how many people who go
to church on Sunday morning or
whenever they go who read the
Bible sometime during the week?
How much time do we spend
talking to our Heavenly Father
about our needs or the people we
love rather than complaining
about what they don’t have
and what we don’t have?
Think about this, when Almighty
God says, “You matter to Me,”
that’s God.
When God says, “You matter to
Me,” what more powerful word
of encouragement could
we hear than that?
You matter to Me.
I care about you.
I’m concerned about you.
I know all about you.
I want the best for you.
I love you.
My love for you is
not conditioned.
My love for you is
absolutely unconditional.
I’m looking forward to seeing
you when I call you home.
I’m looking for to be–you being
in all that I have provided for
you in Heaven.
Where is God in this mixed up,
confused, frustrated, very
affluent world that has lost
its sense of direction?
And then I want you to
notice something else.
And that is the fourth evidence
that our life matters to God is
that we’ll be like Him.
In other words, think
about this for a moment.
He says in First Corinthians,
chapter fifteen, in–is–you
know how long that chapter is
and how much God says about our
life and how much He says about
our future life and our
resurrection and all the rest.
Think about it.
The Scripture says, “But now
Christ has been raised from the
dead, the first fruits of
those who are asleep.”
And then he starts talking about
how God is going to work in our
life in the resurrection.
So, think about this.
You matter to God so much that
He not only has provided for
your life now, He’s provided for
your life hereafter, forever
and ever and ever.
We don’t have to worry about
life after death if we’ve
trusted Christ as our Savior.
Our life matters to Him.
In fact, if you’ll think about
it, there’s not a single aspect
of your life in which God has
not involved Himself for your
past, present, and future.
And the future is that we’ll
have a resurrection day.
One of these days, we’re going
to be with God forever and
ever and ever.
Because He cares for us.
Because it does matter to Him.
And when we look at the Word
of God, we talk about the
heavenly family.
We talk about the Word of God.
We talk about Heaven.
We talk about how Heaven’s
going to be.
We don’t know what Heaven
is going to be like.
We know what the Bible says as
best you could describe
something that is indescribable
in human words.
How do you describe what
Heaven’s going to be like?
We can’t describe it.
But we know that God’s given us
enough to give us hope in
the Lamb’s Book of Life.
Listen to this, evidence that
our life matters to God is
we’ll be like Him.
And when I think about that,
that’s hard to understand.
Hard to comprehend that we’re
going to be like Him, not look
like Him, but like Him
in our very being.
We will be eternally with Him.
We will think like Him,
we will love like Him.
In many ways, we’ll be like Him
that we can’t even describe.
And then, I think about in this
light: the fifth reason that our
life matters is that He desires
that you and I live a pure, holy
life by the power of the Holy
Spirit, bringing Him glory
for all eternity.
What’s His desire for us?
That we live a holy life.
How can I live a holy life?
Simply obey the Holy Spirit
with whom He indwelt you.
Think about this, God does not
require anything of us He’s
not provided.
He wants us to live a holy life,
so what does He do?
He indwells us with the Holy
Spirit, that we would know what
the truth is.
We’d realize He loves us.
He forgives us.
He cleanses us.
He wants the very best for us.
And He’s willing to provide
the best if we’re willing to
trust Him.
So, I’d simply ask you this: has
there ever been a time in your
life when you faced the reality
that you are worth something
to God?
That He cares about you?
That He loves you?
That He wants you to know
what is true, what is right,
what is best?
That you would understand that
one of these days, you’re going
to die and give an
account for Him?
Has it ever dawned on you that
if you ask Him to forgive you
of your sins, He will?
If you ask Him to give you
assurance that when you die,
you’ll go to Heaven, He will.
Has it ever occurred to you that
God is so–He’s so involved in
your life in every aspect, He
hasn’t forgotten anything?
Every aspect of your life, He’s
concerned about, willing
to forgive your sins, willing to
call you home one day, absent
from the body, not floundering
in the darkness everywhere,
absent from the body, present
with the Lord, that’s
the promise of God.
The next most important decision
you’ll ever make if you’re not
a Christian is the one you can
make right now, and that is to
surrender your life to Christ.
You say, “What does that mean?”
That means you confess that
you’re a sinner before Him, that
you cannot change yourself, that
when Jesus went to the cross,
He went to the cross to pay your
sin debt, and it is a debt, your
sin debt in full.
And if you ask Him to forgive
you on the basis of what He did
at the cross, paying your sin
debt, if you ask Him to forgive
you, He will forgive you.
He will write your name in the
Lamb’s Book of Life, never
to be erased.
And from this moment on, you can
rest assured, He will be living
within you to guide you, help
you, strengthen you, and give
you life at its very best.
Your life matters to God.
And Father, how grateful we are.
We don’t have to come up
with a new idea.
We simply need to respond to
this awesome truth of the
Gospel, that You came into this
world, laid down Your life on
the cross, shed Your blood for
our sins, accepted us as your
children, written our name in
the Lamb’s Book of Life, and
now we have security, real
security, the security to
forever be with You once
this life is over.
Thank you, thank you, thank you,
God, for such blessed assurance,
in Jesus’s name, amen.