Do you believe you are fearfully and wonderfully made? A call to embrace our value as established by the LORD, as we explore the concepts of our intrinsic worth and the humanity of the unborn. 

<p>Do you believe you are fearfully and wonderfully made? A call to embrace our value as established by the LORD, as we explore the concepts of our intrinsic worth and the humanity of the unborn. </p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

Antionette Duck

Made in His Image

In Jeremiah, there's a verse, I'm sure you're all very familiar with it, where the Lord says, you shall seek me and find me when you search for me with all of your heart.

I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity.

For us, the focus of our ministry is this idea of taking captive those thoughts and ideas that have exalted themselves above and against the knowledge of God, according to 2 Corinthians 10, 4, and 5.

There are ideas, there are mindsets, there are thought processes that we are held captive by that are desperate to be brought into obedience and captivity to the Lord.

A person isn't born thinking I'm going to have an abortion.

There are thoughts, there are ideas that are compromises that happen in our thinking just like with anything else that grieves the Lord's heart.

There's a breakdown in what was intended and what we do.

And so it's those deceptions, those compromises in our thinking, they have taken us captive.

And the Lord is saying, I've come to set you free.

That's the focus, 1 of them, of this ministry, to take captive those ideas that have exalted themselves against the knowledge of God so that people can walk in the freedom that he's intended us to walk in.

So I'm going to begin with this question.

When was the last time that you praised the Lord because you are fearfully and wonderfully made?

When we talk about abortion and the value of human life, some tend to focus on the unborn and the rightness or wrongness of abortion.

And some tend to focus on the woman in crisis and her circumstances.

This issue, it's not just about the unborn and it's not just about the woman in crisis.

This issue is about both, not just about circumstance and not just about the rightness and wrongness of this issue.

This issue is about reawakening us to the value that we possess because we were made in the image of the Lord.

We have forgotten what it means to be made in the image of the Lord.

I challenge you as we go through the seminars today, as you go out into the rest of your week, the rest of your month, the rest of your year, read the Bible.

Read this book through the lens of a God who's declaring your value because from cover to cover that is what He's doing.

Our value was established, undeniably established at creation, and our value was entrenched forevermore.

If you imagine a wall of granite and the Lord taking a chisel and literally entrenching it, that's what happened to your value at the cross, forevermore, written into the canvas of eternity.

In Isaiah 49.1, it says, the Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named me.

Diane actually came across a couple of these, well the ones that I'm using.

That was you at your very first moments, those cells.

And right then at that moment, you possessed everything genetically speaking that you possess right now sitting here today, everything, the Lord called you from the womb.

In Ephesians 2.10, we're told that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, Jesus Christ to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.

There is a work, a purpose, a destiny to your life that he prepared specifically for you to do.

In Genesis 127, it says, God created man in his own image.

And in John 1621 for joy that a human being has been born into the world.

The first part of that verse says a woman when she's going through childbirth, she's experiencing all of this anguish and then her child is born and there's all of this joy because a human being has been born into the world.

Isn't it significant that the scripture specifically says a human being has been born into the world?

Not a potential life, not some other kind of organism.

A human being is in the womb and it's a human being that is born into the world.

White from Patriarchs and Prophets and it says that men are so intent on excluding God from the sovereignty of the universe that they degrade man and defraud him of the dignity of his origin.

When the Lord came to crown his glorious work, he did not fail to create a being worthy of the hand that gave him life.

When the Lord came to crown his glorious work, He created a being that was worthy of the hand that gave him life.

There is a glory, a reflected glory, but a glory to your existence.

There's a value that you possess that is absolutely magnificent.

Our value was established unchangeably at creation, and we see then that it was fortified, entrenched at the cross forevermore.

God literally gave his own life to buy you back.

Literally gave his own life to buy you back.

Have you ever read John 3, 16 through the lens of value?

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

There's a tendency, I think, for believers to read the Scriptures for salvation but somehow to miss the declaration of love that's contained there, the declaration of value, your value that's contained there.

In Isaiah 50, 6 through 7, it says, I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who plucked out the beard.

I did not hide my face from shame and spitting, for the Lord God will help me.

Therefore, I have set my face like a flint.

He stretched out his arms and he refused to come down just for you and we're told if you had been the only 1, he still would have done the same.

The infinite became finite, the boundless became bound, just for you.

Have we grown up in church too much that we have missed the glory of what he's done, of the value that he declared when he did it.

The Lord didn't come to die for flora and fauna.

He didn't come to die for plants and animals.

In Hebrews 12, 2 it tells us for the joy that was set before him, the Lord endured the cross, despising the shame.

Now we know he came to earth out of love for his Father, out of zeal for his glory, and out of love for broken humanity.

Do you know what the Lord's joy was when he was on the cross?

He literally could see down through the endless ages and he saw you.

He foresaw your shame, your pain, and your need.

He saw all of it and he said I'm stretching out my arms and I'm not coming down just for you.

But then he anticipated not just your brokenness and your need, he anticipated your reconciliation and your redemption to him.

And no matter what brought you here today, no matter what has preceded your life, no matter what what messages the world has fed you, the enemy has fed you, your family, your friends, your significant others, no matter what you've heard, this is the truth about you.

You are loved beyond your wildest imagination.

The cross underscored our value for all of eternity.

No matter what you do, no matter what you've done, the value the Lord places on you will never change.

And no matter what you do and no matter what you've done, the Lord will never, not ever love you less.

There will be people who are eternally lost forever.

But the Lord's love for us, it doesn't change.

He will never change his mind about the value he's placed on your life.

The creation, it's not just a nice story.

And the cross is not just an abstract idea.

The Lord knew at creation that the cross would be required of him.

Think of this, consider it, accept it, dare to believe that it's true.

When he spoke the world into existence, when he flung out the heavens, the Lord knew that we would betray him.

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Made in His Image

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