I'm going to read a portion of an obituary,
an obituary of a 19 year old young man
who experienced a lot of trauma through his entire life,
and who died by suicide a couple of years ago.
Here's the portion of that obituary.
It says, "He was a beautiful boy who could outrun us all
but could not escape the trauma he experienced.
A young man with a wide easy smile
that masked the pain he carried into every space.
He spent much of his time anxious and depressed,
angry and exhausted.
His mental health diagnosis ranged
depending on the doctor and the day.
His symptoms and behaviors
shifted with age and circumstance,
but what did not change was his belief
that there was something so fundamentally wrong
that he was unworthy
of goodness, peace, joy, family, and love."
And the word that jumped out of me in that section
was the word unworthy.
He felt he was unworthy.
And that's not an uncommon feeling.
We all feel unworthy at different points in our lives,
unworthy of all those same things,
unworthy of the best things we can give one another,
and unworthy of the best things we can receive from God.
It's been that way from the beginning,
Adam and Eve felt entirely unworthy
when God promised a savior
who would come and save them from their sins.
The Apostle Paul felt entirely unworthy
when Jesus stopped him on the road to Damascus one day
when he was still Saul,
and introduced himself as the Jesus
that you've been persecuting Saul.
And then Jesus made him
into the greatest missionary the world has ever seen.
The Apostle Peter felt unworthy
when Jesus, after He had risen from the dead, reminded Peter
that you denied me three times,
but then still entrusted him
with the most valuable part of His entire kingdom,
His own flock, His own sheep.
King David felt very unworthy after his sin,
after his sin with Bathsheba.
In fact, he wrote down exactly how he felt in Psalm 32.
He said,
That's David expressing his guilt,
that's David expressing his unworthiness.
But those words are also something else.
Keeping silent, bones wasting away, groaning all day long,
God's hand was heavy on him, strength was sapped,
you know who else that describes?
It describes Jesus
hanging on a cross,
knowing all the ways that we are all unworthy
of God's greatest love,
and yet He chose to give it to us anyway.
And because of that,
we get to believe what we read in 1 John chapter three,
which says,
And if that's what we are, do you know what that makes us?
In Christ worthy of God's greatest care
and greatest attention, every day of your life.
In Christ, you are worthy.
You know what word I really like?
Has, what great love the Father has lavished on us.
He already has.
He's already considered us in Christ worthy
of His greatest love.
Are there are different words or phrases or verses in the Bible
that remind you of that great love,
things that are especially meaningful to you?
Why don't you share them with the group
so that we can find a mutual encouragement from one another
and from the many ways God has touched each of our lives
through His word.