Your Worth Is Infinite

On a tour of the Denver Mint, Heather and her daughters learned that it costs the U.S. Federal Reserve 14.3 cents to make a $100 bill. The idea that a piece of paper that is technically only worth 14.3 cents has a value of $100 was a hard one for her kids to understand. So, to help her explain, she turned to every home school mom’s best friend . . . google. Time.com sums it up like this: “Why does our money even have value? Because the government says it does.” This is an abstract idea, but that doesn’t make it any less true. The technical value of a $100 bill might be only 14.3 cents, but the MAKER and the BACKER of the bill say it’s worth $100 and so it is worth $100.

One of my favorite Christmas songs is O Holy Night. In the song, there is a line that says:

Long lay the world, in sin and error pining

     Till He appeared…and the soul…felt…it’s worth.

Many of us have suffered emotional and physical abuse. One of the tools abusers use to keep us obeying them is invalidation. In other words, they make us feel like we are worthless unless we do what they want. Even if we have not been abused, society tells us that our worth is found in our career, our bank balance, the size of our house, the size of our pants, the cleanliness of our house and/or the sweet and obedient nature of our children. So, we spin our wheels and exhaust ourselves trying to prove our worth.

But even as we achieve more and more, our worth never seems to change in the eyes of the culture. Tweet This

The Bible tells us our worth is not something we can earn. We are made in the image of God and we are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. Because of this, we have worth that no one can take from us. Jesus came and sacrificed his life on the cross because He saw our intrinsic worth. Because of His sacrifice, we can feel our worth. As the lyrics go: “He appeared. And the soul felt it’s worth.”

Even though the actual value of a $100 bill is 14.3 cents, we accept the worth proclaimed by the MAKER of the bill. We don’t take a poll, asking those around us what they think it’s worth . . . we trust that the maker of the bill knows it’s true worth. When we are considering OUR worth, it still doesn’t make sense to collect any opinions from outside. Like our currency, our true worth is assigned by our MAKER. Billy Graham writes: “Jesus said that your soul is worth more than the rest of the world put together. In Mark 8:36, He asked,

‘What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?’

It is impossible for us to grasp what is meant by ‘the whole world.’ For this is not only the physical world or the geographical world. It includes the business world, the scientific world, the intellectual world. Jesus said that the soul is worth more than all the world.”