Why You Matter.

Why You Matter
by Suzanna McDowell

(Letter to the Lost)

You matter.

You matter because there is a case pending against you that all of history hinges on. You, God’s masterpiece, knit together out of a secret DNA code that only He could write and science is still beginning to try to decipher. Too much beauty is contained in that code to describe. A thousand pictures could not capture how it makes those who love you feel when you laugh. Too much wisdom is written in those helices for our most brilliant minds to comprehend. Like the wisdom that teaches the feet of the illiterate to balance their weight perfectly on symmetrical legs. Too much joy is written into those strands to be expressed; even your parents didn’t come close on the day of your birth. The only appropriate celebration for your grandeur is of heavenly proportions…but that does hang in the balance.

Because your DNA was hijacked and your beauty marred and the wisdom despised and the joy stifled. Because you and I have participated in the greatest treachery of all time. The One who designed, crafted, and rejoiced over you for Love has been denied His heart’s desire: full fellowship with you. Your soul’s DNA no longer reads, “Lover of God with all heart, soul, mind and strength.” It’s been changed to read, “Seeker of self for pleasure, glorification, identity, and source.” The design is so grossly perverted that you have to be told…TO BE TOLD IN WORDS…to love the most beautiful, perfect Lover conceivable. To love Love Himself. You and I, we must be commanded to love Love (for which we were made). To see Light (for which our eyes were formed). To do Justice (which is HIs only possible course). To cherish Mercy, by which we continue to breathe from moment to moment.

So because He must, He commands it. And still, after the command, written long form in 66 books over hundreds of years, shouted by prophets who were thrown in jail and sawn in half, and then embodied in His own Son made flesh, still after all…still the Word is neglected and disbelieved, the prophets despised, and the Love, Light, the Son of God, made into a pendant. Crucified by religion daily, His righteousness undesired. And here you are in the now of history, with thousands of years of defiance of men before you and the return of the King to come, and everything is hinging on how you will respond.

You matter. The case against you is unchangeable, insurmountable, terrifying. You were made for greatness, one way or the other. And you have been pursued in the sea of humanity for rescue by the Son of Man and the Son of God. One and the same, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Have you heard His name? Then you have been pursued eternally and offered the world’s only hope. Have you seen His book? Then He has cried out to you in a loud voice. Have you been told of His death? Then you have been confronted with the most astounding injustice the greatest imagination could ever conceive of, the greatest story ever told, and the greatest act of Love any man or spirit could attempt. The immortal God dying slowly at the hands of the rebels, the underlings, the traitors. The created killing Creator. The Omnipotent nailed up by weaklings. Voluntarily.

And YOU are the one at the center of the story. The ONE for whom Christ died. You matter. You matter. You could not matter more. There is no more certain guarantee of your worth than this, Jesus Christ hanging on the cross outside the camp, bloody beyond recognition. You matter. If there is one question on which you dare not waste another moment it is the question of whether you are loved and important. Do you see Him there on the Cross? You matter.

No, the question is not whether you are loved, or whether you are significant. You must disbelieve the Cross and reject history to remain asking what has been so resoundingly answered for all time. No, the question is if you esteem Him. Whether you see Him as worthwhile and significant. Him, the King of Glory. All Creation is groaning for His return, but He holds off, offering you another day and another breath to engage all the angels of heaven in celebration. Will you repent? Will you turn? Will you bow and surrender to love, or defy not only the Righteous Judge, but your own Advocate and Redeemer, in the end standing only in agreement with your accuser and abuser, who calls you worthless and tutors you how to be so? For a few moments the world will stand with you as you stand with them, but it is a vapor. And so you will face the One before whose face all of heaven and earth flees away on your own. And He will open the Lamb’s Book of Life, to see if your name is in it.

All the universities in the world, temples of idolatry, and drunken stupors of men will never change the eternal truth: There’s a book. He died to put your name in it. You matter. Will you believe, confess, and repent? He will pay all debts, allowing you to die and be reborn. To be a new creation, to have new life, eternal life in full fellowship with Him. He will save you not only from the eternal penalty of sin, but from the life of slavery to sin you now live. Sin will no longer be your master; if only you will submit to Him, the kindest and most preferred of all Masters, Lord of all! Bowing to His Lordship will make you free!

When you do, friend and brother, finally the celebration of your worth is released in the heavenlies, all the angels rejoicing at the redemption of the Precious Prodigal. What joy, on earth and in heaven, the Father’s will done. Restored relationship with you. You matter.

8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): 9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Rom. 10:8-10

And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ 10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Luke 15:9-10

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[a] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Cor. 5:18-21

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I hope this encouraged you as much as it did me.
Lift your heads! Continue to pursue the One who sought you first!
He is worth it all.