The Core of Who You Are
Bible Reading: Psalm 8:1-9
You made us only a little lower than God, and you crowned us with glory and honor. Psalm 8:5
Most of Morgan’s fourth-grade classmates walk by the mirror with barely a glance, but she always stops and stares. She pokes her hair. She adjusts her outfit. She twiddles and tweaks until she decides she looks just right. After all, she thinks, how good she looks is what makes her great.
Morgan might be the only one hogging space at the mirror, but she isn’t the only one who thinks he or she has found the secret to being special:
• Jason reminds everyone that he’s the biggest brain in the grade.
• Jennifer brags about how fast she can whiz a softball.
• Ricky can beat everyone at any video game ever invented.
• Todd lives in the biggest house in town.
As important as those things feel, none of them are what makes us matter. They are parts of who we are. But they’re just the outer layers.
Talk about it: If all those things aren’t all that important, what really makes you special?
That’s a question worth answering, because how you see yourself shapes whether or not you face daily life with confidence. It affects how happy you are, how you treat people, and how you respond to God. You need to know that you are much more than how you look or where you live or what you’re good at.
You might work so hard at perfecting your outer layers that you never discover what truly makes you who you are. As a Christian, the thing that makes you incredibly special is this: You’re a child of the King.
One girl said this about her friend: “She’s one of the prettiest girls in the world, but she thinks she’s grotesque. It’s as if she’s saying to God, ‘God, if you made me like this, then you must be a real jerk.’”
That girl doesn’t see that God alone knows who she really is, and the fact that she belongs to him is the big deal about her. It’s far more precious than how pretty she is, how well she does at school or sports, or how popular she becomes.
You’re a person of great value and worth, made to look and act like your Creator. He has crowned you with glory and honor as his child. And when you get close to the King, you’ll begin to see yourself as the princess or prince you are.
TALK: God wants you to enjoy being the person he made you to be. What gets in the way of seeing yourself as God’s child?
PRAY: God, teach us to see ourselves as you see us—and as the Bible describes us.
ACT: Share this great truth with a Christian friend who feels worthless: You are a child of God!