Unashamed (1 of 6)

Mike Connell

Page 4 of 10
That's true, but let me just give you this thought here. Suppose your little child - here's your beautiful little child, and the child has had an accident, fallen off something, and now your child comes running to you and as you look, now that beautiful child that went out to play now is looking quite different. The child now has got a bone sticking out of the arm here, the skin is broken, there's blood and there's this terrible sight there and the first sort of reaction is oh! You don't want to even look at it - but then you go basically it's still your child, just your child's damaged. Now you're not going to reject your child. You're not going to abuse your child - you just can't do anything now can you! You're really bad! You don't treat a child that way because their arm is broken.

They're your child, but they're damaged, and they need your help to be repaired to their original condition. That's how God sees us. Now if you can get that concept in your mind, it'll change how you relate to God. God is not there ready to beat on you because you have a broken arm in some part of your life and there's a bone sticking out. He's not there to beat on you. Jesus said: I've got no condemnation to give. What He came to do was to restore us, so we could function like God intended us to function. You've got to understand that when Jesus came, He came to actually address the root problem and then to restore us, so we can live life like we're supposed to live life. The trouble is many Christians only get a bit of the way. We give our lives to Jesus and never embrace changing to become what He called us to become, and to fulfil the destiny of representing Him in the community, hence the church is withdrawn from society, and has meetings instead of being stirred in God to change the world we live in, bringing creativity into it, in a way they've never seen before.

See some people, they have issues over a number of things of course. One they have issues over is getting buildings painted and done up nice and oh there's money, money, money. Now that's a wrong thinking. How will people know that the God we serve is excellent, if we don't present ourselves individually and corporately in an excellent way? It confirms the wrong impression they have - don't get near God, you lose all you have. You'll become mean and miserable and bitter and twisted and you'll be a hypocrite like all these other people we've seen. Do you understand? It's a concept that people have got a hold of, they want to believe it of course, because they want to come near God, but actually what they're looking for is to see, have you got something for real that I need? Has your marriage got something different? Have you got something different? That's why we need to become unashamed, and you'll see just in a moment.

So God - very good, so when God looks at you He's still saying: very good, very good, very good. You say what about this is wrong and this is like this? Yeah, I know - but you're still very good, you're made in my image. Your value comes not from whether you did well. Your value comes from who you are. Who you are is? Made in the image of God! That's why evolution and all that goes with that devalues you as being made in the image of God. You cannot ever, ever base a person's value on what they're doing. It has to be based on what God says - good! God is good, and what He's made is good. God doesn't make any junk. He didn't make junk when He made you. You've believed a lie, and we've got to change that lie this year, okay? Whatever God makes is good.

Here's a third thing now. God clothed man in His own glory. I'm going to explain what that means in a moment - just keep your finger there in Genesis, Chapter 2 and look quickly in Psalm 8. Now we're looking at the original design, because if you want to see how something should function, go look in the manual and how it was made, then see what needs to be done to repair it. Okay then, in Psalm 8, Verse 4, the Bible says: what is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You visit him. You have made him a little lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honour. How about that? You've made to have dominion over the works of Your hands. Look at that Verse 5: You have crowned him with glory and honour, crowned him with glory - now what does that mean?