[Service two of “End of the World as we know it” camp 2012- speaker Garland Owensby/my thoughts]

You see… the world likes us to believe that there is nothing special within is. Every advertisement tries to convince us that we have to lose weight, buy those clothes, use that product, use this supplement, and blah blah blah. That’s how I feel by the average advertisement I see or hear…blah. We constantly have to “improve” ourselves in order to be “good enough”, “skinny enough”, “hot enough”, desirable enough”, or whatever other crap- yes I said crap- our culture tells us to be. But you see, there is so much more than this culture. There is God. God created this world we live in, however perverted and different it has become from its original creation. 

Look at Psalm 139 [sections]:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it!

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

David, the writer of this Psalm, knew that he was not accident, not just a person to live on this earth and die with no purpose at all. He knew, from his years of intense mistakes, the grace of God upon his life. He knew how much God’s love was for him, because without God’s love, things would have been vastly different. David understand that God intensely loved him. 

God intensely loves you! You are not an accident. He created you with purpose. In order to understand that you have purpose for your life, understand this…God is crazy about you. He is excited seeing you live out your life…or at least that’s his desire. He is our God, our Father, and he deeply wants to lead us in a way that is good for us, because it honors him. So when we live out lives in selfishness and in disregard to your life as his Creation, it saddens him deeply. We are “fearfully and wonderfully made” which means we were made in great awe, in deep love, for incredible purpose. When we begin to believe in the words of the Father instead of the words of the world, we begin to look at ourselves through a completely different lens. 

Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there is any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!

When we see ourselves the way God created us- a beautiful creations a part of his whole plan and purpose- we can reject the world within us. We can end its domain on our lives and not listen to the lies, the deceit, or the pain. We also need to reject the part of the world that we have allowed within us- sin. Whatever sin [things that draw you farther from God, not closer, and things that go in direct opposition to his Word], we need to remove and repent of. God is a gracious God who gives us strength to overcome anything. He gives us the ability to live the amazing adventurous lives that I believe he has created us for.