“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:1-2
– Jesus knows all of my faults and still loves me.
– In our world we are taught not to show our real selves. We often say to ourselves if you really know me you could not love me.
– Jesus knows us better than anyone else and still loves us.
– Let us pretend for the sake of illustration that we could have as much time to talk with Jesus as we wanted.
Let us imagine that we proceeded to tell Jesus everything that is wrong with us. Yes, some of us could go on hour after hour about all our faults, problems, and lack of abilities, our poor motivation, our insincerity, our impure motives. We could talk until we were exhausted, hoarse, and or both.
– What do you think the response of Jesus would be?
– Would He say “Gosh, I didn’t know that?
– Would He say “I can’t believe you would do that11?
– Or would He say “That is the last straw. I cannot forgive you for that one.”
– Does He ask us “How could you respect yourself after that one”?
– Does He remind us that we have done that for the 40th time?
– Even if we could show God our most grievous and numerous sin and put them on a table before Him, what do you think His response would be?
Yes, that is right, He has removed our sin from us as far as east is from the west. He has promised to love us with an everlasting love. He has promised to help us to carry our burdens. Yet we still believe that somehow we can earn God’s approval by doing the right thing for God.
What does God not have that we could give Him?
We are talking about a God who knows about all our sins all at once. We are talking about a God who knows what we are going to do and say next. We are talking about a God who knows what every human being is thinking all at once. And at the same time is completely controlling a constantly expanding universe with millions of stars and untold and uncounted number of galaxies.
Yet at the same time He loves us beyond all words and is passionately in love with us. At the sane time He holds all that is good for us. Every tenderness and mercy and forgiveness is His possession. That is not even to mention all the things we don’t even know about. Compared to all this we are as little specks yet our Lord knows even the number of hairs on our head and watches over every detail of our lives.
– Jesus knows all my faults and still loves me.
– Jesus has done all this for us without us even asking Him. As a matter of fact, without His persistence we would not even know that He exists!
– If He has done all this for us, would He not give us His identity, and His character and His esteem if we ask Him.
– God desires to make us better.
We all remember the story of the good Samaritan as told by Jesus. How many times have we been laying at the side of the road, beaten up by life. Even waiting and hoping for our life to end. How many times did we seem to find no hope and future.
There seemed to be no way that we could experience the saving power of the Lord.
But then along comes Jesus, often in a very unexpected form (why, it might be example), picking us up, wrapping our wounds, giving us comfort and strength.
– It is not a question of if Jesus will help us.
– It is a question of us expecting that He will and letting Him choose the time and place that He has already seen that would be most beneficial to us.
That is having Christ esteem.
– Christ esteem grows as we esteem Christ in all things.
– Christ esteem is seeing ourselves as Christ Jesus sees us.
– As His son or daughter
– As totally in need of Him
– As ready to live in Him and with Him
– As ready to rule with Him
– As forgiven
– As spotless and holy
– As in always falling more deeply in love with Him
– As having His power and authority
– As being as His mind
– And His heart
– As His hands
– His feet
– Speaking His words
– Being His ears.
That is what Christ esteem is all about.
– Christ esteem means that we are
– Regarded with respect and admiration
– Regarded highly and favorably
– Honored
– Revered and confirmed
– Sanctioned
– Spoken and thought of favorably
– We are prized warmly and fondly thought of
– Held with tender feelings
– We have worth, excellence, privileges
– A privileged position with God
– We are noble
– Of royal blood
– As kings and queens
The Father of the universe, the mighty Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the most powerful and awesome one.
– He sees us as esteemed.
– We have Christ esteem with the Father in heaven.
– The Father who knows all faults and blemishes, who sees every sin and darkness in us.
– He has chosen to cherish us, honor us, esteem us, to remember and dwell with us forever in everlasting and complete love.
– Because we are covered and we dwell in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus.
To accept the sacrifice of Jesus is to have Christ esteem.
– To remember that there is absolutely nothing we can do to earn or add to our salvation is Christ esteem.
– To remember that all our goodness, holiness, righteousness and worth and that our talents and abilities come from Christ Jesus is to have the kind of esteem that God wants us to have.
– When we are God esteemed we have Christ esteem, and the Father in heaven has made every good thing available to us in the abundant riches of Christ Jesus.
– When we have Christ esteem we have access to all the riches of heaven.
Because of Jesus, God has made a decision to deal with us in complete love. This means that He has forgiven and forgotten all our sins and that He has made a place in His heavenly home for us to live with Him forever.
Has any other person or God promised to do this for us? Would Almighty God want to live forever with a person that He did not like?
Jesus has already experienced all of my hurts, fears and doubts and carries them for me. Let us take a minute to remember when we experienced the suffering of a friend, it was not any fun to see their pain or feel their sadness.
– But Jesus not only saw our pain but took it upon Himself to suffer and die for us.
– When was the last time your best friend suffered or died for you?
– Who was it that cried over Jerusalem? or over the death of His friend Lazarus?
– And what did Jesus do about it? He raised Lazarus from the dead!
– Which is the same thing that God is going to do for us.
– Has Buddha or Gandhi or Confucius ever offered to die for you? Did they offer you everlasting life?
Pain, sorrow and sadness were all part of Christ’s life, the God who loved us so much that He wanted to make this part of our lives part of His life too. This is Christ esteem. To know that when we cry and hurt that it is our God and Savior Jesus who cried and hurt with us. Christ Jesus esteems us so much that He knows and carries our pain.
In low self esteem we carry the pain by ourselves. In Christ esteem Christ carries it for us and with us.
(Michael Carr, August 2025)
The Eagles Cry 