1 Corinthians 1:27-30 TLB Instead, God has deliberately chosen to use ideas the world considers foolish and of little worth in order to shame those people considered by the world as wise and great. He has chosen a plan despised by the world, counted as nothing at all, and used it to bring down to nothing those the world considers great, so that no one anywhere can ever brag in the presence of God. For it is from God alone that you have your life through Christ Jesus. He showed us God’s plan of salvation; he was the one who made us acceptable to God; he made us pure and holy and gave himself to purchase our salvation.
Does it make you feel intimately known and loved by God when something in your life is already in place before you realize its need to your life? This has happened to me on many occasions. And many of those times, I either wasn’t happy with the provision or didn’t realize its importance because I hadn’t reached the point of its needfulness to my life.
For example, my mother made me a little cross-stitch Jesus loves me picture when I was young. I liked it well enough to carry it with me to college, graduate school, and marriage and from one home to the next. This picture always sat on a bookshelf or tabletop but never in a place of importance. Until one day when I accidentally knocked it off and broke the glass front. I found an old blue rubber band that nicely held the picture together (function over form for this farm girl). Yet when I was putting that rubber band on the picture, I realized some very important truths – Jesus loves me as I am, broken and overlooked. And even there in the broken, Jesus holds me together in His love.
Realizing those truths turned that little picture into a treasure for me. Now this picture sits in a place of honor in my favorite place, my home office. And there in my office, amid the constant struggle for strength to pray, listen, and write, this little picture constantly reminds me that:
No loss or no life change can lessen Jesus’ love for me.
No pain or pressure can penetrate Jesus’ provision for me.
No sorrow or sin can subvert Jesus’ salvation for me.
But more importantly, Scripture tells me these same truths in Romans 8:38-39 NLT And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Scripture reinforces those truths in this chapter’s* focal verses from 1 Corinthians 1:27-30. The truth that God chooses to use what the world considers broken and overlooked as His tool of choice to reveal wisdom. The truth that God chooses to use what the world considers unworthy and unloved as His beloved and beautiful treasures.
And here in my broken, rusty, and battered frame of dust returning to dust, I know Jesus loves me. He always has. He always will. He chose to love me when I had the world by the tail and a bookshelf full of awards. He chooses to love me now when the world can see me as incapable or inexcusable. He will choose to love me when I could be seen as a drain on people, resources, or time.
His example of love-giving to me was considered foolish, unworthy, and overlooked in all ways because the wisdom, truth, and gifts in it were humble and hidden to the world (see Philippians 2:6-11). Kind of like a faded Jesus loves me cross-stitch picture in a rusty, chipped frame with a broken glass-front held together by a rubber band.
And better still, He loves all of us in the very same way today. And for all the todays yet to come, without condition or clause and no matter the circumstance. For the truth is Jesus loves because He chooses love as He is love (see 1 John 4:16).
Ephesians 3:18 ICB And I pray that you and all God’s holy people will have the power to understand the greatness of Christ’s love. I pray that you can understand how wide and how long and how high and how deep that love is.
Please take some time today to stop and consider Jesus’ great love for you, wherever you are in life today. No matter what you’ve done, He loves you. No matter what you can (or can’t) do, He loves you. And that truth can never be broken, even if you are…
*this post is an excerpt from the book I’m currently writing, “Nevertheless: Finding hope in suffering”
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written by and copyrighted to Beth Madison, Ph.D., 2022
Soul Scientist 
This blog is such a blessing to me and gives me so much encouragement when I feel so inadequate and so unworthy. Jesus died for ALL of us and He gave His salvation freely to everyone that accepts His gift and He gives us eternal life.
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Yes! For all of us!!! Thanks be to God!
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