Living a recycled life

Do you remember the movie Iron Giant (1999). In that movie there’s a metal giant that appears in the area. The giant is hungry and looking for food. He comes upon a scrap yard. The man who owns the scrap yard lets him stay temporarily eating his metal scraps. This man is an artist and uses the scrap for art pieces. The quote that made me stop to think is; “There are two kinds of metal in this yard. Scraps and art…” As you watch the video you see no difference in the two types of metal pointed out. It really made me consider how much the value of an object is in the eye of the creator.

We are quick to throw stuff away because we no longer have a value for it. Often those same items can be used for another purpose, if we were to stop and consider the value. So the item may still have value but how it’s perceived may change. This is so similar to how we view ourselves! We may have thought we had value at one point but after making terrible decisions or doing things only bad people do…we begin to see our lives as garbage and not worth anything.

Can I be blunt with you? I have made many, many, many mistakes. I have been a Christian all my life, but so many times I made decisions that were directly in disobedience to God. As an example, take my high school years. I wanted to be liked and valued and it seemed that I needed to cross the lines of being promiscuous to gain that value. Thing is, after giving myself away, I didn’t feel loved. It felt less valuable than before. Each time I compromised and tried to make my self valuable and worthy of love, I felt worse. As much as I desired value, the more I tried to find it in the world around me, the more I lost what value I perceived I had originally.

As I got older, and my self perceived value waned, I made more and more decisions based on what I thought “someone like me” might deserve. Maybe I was now disqualified for several situations or dates because, they wouldn’t want someone like me to hang out with or be friends with. That feeling of value, or lack of value caused me a tremendous amount of pain. Majority of it was mental anguish. It becomes a mantra we say to ourselves or tearing down ourselves to prove the point of what we feel like we are worth.

Have you ever watched a video about the life cycle of a can that has been recycled? Did you know that it takes a lot of energy to make the original can but once made that can has the potential to be recycled and reused forever. The process to recycle that can is pretty simple but effective for creating a new creation from something old. The can is first smashed and then put in a furnace to be melted down so that all the impurities can be removed. After that the can is remade into the new creation for us consumers. When I look at an empty can, I see garbage. I rarely see anything of value. But when given to the right person that same can can become something new and usable.

Now before you think this is just a blog about cans, let’s get back to our lives. When we are in Christ, God doesn’t look at us and see value only when we are perfect and never mess up. Which is wonderful for us since none of us are perfect – ever! God created us knowing that we would make mistakes and mess up our lives. He also knew that in creating us that He alone would be able to fix those messes. He is the ultimate recycler! God’s desire for us is to be willing to come to Him with our messes, our past filled with regrets, our feelings of worthlessness. He wants to be the one to purify and show you your worth so that you see the value He sees. You were created for a purpose! That purpose is not forgotten simply because you don’t see it any longer. In fact your value has zero to do with your feelings.

I believe this is often the most difficult part. Those dang feelings! There are times God begins to change, transform and purify us. Only to have us argue with Him. We can get stuck believing that we are worthless and fight to keep that title. It ‘s not that we want to stay wounded and down on ourselves but we have gotten comfortable with being worthless. Sounds counter intuitive, right? Think about it, do you or some one you know constantly remind you how broken they are? Do they resist any affirmation of healing or worth? Do they say “it’s just who I am” naming off terrible character traits.

It’s one thing to want God to do a work in us and create new life from the junk we see. But it’s another to allow Him to change unhealthy thoughts and patterns. We have to trust that His is able and fight to replace the negative feelings with life giving truth. Tim Keller said ” We may hear our hearts say, ‘it’s hopeless!” but we should argue back.” God’s word is literally filled with thousands of hope filled thoughts that God thinks about you! Think how different our lives would be if we 1) let God create something wonderful our of our mess and 2) we lived our lives believing what God says about us. The world would not look like it does. Everyone would want to know more about our life recycling God.

Let this be our focus as we look at our lives and wonder/hope if God can redeem them. Ephesians 1:3-8 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. ⁴ For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵ he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— ⁶ to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. ⁷ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace ⁸ that he lavished on us.