Discovering your true worth is
a journey. In our effort to find our great worth,
many of us become deceived and believe we have
found real worth when really we have found nothing
more than a false sense of significance. We can
be much like a prospector during the California
gold rush who staked all his dreams on shimmering
rocks that ended up not being worth a thing.
In Luke 15 Jesus tells a parable of a son who takes this journey to discovering
his worth. It is a timeless story that mirrors our own. Our first introduction
to this son reveals how, deceived by his sinful nature and the values of the
world, his view of his worth was skewed. Rather than recognize the wonder of
being loved by a wise father, he saw himself imprisoned in a religious home.
This son had a father who loved both his sons so much that he had perhaps announced
that both of them would share fully in the inheritance after his death. Rather
than recognize the value of his father’s love, this son focused on the
value of his father’s possessions. After a time he could think of nothing
else except the inheritance and how he would spend it so much better than his
father and older brother. He would travel the world and use wealth to prove his
worth. So intoxicated by the thoughts of the worth that awaited him, he made
the audacious request to ask his father for his inheritance while his father
was still alive.
When the father consented, the son rushed off to live in a distant country and
tried to find worth from what the world had to offer. There was a long period
when he was living his dream and getting the sense that he had found all his
heart wanted. But a famine in the land drove prices up and quickly brought him
to bankruptcy. Without money to define him, he hired himself to a pig farmer,
where once again he began to miscalculate his worth. As he considered the predicament
he was in, so poor and hungry that he longed for pig food, he remembered his
father. He believed that he was not worth being his father’s son again,
but he thought that perhaps he could become one of his father’s hired servants.
He knew he would receive food and decent pay if he was employed by his father.
He couldn’t be positive he was worth that much to his father, but he felt
it merited a trip home to see.
When the son was a long way off, his father ran out to meet him. The son told
his father: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no
longer worthy to be called your son (Luke 15:21). Although he also planned
to ask for a job as a hired servant, his father never gave him a chance. Rather,
his father welcomed him back as his son, dressing him in fine robes, and special
rings and celebrating with a huge banquet.
The son searched for worth from how much money he had, what he could spend money
on, and what he could do—become a hired hand, but none of that gave him
a sense of worth. The son finally discovered his great worth when he received
his father’s love. He had this worth all along, but he never understood
it until he saw himself as unworthy of such a love. Do you know your great worth?
I don’t think you will really recognize it until you discover your unworthiness.
Facing your unworthiness leads to the discovery of your great worth!
