Created For Excellence Series

Created For Excellence

May 9, 2010 Proverbs 31:10-31 Colossians 3:10-17

Today is Mother’s Day which is a time in which we say thank you to all the mothers and special women in our lives who have made us better than what we were. God chose to send everyone of us into this world through a mother. We came into this world already owing a debt to someone who paid a sacrifice for us to be born. Then God placed little girls, young ladies, and women in our lives who touched us in very special ways and to them all we can say thank you. If you’ve been blessed by at least one woman, say amen. If you’ve been blessed by two or more shout Hallelujah.

When God created women, God did so with a plan of excellence in mind. I want every woman and every girl in here to say. “I am a work of excellence.”One of the great tragedies in the world today, has been the failure of the world to recognize that when God created the woman, God was creating excellence as a gift to the rest of all creation.

Imagine with me for a moment, if you had a beautiful picture in your home that was worth over a hundred thousand dollars because of the artist who had painted it. It was a one of a kind masterpiece. The artist had put excellence into every stroke of his work The colors were awesome. The depth perception was amazing. It was the final work of the artist who was abruptly killed in a car accident. You knew the painting was going to continue to increase in value. You gave it a place of honor in your home.

One day you come home and the lock on the door is broken. Petty thieves have broken into your home and stolen several electronic items including the painting. You report the items to the police. Fortunately for you, you had the items marked and numbered. A few weeks later, the police inform you that several of the items showed up at a large local flea market. You go out in the rain in search of the painting hoping against hope that it there.

You look and you look. Finally you see the frame of the picture sitting in some mud, in the rain with about five other pictures that you could purchase at any Salvation Army for less than ten dollars. The picture itself is now torn. It is obvious that whoever had taken the picture did little to protect it. There’s a shoe mark where someone stepped on it, and there is hole where someone poked something to hard in the back of it. There is a rip going across the bottom of it where something sharp had caught it.

As you see your magnificent piece of art, laying there among cheap imitations, battered and bruised, what kind of thoughts go through your mind. Are you angry at what has been done to the picture? Are you angry at those who stole it and felt it was there’s to do with as they pleased? Do you feel sorry for the one who is trying to sell it at far less than its true value? Are you grateful that you found it and will have the opportunity to restore to its former position of excellence?

Saints, when it has come to the beautiful painting that we call women, far too often we have hijacked them for own purposes, failed to realize their true value, and injured them in ways that have left them feeling stepped upon, wounded, stabbed and torn in various pieces. If you are a woman and you are feeling like this today, I want you to know there is a God who created you, who has been searching for you, and who is willing to heal you, mend you, and put you back together again with the glory he intended for you to have. When you read the gospels, you discover that Jesus had a special place in his heart, for women who were being used and trampled upon.

God intends to use each of us here to assist in the process of undoing the damage that we ourselves have caused.

When God created Eve, she was created with the intention of bringing excellence into the world. Without the presence of a woman as a separate identity, even though all was perfect in the world, God was able to say “something here is not good.” There was Adam, the perfect man, and yet he was missing something that was good. Something that could empower him with excellence. The good he was missing was Eve.

Eve had been created for glory and honor . Her mission was to move things from being good to being excellent. There was something special about woman from the very beginning of creation. Adam knew instinctively that He was to honor this woman.