Everyone Is Someone In Gods Kingdom

Everybody is Somebody in Gods Kingdom

Scripture Text

Romans 5:4 NIV

we [c] also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because Gods love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Sermon

Everybody is Somebody in Gods Kingdom

Today I wish to build you up. Together we will look at David and how he was almost overlooked as a possible candidate for kingship. He was not his fathers first choice in fact it would seem he wasnt even on the list of possible choices.

If you are someone who has been waiting for your ship to come in or for your opportunity to shine then this message is for you. If you feel that opportunity has passed you by or that your skills or talents have been overlooked or unappreciated then I want to encourage you to stay the course and run the race in an honorable way just as St. Paul has describes for us in

1 Corinthians 9:24.

24Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.

Do you remember being a child in grade school and having to compete in field day activities? If you were like me this was a day that you wished you could have avoided. It was not that I disliked competing it was that all the rewards for competing went to just a few, the winners.

Now Im not crying about being a looser its just that I felt my effort was equal to or greater than the winners. But the fact remained that no matter how hard I tried at a particular event I was destined to be counted with the losers and not the winners. For whatever reason, I did not have the strength, or the speed or the stamina or the skill to win at these kinds of events.

What I did posses was a desire to win and a desire to compete even though I knew in my heart that it just was not going to happen. In life not all of us will win at certain events. We may not win the heart of the young woman or young man we fall hopelessly in love with. We may not get into the university program or career path we had hoped. We may not get the promotion or job opportunity we thought was best for us. No, for some reason things do not work out the way we plan or the way we think they should.

Nevertheless we must press on through one disappointment after another, through one set back after another and through one heart ache after another. But, why? What purpose does all this disappointment and grief serve?

Romans 5:4 NIV

we [c] also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because Gods love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

There is a lyric in the song I sang that speaks volumes to my heart.

Ray Boltz the writer of this song said it best when he said ... Things like chance and circumstance, they dont really matter my Father holds tomorrow in His hand.

So much of our self worth seems to be drawn from what others think of us. We seek our parents approval and sometimes our siblings respect. We are evaluated from the moment we are born. The doctor measures us and weighs us and then measures us against a medical standard that determines if we are Grade A or a Grade B baby.

Our relatives then compare us to each side of the family. Our features are compared and evaluated, our eye color, hair color and even our smile.

When we get to day care or nursery school we are again evaluated based on our ability to go potty on our own and whether we can speak or not. Then its off to school and report cards and exams and on and on it goes until we are turned out by society to become someone who either meets or fails to meet a predetermined expectation.

Well friends, thats what the world expects to accomplish in us by its influence over us and its desire to mold us into the person it believes we should be.

Further more the world or society demands that we accept what it has made of us and that we should be grateful to be what and who we are and that we should never aspire to overreach our station in life because the world loves a winner and if your not a winner you need to get out of the way or just stay on the sidelines. Thankfully our God does not see us that way.