August 14 2018 – Click here to listen
A reader sent me some interesting cartoons the other day and the one below caught my eye.
Albert Einstein was a genius, but he apparently thought everyone else was as well. Your skills might not have been his skills, but he insisted that you were a genius and was wise enough to understand the diversity of God’s plan. My father belittled me at every opportunity when I was growing up. He told me I was stupid and would never amount to anything. I believed him, and after years of hearing him criticize me I gave up on life. I had low self-esteem and became suicidal more than once because of it. I wonder how many folks out there have low self-esteem and are as depressed as I was.
This cartoon talks of our education system and is no doubt an effort to discredit standard testing, but education is more than just going to school. It’s about parents, athletics, peers, church members, and virtually anyone who interacts in our lives in any significant way. God the ultimate genius made us all different right down to our fingerprints and DNA. Nothing concerning humanity or creation was done randomly, so one might ask why He didn’t make us all the same. Why didn’t he make all animals the same? Why did He create oceans, mountains, deserts, tropical forests, great plains, rivers and lakes? You will have to ask Him, but it no doubt life would be incredibly boring if He had done so.
All I can speak to is that each and every one of us are precisely designed for a specific purpose in serving God. The Bible states we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” It also states we were created in Christ Jesus for good works. Eph. 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. It doesn’t say that you need to be a mathematician or nuclear scientist, a Billy Graham type preacher, a star athlete, an articulate speaker, an actor, a physician, or anything that has anything to do with anyone else, especially those whom society seems to put on a pedestal.
Anyone can do good works. If you can cook, then prepare a meal for someone who is hungry. If you are a loving person, visit a hospital or prison and offer love and hope to those who have none. If you are blessed with making money, bless others who aren’t so fortunate with a portion of it. If you can teach, then find someone who needs instruction and teach. The Verse above says that God prepared you for good works. You have no excuse and neither do I not to obey Him.
You are a genius. Use your gift for the good works of Christ Jesus and enjoy your life. Don’t allow anyone to ever tell you that you are anything less than a child of God, fearfully and wonderfully made in His image, saved by the blood of His Son Jesus Christ. You are very special, and God loves you today, tomorrow, and forever . . .
1 John 3:1
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.