November 14 - Value and Victory

Value and Victory

“Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.” (Isaiah 43:4) RSV

God values you. No doubt about it.  In fact, we all want to be significant and have value. God declares me as having significance.  In essence, we have no value apart from God.  As one person said, “God is the only one who separates a human being’s value from a mosquito’s value.”  If there is no God and no relationship with Him, then our end is gloom and doom because we are going to die without the hope of eternity.  See what I mean.  The mosquito’s life ends no differently than yours when you take God out of the picture. No God…no heaven.  No heaven…no hope.  No hope…no future.  However, if there is a God and you have a relationship with Him, then you have inestimable worth and you are offered a future that is eternal.  In the end, our value is solely and solidly based on our proximity to Him because everything else will one day fade from the face of the earth.

Mark Anderson wasn’t born…he was discovered. Having known Mark for many years, his story is amazing to say the least.  His mother’s unknown pregnancy was one for the ages as a doctor’s x-ray examination revealed an ovarian tumor which required immediate surgery. Briefly into her procedure, the doctors proceeded to lift out of the mass revealing a sight rarely experienced in a cancer surgery or any other for that matter.  A two and a half pound baby boy lay hidden in the interior walls of her body which quickly elevated the surgery to a whole new focus…the saving of two lives rather than just one. The future World Champion Decathlete, Olympic Star, and M.A.S.H. show guest star, would have an inauspicious beginning to say the least.
         

Placed into an incubator, the watchful nursing staff would tell you they simply expected the worst. Such a frail little body, with limited lung, heart, or organ development, he hardly stood a chance in a million of surviving with such limitations. Only time would tell the outcome.
        

Day after day would pass with low to medium progress occurring yet the little baby slowly persevered. Week after week would see miniscule advancements, but on the tiny baby proceeded.  However, the surprising day would come when Mark’s mother would take the little baby, now at five pounds, home with her, as they had done all that they could do. Again, they wondered if he might quickly be rushed back to neo-natal care apart from the medical machinery that had kept him going to this point. Under his mother’s tending, baby Mark would survive.  Though sickly, he would make it through.  

           

His home life would leave something to be desired. Growing up, his father was physically and emotionally abusive causing his mother to cut ties and move on to another man, only to find each one as bad as the first. Though sadly it had the makings of a Broadway title, “Seven Grooms for One Mother,” each treated Mark with contempt leaving his level on the value scale as low as one could imagine.
            

Sports became his hope but he could never learn enough or grow enough to make a team. Tryout upon tryout, in junior high, became continual reminders that he would always be a loser. The football coach told him he feared Mark would get broken into multiple pieces because he was too skinny; his basketball audition left the coach putting Mark so far down the list he was cut after one practice; and Mark wasn’t long for the baseball world because the back swing sent him spinning in the other direction. Three strikes and he was out.
However, as fate would have it, Mark encountered the track coach who seemed to be far less concerned with talent and far more interested in a “pulse.” He shared to every living being in the school, “I don’t care if you can run, jump, or throw, all I care about is if you can ‘breathe.’” Mark couldn’t do a lot of things well but he had definitely developed his “breathing” skills.
             

Slowly, Mark’s coach began to spend time with him. Even with last place finishes at every event, Mark just enjoyed being part of the team. It wasn’t so much his finishes, but the fact that someone showed interest in him, that kept him coming back. After all, you can tolerate a lot of disappointments if you’ve got people who can applaud you through them. And that’s exactly what his coach would do.
         

Even entering ninth grade at 5 feet tall and 100 pounds, Mark remained undaunted. His coach had taught him the high jump and he found that, even though he couldn’t do too many things well, he could certainly jump. As his heights rose, his coach began to challenge him in new areas. While Mark didn’t know it, his coach saw a Decathlete (ten event) Champion in him that Mark couldn’t see.
           

Mark began to eat more, lift more, and grow more to the point he caught the eye of local colleges in Southern California. His training was paying off. Two years at Mt. San Antonio College would soon lead to two NCAA National Decathlon Championships at UCLA. The little baby that no one expected to survive was quickly rising to the top in the athletic world.
           

At this point, being reunited with his Junior High Coach, Mark would self-admittedly find a great deal of pride setting in. While his problem in his early years was a lack of self-confidence, he now was ironically, in his own words, simply arrogant. The world that had paid no attention to him was now paying to come watch him perform. Mark was on top of the world as the World Champion record-holder in the Decathlon. In 1984, he made the Olympic team and was prepared to take the crown as the World’s Greatest Athlete. His popularity even brought a guest appearance on the legendary sit-com M.A.S.H. where he starred as a pompous athlete who took on Father Mulcahey in a distance run entitled “Run For The Money.” Little did people know that Mark was every bit as cocky as the character on the show.
            

Easily winning the trials, Mark prepared to be hoisted onto the crowd’s shoulders and onto a “Wheaties Box” as the Gold Medal Winner. However, fate can be a cruel thing. Pulled hamstrings, meniscus tears, and nagging injuries would leave him helpless and crashing back down to earth as the dream became a nightmare, as the 1984 Olympics found him falling far short of the Gold-Medal expectations set by himself and others.  In fact, it was that experience that would re-unite Him with the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, whom his coach had introduced him to back in his skinny Junior High years.  However, this time, he truly began to grasp God’s love whether climbing new heights or crashing down from them.
             

Looking back these many years later, it was that experience that rendered a new perspective which would ultimately allow Mark to go from an earthly perspective to an eternal one. Those things that were once the obsession of his life, have now become of less importance…and those things that were life or death have now become expendable. For one who was on top of the world, God had a bigger plan.

The truth is, everyone is created by God but everyone does not belong to God.  Only those who belong to God are those who choose to say, "God put me in Your family" because of my faith in Christ. When a person does that, they belong to God.  Like MasterCard says, “That means you're priceless.” Isaiah 43:4, “Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.” (RSV)   You have incredible value to God.  You not only are seen that way.  He has made you part of His family. You're valuable. If God is not in the picture, we have to find our value through something else which causes us to base our significance on the wrong things.  We work our whole lives trying to prove we have worth. We try to find it in our work.  We try to find it in relationships.  We try to find it in where we live and what we drive.   We try to find it in how we look. (The cosmetic industry and plastic surgery industry is a multi-billion dollar industry.) The problem is, we are often basing our value or significance on things that are not lasting.

Terry Risser

Reflections:

1)   Where have you gained your greatest value in life?

2)   What is the danger of putting your trust in things-over God?

Consider reading the Word:

Copyright 2014-Terry Risser