S1P2 – Before we chose, we were chosen

Eph. 1: 4

Even as [in His love] He chose us [actually picked us out for Himself as His own] in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy (consecrated and set apart for Him) and blameless in His sight, even above reproach, before Him in love.

 

I believe that my salvation experience was not an uncommon one.  The notion that God was seeking me seemed rather absurd, especially considering the person I had become at the time I was presented with the real Jesus.  Quite honestly, I wondered how God could be so desperate as to invite me to join the fold.  Didn’t He know me?  Hadn’t He been watching me all these years? I wouldn’t have chosen me, and I know myself pretty well.

 

I had bought into the lie.  The truth is that God chose me long before I chose him.  In fact, “before the foundation of the world” He chose me.  Before the earth I call home and the sun that lights my days and the stars that guide my travels came into existence, He chose me.  Before I ever uttered a false worse or committed a sinful act, He chose me.  And since then, despite my faults, he has longed for me to choose Him in return.

 

Psalm 139 speaks of a God who knit me together, appointed my days and skillfully formed me.  My reconciliation to the Father is neither a chance occurrence nor a coincidence but speaks of a complex and painstaking plan undertaken by Him for the sole purpose of drawing a soiled and broken person into a pure and holy God.

 

The God we serve and who calls us to Himself carefully selected and created us with this end in mind, “that we should be holy and blameless in His sight.”  In Christ, we gain our worth.  When we doubt our worth, God’s desire for us or whether we have any purpose in God’s kingdom, we have only to meditate on everything our creator undertook to bring even one of us into His family.  Let our worth be determined by the fact that God chose us first.