Self Worth (June Hunt Hope for the Heart) by June Hunt Page A

family life to the reality that I’m in the family of God, changing my focus from demoralizing personal failures to the fact that Jesus is my personal Redeemer.
    If you can’t see your God-given value , if you wonder about your God-given worth , you’ve come to the right place. Within these pages you’ll learn what is true about you. As you read, I pray that His love will transform every false view you have until you are able to see yourself as God sees you: His precious child of infinite worth.
    Yours in the Lord’s hope,

SELF-WORTH
    Discover Your God-Given Worth
    What happens when you long to receive a gift, but only your sister is given a gift? What happens when you long to be held on your mother’s lap, but only your sister is allowed on her lap? What happens when you long for your mother’s love, but only your sister is given her love?
    Ask Dorie Van Stone. 1 Dorie would tell you that repeated rejection is the breeding ground for low self-worth. Her own mother never even wanted her. Her own mother always called her “ugly.”
    Dorie never received the love and affection her heart so deeply craved. However, what a comfort for Dorie (and for all the Dories in the world, both male and female) to come to know this truth:
    “The L ORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the L ORD looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

DEFINITIONS
    Why should Dorie feel any sense of worth? Even before she and her sister were discarded at an orphanage, life with their mother was filled with rejection. Her mother would leave Dorie in charge of her little sister for hours—a six-year-old responsible for the total care of a five-year-old! Each time, she longed desperately for her mother to return, saying to herself, “I hope she’ll be glad to see me.” But each time her mother returned, she brushed right past Dorie to gather Marie into her arms and give her a great big hug, sometimes bringing a gift, always showering attention—attention never shown to Dorie. No wonder Dorie was left reeling with low self-worth. 2 As the psalmist said ...
    “Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless; I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none.” (Psalm 69:20)
WHAT IS Self-Worth?
    As a child, Dorie didn’t have any concept of “self-worth.” How could she? As a continually rejected child, how could she feel any sense of significance, of value, of worth? Even more basic than that, how do you determine the worth of something or someone? How do you know your own worth? Do you look to yourself or others in order to grasp your value? If you look anywhere other than to God—the God who created you with a purpose and a plan—your view of your own value is in grave danger of being distorted. Before you were ever born, God established your real worth by knowing you, by choosing you, and ultimately by dying for you! The Bible says ...
    “He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” (Ephesians 1:4)
Worth signifies the value, merit, or significance of a person or thing. 3
Self-worth is the belief that your life has value and significance. 4
“ Worth ” is a translation of the Greek word axios , which means “of weight and worth.” 5 In biblical times, gold and other precious metals were placed on a balancing scale where their worth was determined by their weight, leading to the expression, “worth their weight in gold” (Lamentations 4:2).
    Q UESTION: “How can someone’s worth be determined?”
    A NSWER: At an auction, the worth of an item is determined clearly and simply by one thing: the highest price paid. Each item goes to the highest bidder. You were bought from the auction block of sin over 2,000 years ago when the heavenly Father paid the highest price possible—the life of His Son, Jesus Christ. By that one act, your worth was forever established by God.
    Jesus Christ paid the ultimate price for