Thankful Thursday #20

Another week has gone by and my only post this week will be the Thankful Thursday entry. I hope life will settle out here soon and more musings will fill this blog. But until then, I'm thankful for Iris at Grace Alone... who faithfully encourages so many of us to be thankful.

This week I've spent some time talking to my ever faithful Wise Guy (folks who've read other blog posts will be familiar with Wise Guy.)

I've revisited the concept of validation. To validate something means to endorse something, or to verify something, or to approve something.

You know how parking tickets can be validated? You go to a restaurant and the restaurant will validate your parking ticket--stamp it somehow so you don't have to pay your parking fee. You're endorsed or verified or approved by the restaurant--and you don't owe any money to the parking garage.

Sometimes I treat myself like a parking ticket. I run around and try find someone to validate me.

And sometimes I go to the wrong people to validate me. I go to people who will never, ever really see me for who I am and never, ever approve of me.

And then I think, "Ooops! I just tried to get my ticket validated at the wrong window!"

I make a little joke--but the truth is being invalidated hurts.

All of this to say:

• I am thankful for God because his actions validate me. He created me in his image (Gen. 1:27). He says I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). Yeah, I have a hard time believing that, but who am I to argue with God? He loved me enough to send his son to die for me (John 3:16)--and if that doesn't validate me, I don't know how anything can.

• I am thankful for the people he has sent into my life who have validated me. Sometimes we need "God with skin on." Friends who love me--the good, the bad, the ugly, and the me I so want to be--validate me. They tell me I have worth. They reflect God back to me and make me believe that I am made in his image. They help me believe that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Sometimes they even say they're sorry that other people have invalidated me. And the hurt is a little less.

And just in case you've forgotten, let me remind you: You're made in God's image too. You're fearfully and wonderfully made. Jesus died for you too.

God's validated your parking ticket.

Do You Validate?

Photo from FreeFoto.com

"Instead of striving for a manmade ticket to heaven based on high achievement and hard work (for which we get all the credit), I suggest we declare our own spiritual bankruptcy and accept God's free gift of grace."

~ Charles R. Swindoll, The Grace Awakening

I spent some time talking with Wise Guy yesterday. At one point, we even tried to figure out how long we've been talking things out--me, looking for answers, Wise Guy, knowing the answers but letting me keep on looking so I can figure it out for myself.

We've been at this a long time, folks.

I always take notes during our talks. Here's one from yesterday:

I keep taking my ticket to the wrong counter to get validated.

Now if the "ticket" represents me, what I'm realizing is I am looking to the wrong things, the wrong people, for validation.

Do you ever do that?

Just A Thought: I keep wanting certain people to validate my ticket and thereby say I have worth. I need to tear up that ticket--or at least turn it over to God so He can write "Grace" across it in big red letters. We Accidental Pharisees--we're trying to pay our way to heaven or we want someone else to validate our "ticket" for us. We forget about grace.