By Katie Ginn
Can I talk to the teacher’s pets for a minute? It’s OK, I’m one of you. I’ll be gentle.
In this month’s cover story, Heath Ferguson says he wants people to understand that their value doesn’t change on their best day or their worst day. I’d like to take a moment and expound on that.
I was a pretty high performer growing up, and that continued when I became a working adult in my 20s. I went from making straight A’s, scoring a 33 on the ACT, and graduating from college magna cum laude to winning journalism awards and getting raises.
Then I landed my dream job – my current one – as a business owner. I had never owned so much as a lemonade stand.
In my first full year at MCL, we turned a profit. Yay! Maybe if I stayed within my budget and published a good product, I could make a living at this.
Then COVID hit. Then I noticed I was losing money. I wasn’t sure if it was all due to COVID, but it got worse over time, and pretty soon the dollar amount in my business account was getting lower every single month – not drastically, but somehow that made it worse. Instead of watching MCL get hit by a bus, I was watching it die of cancer, and I was the one who had to find the cure. Something had to change.
Eventually, ad sales kicked into a higher gear (praise God!), but that’s not where I’m going with this column. What I want to tell you is that God valued me just as much in 2020 and 2021, when I was “failing,” as He does now, when I’m “succeeding.” And I think if I hadn’t “failed,” I never would’ve learned that.
While I was “failing,” and crying out to God on my knees in my closet, I started to realize I’d been basing my value on my job performance. Subconsciously, I had believed two lies:
- If I managed my time well enough, sold enough ads, and published a good enough magazine, I was valuable to God.
- If I “failed” at any of those things, then God wouldn’t love or value me anymore.
These are two sides of the same coin, and that coin is the currency of hell. For the love of God (literally), please, don’t buy the lie. I’m talking to 18-year-old honors students, 81-year-old grandmothers, and everyone in between. You want to see your value? Stop what you’re doing, and look at the cross.
God decided you were worth sending His perfect Son. God decided you were worth Jesus dying for all your sins. God decided you were worth it.
When did He decide that? While we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). Not when we buttoned our shirt, combed our hair, and gave Him a firm handshake. Not when we repented. Not when we believed. He valued us when we were too evil to value Him.
If you have trouble believing all this, I get it. Ask God to help you trust Him. Talk to other believers, and you’ll find that they struggle with self-worth too. You wouldn’t tell them they don’t have value, would you? Then don’t tell yourself that either.
If you’re young and have never “failed” at anything, you will – and it can be a good thing when you do. If you find a job or other opportunity that involves a skillset you don’t have yet, don’t automatically shrink back in fear of failure. Instead, when you “fail,” lean on your Savior, and you’ll learn that His love for you hasn’t changed one bit.
I keep putting “failure” in quotes because I like to believe the old adage that we only fail when we never get back up and try again. But the truth is, we’ve all failed already. Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Yes, there’s a comma. The next verses continue, “and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood — to be received by faith.”
The gospel is for failures. Thankfully, that includes all of us.