1.2 About You

Before we talk more about belief or faith or even God, there's a really, really important question that's underneath all of that. What does the Bible actually say about you? It's an important, important question because listen, the way you see your life shapes your life. The way you see your life shapes your life because what you believe about yourself shapes how you live, it shapes how you love, how you relate to God, whether you realize it or not, it's that important. At Canvas, we believe the Bible teaches something incredibly important about every single person, including you. Let me start with this. I don't care what your background is, I don't care where you came from, I don't care the circumstances surrounding it, you are not an accident. You were made on purpose, with a purpose, and for a great and a deep purpose. You're not a mistake, you're not disposable, you're not insignificant, you're not forgettable. Bible says in Genesis chapter one and verse 27, so God created human beings in his own image, and in his image he created them. You are the image of the all-knowing, omnipotent God. You are a bearer of his image. That means that you are deeply, deeply significant to God and to this planet. Your life has value, deep value.

Before you ever do anything valuable, before you ever make anything valuable, you yourself are valuable because you are an image bearer of God. Your worth is not based on your success, your past, your productivity, or your behavior. It comes from the simple truth, again, that you were created in the image of God. Psalm eight says it like this. When I look at the night sky and I see the work of your fingers, the moon, the stars that you set in place, what are mere mortals, that you should think about them, yet you made them only a little lower than God and then crowned them with glory and honor. That's a wild, wild thing, man, that we were made in the image of God and that as mere mortals, he thinks about us, he took great care, great time, great effort. Bible says you were fearfully and wonderfully made. Out of everything God created, we were the main focus of his attention and love. We are the apex of his creation. If you look at the Genesis account, he speaks everything into existence. I want you to hear this. He speaks everything into existence. Let there be light, let there be firmament, let there be heavens, let there be fruit-bearing trees. Speaks, speaks, speaks, but when it comes to man,

he gets down in the dirt and forms, the Bible said forms man. So it implies he gets his hands dirty and he forms man out of the dust of the earth. Then he leans down and breathes the breath of life. It speaks of proximity, that he's present, that he's close, that he's intimate with man. We were different than everything else that he ever created. He thinks about you differently. We believe that you matter to God. We also believe the Bible is honest about the frailty of mankind. While we were created good and full of potential, something has gone wrong inside of us and the Bible calls that sin. That's a word that people kind of misunderstand a lot because sin isn't just about breaking the rules or being a bad person. At its core, sin is a posture of independence from God. It's simply choosing our way over God's way. That's where sin entered into the world. And Isaiah 53 and six puts it like this. All of us like sheep have gone astray. We have left God's path to follow our own way. When the Bible calls us sheep, it's not a compliment, right? It's not a compliment. It says we have wandered away from the good path of God. And this resonates because really deep down, we all feel this.

We all experience moments where something feels off. We know it. We can't always put our finger on it, but we know something just isn't quite right. We hurt people we care about. We sabotage ourselves. Sometimes we just feel so deeply disconnected from God. Bible says in Romans three and 23, that everyone has sinned. Everyone has sinned, me, you, all of us, and have fallen short of God's glorious standard. That includes church leaders, skeptics, everyone in between. And here's the important part. It's our sin that ultimately separates us from God. Isaiah 59 and two said, it's your sins that have cut you off from God. Because of your sins, he has turned away and will not listen. Now that separation is real and it's dangerous and it's painful, but glory to God, it's not the end of the story. It's actually the beginning of this beautiful story of redemption. The scriptures teach us that God did not respond to that separation with distance or punishment. He responded with a plan of redemption. He responded with a plan of redemption. That's where Jesus comes into the picture. We believe that relationship with God is restored not through trying.

harder, not through striving for perfection, not by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and trying to straighten up how you talk and how you live and the things that you do. It's not about getting more religious. It comes to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus didn't come to shame people into change. He came to bring back people into a right relationship with God as the perfect sacrifice for our sin. He died vicariously. That means He died on the cross for me. He did it for you. It was our penalty to pay because of sin, but He knew that we weren't good enough to pay it because sin had tainted us. He was the only one who was perfect that could be offered as a sacrifice once and for all to pay the penalty of sin, and He did it. He did it willingly. He did it gladly. He did it beautifully. He did it brutally so that you and I could go free, and all we have to do is trust Him with all of our lives and turn from ourselves and turn to Him so when we say, what does the Bible say about you or what do we believe about you? You were created in God's image. You are deeply, deeply loved, and while we are all guilty of sin, God doesn't reject you. Instead, He made a rescue plan to restore you,

and you need to know the good news of the gospel is that you don't have to clean yourself up to be accepted by God. You don't have to hide your questions or hide the guilt or the shame of your past. God meets people exactly where they are. He just loves them too much to leave them there. You bring your sin, you bring your shame to the foot of the cross, and you find hope and peace. That passes all understanding. It starts by putting your faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ.