“Fear of Not Mattering”                                                 Wk 2 in series : (Sermon: 1.17.10; Wellspring Church; Rev. J. Moschenrose )

Psalm 139:13-18; Matthew 10:29-31

I am blessed to have a mother who was willing to discuss most anything with me as I was growing up.  She discussed even the taboo subjects of finances, politics, and religion.  We didn’t always agree on everything (she had strong opinions), but we were free to discuss any of those subjects nonetheless. 

My mom also freely talked about life and death – death was not the taboo subject that it is in many homes.  I’ve known all my life that my parents had a will, and my mom has been very verbal about what is written in the will, how her property is to be divided, and so on.  She’s openly discussed these matters because she doesn’t want people to fight over her things.  But she’s also freely discussed death and dying because her Christian faith is rock solid.  At nearly 91 years old, she has no regrets, she stays in proper relationship with people, and she’s ready to go be with her Lord anytime He’s ready for her.  As she says, “I’m ready anytime He is, though I’m not in any hurry.”

My mom feels like she’s had a blessed life, and knows that God has been with her and been good to her all her life.  When she looks to the future, she asks only two things from God.  She hopes to die quickly and not linger in terrible pain.  And she doesn’t want to outlive her usefulness.  So if I had to name two fears that stretch my mom’s faith, it’d be that she fears dying in terrible pain or lingering a long time, and she fears the possibility of outliving her usefulness. 

My guess is that we all share these feelings of my mom’s.  We all hope that our lives don’t end in terrible pain, and that we don’t outlive our usefulness.

Which brings us to the second in our series on the subject of fear.  My mother saying that she hopes she does not outlive her usefulness is another way of saying that she needs her life to matter.  We all need our lives to matter, don’t we.  We don’t have to be old to fear that our life doesn’t matter.  The other day as I exercised I watched one of those TV court shows of civil law suits.  LaKeisha was being sued by her former friend who out of pity let LaKeisha live with her because she had no where else to go.  Although these are supposedly real cases, I had a hard time believing this one.  I mean, the behavior that LaKeisha admitted to left me wondering if the facts had not been exaggerated for the benefit of the television audience.  LaKeisha was 19 years old, dropped out of school at age 15, had never worked a day in her life.  She had no friends or family who would have anything to do with her because of her outrageous, defiant behavior.  She spent her days openly smoking pot and drinking.  She slept with her roommate’s boyfriend.  When her friend told her to leave, LaKeisha took the woman’s clothes and set them on fire, right outside the apartment building, while smoking a joint!  I couldn’t believe she was standing there openly admitting all of this.  When the judge asked her why she lived this way, she replied, “It don’t matter.”  She went on to share her feelings that she felt her life and therefore her behavior didn’t matter.  Everyone had given up on her, including herself.

Sad, isn’t it?  And LaKeisha is in good company when it comes to the number of people who believe their lives don’t matter.  Look at anyone who lives a life of crime, or are victims of violent, abusive environments, and chances are they too will feel like their lives don’t matter.  In yesterday’s Free Press the lead article was about five people who risked their lives and the lives of others to escape arrest for the petty crime of shoplifting.  Three of them did in fact die, and the other two have been charged with first degree murder and unarmed robbery and now face life in prison in the death of a security guard who was pursuing them as they tried to escape.1  These shoplifters all have long rap sheets, and would do anything to support their habits of addiction and lives of crime.  Drugs and money was all that mattered to them – their lives and the lives of others did not.

Our need for our lives to matter goes very deep, all the way to the manner in which we were created.  You see, you and I matter very much to our Creator.  As the Psalmist says, God formed your inward parts.  God knit you together in your mother’s womb.  God was involved with you since your time of conception, and there’s evidence that God was involved with you even before your conception!  The Scripture says you are fearfully and wonderfully made.  That’s because God’s works are all wonderful – have you seen that poster with the little boy saying, “God made me and God don’t make no junk”?  Well, his grammar might be a bit off, but what he’s saying agrees with Scripture!  God ordained your existence – He beheld your unformed substance and in His book were written all the days that were formed for you.  That means that God decided how many days you would live.  God’s intent was for each of those days to matter; each of those days are significant and filled with God’s love for you.

So our lives begin before we are born with God’s love filling our existence.  And then life happens.  There are many scenarios and places along the continuum of being honored and valued and being dishonored and discarded.  Some of us grow up surrounded by people who already believe that their lives don’t matter, and they pass on this belief by telling us that we don’t matter – that we aren’t worth much, that we are not worthy of their love and are therefore not worthy of God’s love.  They call us names and accuse us of things we don’t even understand until the day comes when we believe what they say.  We believe the names, the accusations, the warnings.  We believe that we deserve the abuse.  Worse case scenario, we end up like LaKeisha or those five shoplifters who are dead or in prison for life. 

However, many people don’t end up being worst case scenarios and yet they too live under the bondage of fear that their lives don’t matter.  This gets played out in many ways.  Some become underachievers.  They haven’t developed the coping skills to fully reach their potential, so they settle in a state of mediocrity.  Their behavior results in chronic underemployment and financial dependence.  And oftentimes they surround themselves with people like them, equally unsuccessful persons, who, while incapable of helping them to become all they can become, at least don’t diminish who they already are.  Their emotional and spiritual development plateaus in a pre-adulthood stage.  They hate the results of their low self-esteem, but would rather linger in mediocrity than to face the possibility of failure or to pay the price of reaching their full potential.  Being a responsible, mature adult emotionally, physically, relationally and spiritually has its cost, after all.

There are other ways in which this fear of not mattering gets played out, but I think you get the gist of what I’m saying.  Whether you respond to this fear by being an underachiever or an overachiever, an anxious, controlling person or apathetically passive, whether you hide behind a façade of narcissism and arrogance or let yourself be a punching bag for others, the root cause is the same.  And it is totally unnecessary.  The fear of not mattering is not only totally unnecessary it is also against the natural order – it is a violation of how God created you.  Even if you are at a point in your life where you feel like you’ve totally messed up your life, that you’ve wasted years of your life, that you are a burden rather than a blessing, and that no one would miss you if you were gone, even if you are as messed up as LaKeisha in that television court case, even then, what you’ve done to make you who you are isn’t the only thing that gives or diminishes value.  God determines your value, not you.  You were created in God’s image.  God ordained your life, numbered your days, and even knows how many hairs are on your head (even if you shave your head).  And as it says in the Gospel of Matthew, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.  And even the hairs of your head are all counted.  So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”  This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. (“Thanks be to God”)

Did you hear that? This is the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It’s not something that you saw on TV, or read in a fictional book, or heard a person say to you.  This is what CHRIST said.  And for you to counter His teaching and live as though your life doesn’t matter insults not only you, it insults God.  And THAT matters.  I don’t think any of us would intentionally insult God.  The question for us today is this: what are you going to do about it?  What are you going to do about your fear, or your living your life as though it doesn’t matter?  May you and I choose today to believe what the Psalmist wrote – that we are fearfully (awesomely) and wonderfully made, and live accordingly.  Let’s pray about these things.

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