If I don't have significance to myself, why would I have significance to God? In West Side Story, Steven Sondheim penned these words,
"When you’re a Jet,
You’re a Jet all the way
From your first cigarette
To your last dyin’ day."

When I first attended college, I was a green kid from a missionary outpost in South America. I'd been largely protected from violence, mayhem, and gang membership. Though my parents made lots of mistakes, as I do while parenting today, they brought me up to love the Lord. As a Christian, I knew that my significance and self esteem came from God in my head, but I had never learned how to move that center of knowledge to a personal confidence. I was a Child of God, while acting like a child of the world.

Upon getting married, much of that changed when I was brouight up short by the need to make a living, and while existing in somewhat mean circumstances, my wife and I learned from some very hard knocks, what significance meant to ourselves, as well as our parents.

When you fight for someone besides yourself, you reveal that not only do you care about a second person, but you expose the fact that you care about the soul within the frame of your body. You're using the strength from God to provide food and drink to a family. Finding the daily grind unrelenting, you make a choice to give up and live in public welfare, or you put shoulder to the wheel, and try to move yourself and loved ones on down the road. Confidence becomes reality when you start believing what you are saying, that confession of your status in Jesus yields firmness of purpose and living as if you now know you have life, not just mouthing the phrases.

God is faithful, therefore I know with certainty that I can be and need to be faithful to myself and to my family, my job, my place in this world. God is full of compassion, therefore I can love otherse. I can love, because I am loved!

Lord, teach us to live with purpose as you have loved each of us!