Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.
How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
Psalm 139:16-17
Wanted. It is an innate concept we learn early on in our lives. When we are young, we want our parents. We want them to hold us, rock us, feed us, kiss us, and snuggle us. As we grow, there are needs that we have that must be met, however, there is also this yearning to be wanted. Accepted. Loved. Cared for. Not everyone gets to be wanted by people. Some will grow up without parents to care for them. Some will grow up in foster care bouncing from one unloving home to another. Some will spend their days waiting to be adopted. Some will deal with the feeling of being unwanted by their peers, outcasts. Some will deal with finding love in all the wrong places. We all must face being unwanted in our lives, no matter the form it takes.
Let’s take a look at the story of Joseph. You can find his powerful life story in the book of Genesis starting in chapter 37. Born into a large family of boys, he was always a son that stood out. A favorite of his fathers’. But not for long. Once he began receiving dreams and a calling from God, all that changed. We’ve all had that in our lives, haven’t we? We start to do well in life, then people move in and begin to try to tear you down. Well, that’s what happened in Joseph’s case anyways. His brothers grew jealous of him, his father began to resent him, and slowly his life seemed to turn to shambles. It began when his own brothers threw him into a pit to die, but then they came to their senses and instead of leaving him to die, they decide to sell him into slavery, how kind, right? Then, once he was bought by the Pharaoh, Potiphar and was taken to work in his home, he is seduced by Potiphar’s wife and like the good man he was, he refused to buy into her schemes, so Potiphar had him thrown into prison after his wife lied and told her Pharaoh husband that Joseph tried to seduce her. But once there, Joseph was still using his talents and gifts that God gave him to interpret dreams. Potiphar’s dreams. So, in the end, Joseph was placed as head over the people as an authority. You see, Joseph may not have been wanted by his own family, but through his entire life God wanted him. God saw the potential that no one else understood. God took Joseph from a pit and through some trials placed him in a place of authority in the Pharaoh’s palace. Did this happen overnight? No. Did Joseph enjoy being an outcast? I’m sure he did not. But God was there with him through everything.
There is a God who wanted you so badly he carved you into existence. You were thought up and beautifully created by a Kind who thought this world would not be enough without you in it. Jeremiah 29:11 tells us “For I know the thoughts I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” He knows what you did or didn’t do. He knows who hurt you. He knows who you hurt. He knows it all. And all he wants is for you to know that YOU ARE WANTED. By Him. The King of kings and Lord of lords. He wants all of you. All the ugly, broken bits that you feel could never create anything beautiful. He wants every doubt inside of you so that he can forgive and forget them. He wants us to be free. To know that we are loved and accepted by him. To know that if we let him be our everything, we will never want for anything again. Just like Joseph, we will run into people in our lives who will be jealous, hate, dislike, cast us out, and not want us. But in spite of all of that, we will still come out richer in the end by choosing God. You may feel alone in this life, but you have a God that will go through any length just to have you know he is there and will always be there.
This world is full of broken, hurt people who will try to have company by bringing you down with them. Don’t let them. Speak life. Speak truth. Surround yourself by those who share that with you. Be a light to others who may be struggling with the obsession of being accepted by everyone. No one will have everyone like them, but if you have a few good people who love you and a God that holds you up, you can accomplish beautiful things. Be a Joseph. Keep going when the going gets tough. Listen to God above the noise of others. Let his voice be the guide to your life. And one day, when you least expect it, you will look back and see the trail of all the life jackets God has thrown out to you in your sea of supposed loneliness. Even when we don’t see him, he is with us. Holding us up. We are wanted. Thank God for that today. Then, go out into this world and be one of the good ones, the ones who show love to someone and make them feel wanted because having a friend or two along this journey isn’t a bad idea. Just keep God in first place. You are wanted.
He gives us Roots so we can Fly. Roots and Wings.