DO I MATTER?

NICOLE MILLER

DIRECTOR OF GIRLS’ MINISTRIES

QUESTIONS:

What messages about your value as a girl have you picked up from the following:• American pop culture?

• American Christian culture?

• Other cultures?

• Who are you? Do you know? Take a moment to come up with three words to describe yourself.

• Tell me, the words you wrote are they positive or negative? Did you know that God only has positive words for you? The person you are is the person God wants you to be.

Some Content on this page was prepared by Dr. Christy Hill

BIBLICAL MESSAGES:

Genesis 1:26-31:

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

IMAGE OF GOD

Genesis 1:26-31:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness . . .

IMAGE OF GOD:

The Hebrew word selem (image) in other places in the Bible refers to “actual forms and shapes of idols (1 Sam. 6:5, 11) and reliefs (Ezek. 23:14).” It can also refer to a copy (like an embossed engraving) where an indelible mark is left on a pliable material. Humans were intended to give shape to the immaterial and invisible God of creation. It seems that God wants to reveal Himself through human beings.

Allen Ross, Creation & Blessing (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996), 112.

Some Content on this page was prepared by Dr. Christy Hill

God’s first plan and purpose for us was to be His Image to the world, we get to actually represent God to other people, just because He created us to do so:

• We should ask ourselves what am I doing to fulfill His purpose for me, what am I doing to be His image-bearer? How do I do this?

• Do I believe that God’s plan for me as his image-bearer is better than my own plan for myself?

• How does the way I define my purpose in relationship to God oppose the world’s message of personhood?

Some Content on this page was prepared by Dr. Christy Hill

MY PURPOSE AS A GIRL:

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

• God did not create a unisex human being

• When the male was by himself, it “was not good”

• When the male and female were together it was “very good.”

• Men and women are both dignified with being made in God’s image—some suggest that it is in relationship to the other (not just as individuals) that we image God.

• Adam is created from the ground– first, alone, incomplete and given the task to name (rule) the animals and take care of the garden

• Eve is created after Adam, formed from him (not the ground), the completer and helper.

Some Content on this page was prepared by Dr. Christy Hill

The woman is the perfect counterpart of man, possessing neither inferiority nor superiority, but being like and equal in personhood, and unique and different in function. (Ge 2:18) emphasizes man’s need for a companion, a helper, and an equal. He was incomplete without someone to complement him in fulfilling the task of filling, multiplying, and taking dominion over the earth. This points to Adam’s inadequacy, not Eve’s insufficiency. Woman was made by God to meet man’s deficiency.

From: http://www.preceptaustin.org/hebrew_word_study_on_help.htm#ezer

Some Content on this page was prepared by Dr. Christy Hill

EVE AS EZER

• Eve=“ezer”

• References to God as “ezer”

• Ex. 18:4; • Deut. 33:7; • 1 Sam. 7:12; • Ps. 20:2, 33:20, 46:1, 115:9

Some Content on this page was prepared by Dr. Christy Hill

“The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God Himself, when you need Him to come through for you desperately.

Most of the contexts are life and death, by the way, and God is your only hope. Your ezer. If He is not there beside you…you are dead. A better translation therefore of ezer would be ‘lifesaver.’ Kenegdo means alongside, or opposite to, a counterpart.

You see, the life of God calls us to is not a safe life. Ask Joseph, Abraham, Moses, Deborah, Esther–any of the friends of God from the Old Testament. Ask Mary or Lazarus; ask Peter, James, and John; ask Priscilla and Aquila–any of the friends of God in the New Testament. God calls us to a life involving frequent risks and many dangers. Why else would we need Him to be our ezer? You don’t need a lifesaver if your mission is to be a couch potato. You need an ezer when your life is in constant danger…That longing in the heart of a woman to share life together as a great adventure–that comes straight from the heart of God, who also longs for this. He does not want to be an option in our lives. He does not want to be an appendage, a tagalong. Neither does any woman. God is essential. He wants us to need Him–desperately. Eve is essential. She has an irreplaceable role to play. And so you’ll see that women are endowed with fierce devotion, an ability to suffer great hardships, a vision to make the world a better place.

A woman is not here merely to complete a man, and therefore a single woman is somehow missing her destiny…It is God who longs to be our ezer…You are the image bearer of this God. This is why you long for these things too. There is a radiance hidden in your heart that the world desperately needs.”

From: Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge (pp. 31-33

DAUGHTER OF THE KING

1 John 3:1

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him

YOU ARE KNOWN:

Psalm 139:13-16For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

YOU ARE FORGIVEN:

Colossians 2:13-14When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.

NEW CREATION:

2 Corinthians 5:17-21Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.