Image of God – Youth Sunday (Will Corl)
Good morning everyone! My name is Will, I am a senior at the Central Florida Aerospace Academy, and I am the student connector for our youth group. Let us open with a word of prayer:
Hey God,
Today we thank you for bringing us here to experience how you are working within us and within our youth. I pray that we can all hear your good news spoken through myself and my fellow youth.
In your name, we pray,
Amen.
So, I’m going to be honest, I didn’t really know how to approach the concept of being “made in the image of God.” Sure, it’s stated in scripture several times, like in Genesis 1:27 “God created mankind in his own image,” but what does it mean? It’s inconceivable to think that all of us physically look like God, right? I’m going to revisit humanity being made in the image of God in a little bit, but first, let’s talk about what the image of God actually is.
So what is God’s image? It should be no surprise to you that God loves you. He loved you before you were born, he loves you at your worst, and at your best. He even loves you if you don’t love him. Scripture affirms this by saying this in Romans 8 verse 39: ”neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So, all this being said, I would say the image of God is love and unconditional love for humanity.
So going back to being made in the image of God, we can understand that humanity was made in the image of love. More importantly, we were made to reflect that image of love to the earth, to the people around us, and to ourselves. You may be thinking “Well I’m just one person, how am I supposed to take care of all of those things?” Well, my friend, it is actually very simple. Let’s start with loving the earth.
The earth was one of God’s first creations, along with the heavens. Literally, the first words in the bible are “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Humans were originally created to care for the earth in the form of Adam and Eve. Despite this, we continue to destroy our planet. I don’t want to go too far into this, but simply put the earth is God’s creation, and we were made to maintain and love it, not abuse and destroy it.
Aside from the earth, we should also love each other. And I don’t just mean love those next to us or those in the church, but those all over the earth. This seems like an impossible task, but the love of God perseveres, as described in the verse from Romans I mentioned earlier. An example of this is something I’ve experienced personally. Last summer, I went on a mission trip with some of my fellow youth and their families to Costa Rica. While we were there, we were tasked with running a sort of VBS for kids in the community we were in, Costa Rica is a Spanish-speaking country, and I don’t speak much Spanish. So, it’s safe to say there was a tiny bit of a language barrier. Despite this, with the help of a translator, of course, we were able to spread the love of God to the kids down there. But they also spread love to us. The communities we were in weren’t necessarily the best of places, and the organization we were working with in Costa Rica had been doing several projects to help people in their community. One of the families that they had helped in the past was attending the VBS my group was leading. The last day we were in town she told us her and her family’s story and how Pura Vida had helped them. She hugged each of us before we left and told us how much she loves us and how she could feel the love of God coming through us, as we could feel it coming from her. She said all of this in a language I didn’t understand. Sure, we had a translator, but the emotions can’t be translated. The love of God does not fit within the confines of language, it is universal, and it is made to be shared. She even gave us all a thank you note that was written by her in English. So next time you think you can’t spread love because you don’t think you can communicate with someone, whether it be because of language or other barriers, just know that the love of God will find a way. Also, remember the second commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
There’s a problem with this commandment, though. This commandment only works if you love yourself, which is the third way we should reflect the love of God, and also the one that hits the hardest for me personally, and it may hit hard for some of you as well About this time last year, I realized something was seriously wrong with my mental health. Everything that was stressing me out in life all seemed to pile on top of me in one single month, and it was taking a toll on me. Because of this, I started straying away from my friends and from the church, which is why I think it is incredibly important to take care of and love yourself. It may seem a little selfish to put yourself before others, but remember, you have to love your neighbor as yourself, which means you need to love yourself so you can love your neighbor. And like I said earlier, God will always love you, no matter what you’re going through. I did a message for the youth group a little while back and I shared a saying with them before the end of my message. The saying is “It’s okay to not be okay” and I feel like in this chaotic mess of a world it is very important to hear because, especially in today’s age, where we often criticize ourselves for not being enough or not being worthy. I experienced this personally about a year ago. I started to give myself more and more work that I just simply didn’t have enough time to do, and when I eventually couldn’t do it I got extremely critical of myself. And then because I was disappointed, I had less drive to do more work. So essentially my workload went through the roof and my drive to do that work dropped. This downward spiral took a toll on me, and like I said earlier, I started moving away and abandoning my friends and my church. I also started to have really bad anxiety about what would happen, thinking I would be letting people down if I didn’t get these things done, thinking I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere in life if I couldn’t complete these simple tasks. And then I broke. I remember having a panic attack in my bathroom, I couldn’t breathe and it felt like my mind was moving so fast that I couldn’t keep up. In my darkest moment, the love of God shined through. It was around this time that people around me started to notice what was wrong and started
help me by taking some of the weight off of my shoulders, which helped tremendously. It was then that I could see the problem, and realized that I couldn’t do it all, and that was okay. I started to see a psychiatrist, and now I have medication that helps me. Even though I still sometimes feel like I can’t do all that I’ve promised, I’ve learned that saying no is okay if it means I can make myself more available to share the love of God.
This being said, we want to give you the opportunity to let go of these negative thoughts. When you walked into the service today, you should have been given a piece of paper. On this piece of paper, write down something that has been holding you back from feeling like you were made in the image of God. For example, based on my story I would write down “Perfectionism” or “People Pleasing.” Then, with that piece of paper, you’re going to come up to one of the stations around the room, similar to how we do communion on the first Sunday of the month. When you walk up, place your paper in the bowl of water being held by a student. When you place this piece of paper into the bowl of water, pay attention to how it dissolves. It’s gone. It’s no more. The thing that’s been holding you back has disappeared. Next to the student holding the water, there will be a student holding a mirror. We ask that you take a second to look into this mirror and acknowledge that you were made in the image of God. We pray today that you leave behind anything that has made you feel as if you were not a reflection of him. Now I would like to end in prayer:
Dear God,
I pray today that we can all leave behind what’s been holding us back. I pray that we can all realize the greatness of your love, and that we can be a reflection of that love. Lord, I pray that everyone in this room can leave this place today without the guilt, shame, or any other emotions holding them back from feeling loved by you. Today Lord, we thank you for making us in your beautiful image of love, and again I pray that we can all be beacons of that love.
In your name, we pray,
Amen.