God’s special personal creation

1. To the King of Heavens, all glory and honor and worship is due. I had the privilege of playing in the streets and in the fields, and I belong to that generation who grew up among the children who played in the neighborhood. I used to make my own dolls since there weren’t any at that time. We made them using ice cream sticks, we made the legs, the arms and we dressed them out of cloths that were left over. For us, it was a great blessing to grow up in this way. 3 Sundays ago, Pastor Gail said that God had created us in His image – what a huge difference between how God made us and the dolls that I used to make. The dolls I made had no life in them, I had to move their arms, and even later, when the wind-up dolls were around, I had to wind her up so that she could clap her hands.
2. But even though God made us out of clay, He created something wonderful. He bent down and breathed life into us from His own life. And I was thinking about how God made us in His own image and likeness, God created us to be inspired, because He is inspirational and has inspiration. God has created us with creativity, because He is the creator. He created us to be communicative, because He is communicative. We are special creations. We are people of whom God has taken very special care of. He chose that we should be like Him. I also thought that after so many years, so many centuries, it is so wonderful that God continues to want us to communicate with Him and with one another.
3. We live in a very chaotic world. In a world where the moral values are very different, we hear voices which many times confuse us, and to go along paths which are different from those which we want to follow. We hear voices telling us that we need to be successful, to be wealthy, you must do important things. We get upset, believing that we are not of great value. But God says, that, “I have made you with special care”. In Jeremiah 1: 5 ESV, it says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
4. God created us having a very special plan in His mind, for each one of us individually. Recently, we had to travel to Cyprus, and we took the family’s new baby with us. We have to have a passport issued for her, where she had to have her thumb print taken. And I thought, how many billions of people there are on earth today, not one of us has the same thumb print as another, not one. For each and everyone of us, God has an individual separate plan. Many of us, even as Christians, we have in our minds, and what I’m saying is not bad to be like one another as Christians, but we see other people and we want to do exactly the same as they do, to imitate them, but truly I say to you, that God has created us as something different for Himself. His plan for each and everyone of us is different, and He wants us to walk in our own shoes, in our own way, in our own plan, which He has made for us.
5. I know people in the church, whose aim is to pray 3 times a day, and they achieve this. I have seen people whose aim is to praise God. But the best thing that each and everyone of us need to do is to find our place in the Church where God has prepared for us in the Body of Christ. God has called each one of us separately by name. When He called me, saying that, “Leto, I want you to work for Me”, my calling was for me and not for Victor. When He called Stavro, the calling was not the same as mine. When God called Brian, it wasn’t the same calling as Evy’s. In some things, we will be the same, because people have eyes, and mouth, and nose, and eyebrows, and hands and feet, but when we are on God’s Road, each one of us is an individual person, with a separate calling and great value in the Kingdom of God. We are God’s children, we’re the ones who have access to the Holy of Holies, we have a right to the inheritance to the Kingdom of heaven.
6. A few days ago, it was the anniversary of when we left our houses and our village in Cyprus. It was a difficult day for me, full of emotions and thoughts, but when I placed my eyes on Christ, and I saw that He has called me for a special reason, I said, “Lord, I have a home in heaven, which is waiting for me there, and it is shining and beautiful, it’s a home that You have made for me, because You have called me for a specific reason, a special goal and whatever I’ve gone through or will go through on this earth, so that I will become what You want me to be”. Your love is beyond all thoughts and nothing can separate us from Your love. Depth, height, powers and authorities, archangels – what can separate us from Your love Lord?  Nothing and nobody. Your love has formed me specially, You have drawn me on Your hands, You loved me so much, Lord, that You have me drawn on Your hands. Your plan, Lord, was to give Your Son for me.
7. I like the part that says, that God has created us as living stones so that we can be built upon a living stone. He didn’t say on bricks, He says stones and I love this very much. Because, each stone has a different shape, a different size, and for them to fit together, they have to somehow rub against each other, and since my grandfather was a builder, I used to see that he would put something like clay between the stones so that they could hold together. We are stones which rub against each other, but God glues us together with His love. He wants to make us a bright building. He wants us to be what other people see and say to God’s glory and even though each one of us has their own calling and their own gifting, we need to put this all together, to join all these, to place them under the love of God, and this church of God, must become a fortress, a wall against the enemy, a place where the truth of God is praised. So, when we hear voices, as I said earlier that we are not valuable or that we must imitate someone else, let’s remember that God has made each and every one of us different, given us different giftings and gifts; with different fingerprints. On our Identity Cards that we are Christians, the fingerprint of God, is different for each one of us.
8. I cannot do what you can do, but I can help you in what you do. I cannot give those things that you give, Evy. But I can help you in your gifting. Each one of us, is independent but very joined between us. Nobody will force you to do anything, but we will always remind you and you will remind us, that God has created us very special, that He has called us for a specific reason, that He has called us through the ages, to build His Church, and to give glory to Him. This is the ultimate aim. When you doubt that you belong somewhere, when you doubt that you are valuable, when you think that no one cares about you, remember this, ‘That He knows you, better than anybody else’. Sometimes we say, Ah, I know you very well, it’s as if I gave birth to you, but no one knows you better than God, because He created you, and He says that you are valuable, that you belong, that someone cares about you, and that somebody is taking care of you.
9. God will never forsake us, never ever. I think it’s in 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him”. I was thinking about it – ‘What is it that God Has?’ Last time Pastor Gail said, that the only good one is God. And in God we can find faithfulness; what a wonderful thing it is to grow in faithfulness. To become more and more faithful every day. To believe more and more in God every day. And every day, people should trust us more and more. God is tranquil, what a nice thing it is to be polite before God, and to allow this politeness to grow inside us. And when I speak to Lars, I speak to him politely. When I speak to Sarah, I speak politely, and to grow in politeness.
10. God has goodness, and this goodness of God, must increase inside us. We need to be good before Him, as well as being good before people. Our only example, our only strong and living example, is Christ, who loved us so much, that He heard His Father, who had so much goodness inside of Him, that he accepted to go to the cross for us and He did it with meekness, He didn’t shout, He didn’t complain, but He did it because He loved us. I left love till last, because for me it plays a very important role for us. A lot of people say that we came to Christ because we weren’t loved on this earth.
11. I was the first grandchild in the family, I grew up with lots of love, I had wonderful childhood years, I had exceptional friends, but when I went down on my knees and asked Christ to touch me, His love was incomparable to any other earthly love. I felt like I was melting, my whole being melted like a candle and up to now, whatever may be happening, because there are times when I feel angry, or disappointment, what always keeps me, is this love of God, the touch that He gave me that day, saying to me, “Yes, I want you. I welcome you in My Kingdom, you are a child of Mine”. I will never forget this, nobody can steal it away from me, no matter what voices I hear, whatever people may say, because people can say many things you know, but today, if you doubt as to who you are, where you’re going, if you have any value, ask of God to help you, first of all to trust Him, even I must trust in Him. To trust His Word, because His word is full of ‘who you are before God’, of ‘how much God loves you’, of ‘how much He cares for you’, and when we place ourselves in His hands, even if we don’t believe how much value we have, He says, “My grace is sufficient for you, you’re in My hands, and I will never leave you nor forsake you, because you are very value to Me, because for you, I gave My Son”.
12. Ask God today, that you may become the person, whom God created you to be. Because all of us have been created for a wonderful and miraculous reason and aim. And for us to be sitting in these chairs here today, for me, every Sunday, assures me that I have a hope and a future, because every Sunday, here, I am at my Father’s table, and I receive from Him, and I give to Him, and one day, with the angels above, I would like to say ‘Lord here am I’. “I will never leave you; I will hold you in My hands”. Whatever you may be thinking today, He is holding you in His hands. And as Pastor Gail said this morning, we may not be sufficient by ourselves, but when we’re in His hands, we become more than enough. May God bless you; may He keep you well, and we must always remember that He will never leave us nor forsake us, and that He loved us with a perfect love. Amen.