Check Your Price Tag

by Jessica LaGrone

Wish you could sing like her or dance like that? Wonder what you would look like if only you had long legs or straight hair? Think there is too much around your middle or too little elsewhere?   

Think about it, how do we even consider that we are too fat or too thin unless we have someone to compare ourself to? And how would we know if we were rich or poor unless we were using what someone else had as a standard. The problem with constantly comparing ourselves and competing with others is we either come out on top (and we feel superior and prideful) or we find ourselves sinking to the bottom of the heap.

If you went into a store and tried to pick out the thing that was the most valuable, the thing that had the greatest value, chances are you would go around looking at the price tags until you found the one with the highest price written on it. The price we pay for something determines how much value we place on it. So, if you want to know your value there’s no need to look around at other people. If you want to know your value, you just need to check your price tag. 

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. You have been bought with a price. 

-1 Corinthians 6:20

Did you catch that? You have already been bought and you have already been paid for. And the price paid for you was the life of God’s son, Jesus. If you had been worth any less than that do you think he would have paid the ultimate price for you? And if God considers you to be worth this much, who are you to start discounting yourself? 

Your price tag does not say ‘marked down.’ It does not say ‘damaged; sell as is.’ It does not say ‘great bargain.’ Look closely, your price tag says this, ‘Bought with a price. Loved by God. Exchanged for the life of his son, and now occupied as his temple.’ You are unique and beautiful, fearfully and wonderfully made. You were lost to sin, but you were bought back at a premium. That’s the greatest price ever paid. When God created you, he did so in his image. That’s something you can’t say about anything else in all of creation. He even breathed his breath into you, his spirit, showing you that there is a place in you that he will always want to occupy. God alone wants to be the one to fill you up. 

God loves you, not because you were the “most” of anything or the “best” of anything, simply because you are his. You are his child. You are his daughter. All those little quirks about you, he designed those. All those flaws. He knows about them. He loves you in spite of that. All of the magnificence that he put within you he admires and smiles about that every day. Check your price tag. It’s not worth comparing yourself to the gifts in others and ignoring the gifts that he place in you.

Based on Broken and Blessed, Jessica's new Bible study on the book of Genesis. For ordering information, click here.

Jessica LaGrone is an Associate Pastor at The Woodlands United Methodist Church in The Woodlands, Texas. An acclaimed preacher, teacher, and author. Jessica enjoys speaking at retreats and events at churches throughout the United States. She and her husband, Jim, have two young children, Drew and Kate.