“Thin place” are moments where heaven and earth collide and, for a moment, we experience God. Our hearts long for thin place moments, but we can’t create them. We can only position ourselves to recognize and experience them. This week as we continue in this series, author of the book, “Thin Places,” Tim Bohlke reminds us that God is already moving in our lives through thin places, we just have to be alert in order to not miss them.

Whether you fully believe this or not, your heart aches for thin place moments; moments where your heart and soul come alive, moments where heaven and earth collide and moments where you experience God. You can’t help but long for these moments because they are ingrained in you. Why? Because God created you that way, with the hard wiring to long for his presence. But no matter how hard we try to experience these moments, we will never experience them if we are not positioned correctly. So what do we do?

Since the beginning of time, humans have offered their crops, their animals, even their children as sacrifices to the gods. Why? Two thousand years ago, in a shocking reversal, God offered a sacrifice to us. His Son Jesus. So what now? How should we respond to this?

The Apostle Paul said to “do good…be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share (1 Timothy 6:17-18). This week, we move into the final component of our Be Rich Initiative, which is to LOVE. But what does love require of us? According to Jesus the answer is simple; to love others just has he first loved us. Simple right?

The name “Be Rich” comes from 1 Timothy 6 in which Paul tells Timothy: “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share” (1 Timothy 6:17-18). This week, we're talking about how we can be rich by being generous with our time, in the way we SERVE others.

Chances are that if you’re reading this, you are in the 1% club. By international standards, you’re rich! This week, we're talking about what it truly means to "be rich" as we kick off our annual Be Rich initiative where we Give, Serve, and Love.

A deception all of us tend to believe is that success will bring fulfillment and happiness. We try to measure up, thinking that if we could perform and meet certain standards, we would feel good about ourselves and find our value and worth. We believe we have to earn our worth. Thus, we get caught in the performance trap – I must perform to certain standards to feel good about myself. When we believe this about ourselves; about our self-worth, Satan’s distortion of truth is often reflected in our attitudes, behaviors and feelings. But through Jesus, we have been justified and made righteous in God’s eyes and are fully pleasing to him.

Whether we know it or not, success or failure is often our primary basis for evaluating our self-worth. If success, worthy. If failure, unworthy. And so consciously or unconsciously, we live a life of trying to avoid failure. Which leads us to playing the blame game. Whenever someone fails, we point an accusing finger. When we fail, we search for a reason, a culprit, or a scapegoat. Why? Because we don’t understand God’s unconditional love and grace. We believe the lie that when we fail, we are unworthy of love and deserved to be punished. Whether the accusations are focused on ourselves or others, because we believe that with failure comes condemnation and with condemnation comes due punishment.

We spend so much of our time building relationships, striving to please people and win their approval and respect. And yet, after all of our sincere, conscientious efforts, it takes only one unappreciative word from someone to ruin our sense of self-worth. Why is that? It is because we are living according to the lie that I must be approved by certain others to feel good about myself. But basing our self-worth on what we believe others think of us will cause us to become addicted to their approval. And this is dangerous. Our acceptance and worth are not dependent on others’ acceptance of us, even if they are fellow followers of Jesus! Whether they accept us or not, we are still deeply loved, completely forgiven, fully pleasing, totally accepted, and complete in Christ. And He alone is the final authority on our worth and acceptance.

From the moment we are born, we find ourselves searching to satisfy some inner and unexplained yearning; to feel good about ourselves, to know who we are, our true identify, and ultimately, our worth. But if we base our worth on past failures, dissatisfaction with personal appearance, or bad habits, we often develop a false belief; I am what I am, I cannot change. I am hopeless. I am a shameful person. When we have a distorted view of ourselves, we will never fully experience the peace and freedom that only comes from God.