The 5-Minute Reminder That You Matter

I'm going out to eat worms , big fat , juicy ones , a little short , skinny ones , I'm going out to eat worms .

Now , that's a really gross little song , but it's also a very real depiction of how we feel sometimes when things just aren't going right , when we think everybody's angry with us and we're struggling to get through our day and it seems like bad stuff just keeps happening , nobody's happy with us and we don't even like ourselves .

Unfortunately , many of us feel like that at different times and we really struggle with feeling accepted and feeling loved . I came across a story about a man named August Christian Kilpatrick . Everybody called him Augie .

When he was only five , his father passed away and his mother , unable to care for her children , placed them in the Charleston Orphan House in Charleston , south Carolina . Every Saturday , prospective parents would come and the boys would scramble for their best clothes , wanting to look good , hoping that they would be chosen .

The parents would look over their freshly scrubbed boys and would call one out by name Ricky , I choose you or Johnny , I choose you . And every Saturday Augie would hope to hear his name called , but it never was . Week after week , year after year , from the time he was five until he was twelve , augie watched other boys come and go , but he was never chosen .

Finally , when he was twelve , his mother had scraped up enough money to take all the children out of the orphanage , that is all except Augie . He begged her to please take him home too , but for reasons that no one ever knew , she left Augie there . He didn't get out until he was 14 .

And by then he was an angry young man , a fighter , and , as you can imagine , he didn't feel very good about himself . He was the boy that nobody wanted . Augie went on to fight in World War II and after he got home he went to college on the GI Bill . And then Jesus got a hold of Augie and he committed his life to God .

He felt a call into the ministry and went into seminary , pastored churches and then , in 1961 , he became the first chaplain in Vietnam On Christmas Day 1969 , Augie had one of those spiritual experiences that are hard to explain or define . He saw something .

He saw a vision of a little five-year-old boy named Augie Kilpatrick standing in line , like he had stood so many times before at the orphan house , and he saw a father , father , god , reach down and scoop him up and put him in his lap and wrap his arms around him and say Augie , I choose you , I choose you .

It changed his life and for the first time , augie Kilpatrick knew that he was chosen and he truly believed that God loved him and that he really mattered Over . In the book of Ephesians , chapter 1 , verses 4 and 5 , it says even before he made the world , god loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes .

God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ . This is what he wanted to do and it gave him great pleasure . Through Jesus Christ , this is what he wanted to do and it gave him great pleasure .

You see , god does say to each one of us I choose you , you're my child , holy , blameless in my sight , and I have a plan and destiny for you , and I've adopted you to be my own . That really is what God says to each one of us , and he's saying it to you this morning .

If you're feeling like nobody loves me , everybody hates me , I'm going out to eat worms . I want to remind you this morning that God loves you and that he's for you and that he's with you . I hope you have a wonderful day , my friends , knowing that you are loved and that God really truly cares about you . Take care and we will talk again tomorrow .

Thank you for listening today and I invite you to join me Monday to Friday , right here on Starting Right , with Danny Mac .