You Matter to God – Kirk Cameron

You Matter to God
A good life is the ability to pursue happiness, to worship God, and to pursue His ways that lead to our blessings! Man is valuable and precious to God and has the right to live, to have liberty, to pursue happiness, and to have property. You are important to God and He wants these blessings for you!

With a country divided, the Republican risk and morality being redefined, it’s time to gather round a camp fire, get back to basics, and spark the revival that this country so desperately needs.
This is the American Camp Fire revival with Cook Cameron.
It’s great to be with you again, and, uh, we’re continuing to to go through this this book that a friend of mine wrote called the American Covenant.
I know a lot of you were trying to find that book and, uh, just just hold on.
Hold on for about 10 days. He’s he’s updating it.
And, uh, getting a few things in order with some extra chapters, some special features, and you’re really gonna love the updated version once it comes out.
So I’m in a friend’s house here in Montecito And, uh, this has been just a great time because I’ve been talking with a friend named Dean Wilson, and and, uh, he runs a TV show called The Good Life.
In fact, I got a I got a mug here that says, the good life.
And, you know, we’ve been talking about the good life for the last 20 days together.
What is the good life that we enjoy here in America? Well, I’ll tell you what it’s about.
It’s about life, about liberty, and about the pursuit of happiness.
I mean, you come here and and life is honored and valued.
It should be. We have liberty.
That’s why people are are breaking down the door to get in here. And the ability to pursue happiness.
That is to to to to worship god and to pursue his ways that lead to our blessing.
Provide for our families and and and enjoy the blessing of god’s goodness.
And, I’m I’m reading in the next chapter here of this book and and and and it’s pointing out such an important thing.
You know, this whole concept of of the good life of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that is a very rare and precious thing, and it’s unique to the Christian view of man.
Now he I I wanna really unpack this for you.
You see, for for 1000 and 1000 years, the pagan view of man, the the the non Christian, the non biblical view of man is very different than this idea that man is is valuable and precious to god and and has the right to live and the right to liberty and the right to pursue happiness and have property.
That’s a very biblical concept. You don’t get that out of Marxism.
You don’t get that out of socialism, communism.
Even the evolutionary worldview doesn’t provide for those those values and virtues that you and I treasure.
Throughout history, the individual person is not so important.
Fact that you’re part of the big thing that’s important that mattered to the kings and the emperors.
The individual person is just like Well, think of it like this.
The individual subject of a kingdom or or a citizen of a nation was submerged into their tribe or their nation, and their uniqueness was not valued.
In fact, they were just a little tiny cog in the machine, but there’s millions more.
And so if you get snuffed out, if you’re not there, that doesn’t matter because there’s millions more to replace you.
And you become as anonymous as a grain of sand, but not to god.
God and his word has a completely different view of you as an individual.
In fact, when god made the world, He says in the very beginning of the story of history history is his story, and we read in the Bible in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth And he created, I like to say this this triple decker universe.
Like, think of it like a three story house.
So if you can visualize this, uh, You’ve got the upper chambers here of the sky, the heavens.
You’ve also got the the the main floor, if you will, of the land, and you’ve got the basement or the sea beneath the land.
That’s kinda how god lays it out when he describes the world.
And in this three story house, He fills all three stories with the sun and the moon and the stars and the birds of the air.
And in the land, you’ve got the animals, the creeping crawling things, the cattle, the plants, everything.
And then in the sea, you got the the swimming creatures.
And then god makes a special creature separate from the rest.
This isn’t a a a a fish that grew legs.
This isn’t an overarching worm, uh, you know, or or or anything like that.
This is a creature that he made in his own image.
This is a creature that would bear the the very image of his creator And he called him man, and he gave him a beautiful place to live.
He’s in a garden, much like kind of what I’m in right now.
And then he gave him a great job, and he’s and and and you read the story, and he’s he’s he’s given the task of naming all of the animals.
He’s He’s categorizing them. And so as you can imagine, here is Adam Mann in the garden, and he’s naming the cats and the dogs and the birds and the cattle and the sheep and the goats.
And and I like to think that, no doubt, he was noticing there were some differences between some of the animals and other animals, not just in their kinds, but in their, well, some of them were male dogs and some were female dogs.
Right? Some were male, uh, goats and others were female goats. Let let me ask you a question.
What do you think must have dawned on him after about 10 minutes of this categorizing process?
I don’t know. I’m just guessing he may have asked the question.
Where where’s the girl? Where’s Everybody else has a counterpart.
Where’s where’s where’s where’s mine? And that’s the point in the story where god says it is not good that Adam is alone.
And then he drops him into a deep sleep that opens up his side, removes some flesh or or a rib, and creates another creature, a woman, and closes Adam back up and then brings her to him.
And then Adam opens his eyes Can you imagine the thrill that must have filled that man’s heart when he saw Eve?
In all of her glory. I mean, talk about an upgrade from the sheep and the goats. Right?
And and and her I mean, she was beautiful.
And you know what made the whole thing so magical, so beautiful, and romantic There was no Heather, no Janet, no Jane, only Eve.
She was the only woman on the planet for him, literally, and he couldn’t have been happier.
Think about that.
And he was the only man for her, and they knew that they were god’s perfect design for one another.
And then god told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, right, to to, uh, to have lots of babies.
And then to Take dominion or to govern or to order and beautify and cultivate all that god had made.
He’d put them in charge of everything.
He made the male and female and put them in charge to govern all of god’s creation and to take care of it.
That right there tells us so much about the value that god places on a man and on a woman.
He didn’t create a a a a government of a nation in that garden. He didn’t even create a church.
He created individuals a man and a woman, and he created the family.
And through that family, would be god’s plan of heavenizing the earth.
As they subdued it and beautified it and took all of the raw wild, uh, materials that god had made and began to order them after the patterns of heaven.
What a great story. God values the individual.
And god also values the caring of his creation.
I wrote down here that, God’s first words to his highest creation created in his image were to comprehensively care for his creation.
Let me ask you a question. Is that command still enforced today.
Are you and I right now, wherever you are, uh, are are in in Montecito, California or in Ohio or Florida, Texas or North Carolina, wherever you are, are you and I, as creatures made in the image of god, still responsible for caring for his creation.
Yes. We are. In fact, he repeated that command to Noah after he got off the arc.
Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth. Take dominion over all of these things.
If that’s true, then you and I cannot escape The responsibility for the condition that the world’s in right now.
This is our job. But what happened?
We keep reading the story and we find out that man lost sight of the value of individual people and started to oppress his neighbor instead of loving his neighbor.
He began to enslave his neighbor in steal from his neighbor.
You see right out of the gates, Kane kills Abel. He kills his brother.
And then they start realizing that rather than killing my brother, I can make my brother my slave and have him work for me.
And losing the value for the individual person man in his own selfishness started to enslave other individuals.
And then instead of caring for the creation that god had entrusted to him. What does he do?
Well, in his selfishness, he starts to twist and pervert the command and starts endless wars in order to take the land and the gold and the goods of god’s creation that he is supposed to be stewarding and caring for and using to bless his neighbor.
This is the great big problem that we find ourselves in today.
We’ve gotten away from god’s value of you and your and your family members and your neighbors as individuals created in his image, and we’ve gotten away from caring for his creation.
Some people might be interested in caring for the climate or caring for polluted waters, and that’s great.
But all of god’s creation includes caring for the arts, For politics and government, we have civil civic responsibilities, caring for our marriages, caring for our families, caring for business, caring for national defense, caring for the church, all of it’s part of god’s creation.
None of it is outside of the realm of what god has called us to take care of.
This is this is a big responsibility.
And then what did what did man do even worse than than than not caring for individual people and not caring for his creation, then man turns his back on god himself and forgets about god and then creates his own false gods and begins to worship those made out of wood and steel and stone.
I mean, this is just a a a story that goes from bad to worse.
God starts with Adam. Things didn’t go well.
He didn’t govern himself under god’s principles, either did Noah.
Ultimately, that went from bad to worse.
Then godpixa individual named Abraham and says We’re gonna do this differently.
And I’m paraphrasing, but through Abraham and through his wife, God was going to give birth to a brand new nation of individuals who would share the faith of Abraham and through that family through that nation, god would use them to reconcile The reconcile all of mankind back into a right relationship with him.
And he would do it by faith. And he gave them everything that they needed to accomplish the mission.
He gave them his laws he gave them how to do family, how to do church, and even more than that, he gave his own presence He gave his own presence to this man and this woman and to their descendants, who, by the way, he said would would be more numerous than the stars in the sky.
More numerous than the grains of sand on the shores, and none of them would be anonymous.
God would know each one of them personally individually uniquely. That’s why he knows you.
That’s why he knows me. We’re part of the family of faith.
If we have the faith of Abraham and god values you individually as a treasure, That’s the Bible’s view of the good life, knowing god, enjoying him forever, knowing why you’re here and playing your role well on the stage of the world, right now because now is when he’s called us out on the stage to act in love and kindness and courage.
And we can have confidence that the author of this story knows how to make sure that the good guys win.
So great to be with you again tonight, and I’m gonna pick up again tomorrow in the next chapter of, the American covenant because the story is getting really, really good.
And and I hope that you will share this stuff with your kids and with your neighbors.
And if you have neighbors who’ve not yet joined us around the campfire, uh, consider inviting them.
You know, this isn’t too churchy. Right? I’m in the backyard with the campfire.
This is, uh, about the fact that we love our country.
We’re not getting getting getting weird in saying that America is some chosen nation or it’s a chosen race of people or a certain denomination of of Christianity?
No. We’re saying people who turn their hearts fully to god will find him because he will reveal himself to them, just like he did to you and me.
And that’s what we need.
We need to be a nation of individuals who recognize that god is in control He loves us and he has a plan not only for our our our own lives, but for our families and for our nation.
Thanks so much. Thanks so much for for joining me again tonight. God bless you guys.
Keep praying for each other. Check out the comments, and, Hope you’ll make this a regular part of your schedule like I am.
God bless you guys.
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