A while back, I was on a ministry trip in Poland with a friend. We often traveled by train, but this time we were driving, so this gave us a lot of time to talk. Having exhausted a number of topics, we finally got around to talking about ourselves. As we opened up a bit we began to talk about our insecurities. What was interesting was how different, even polar opposite we were. He assumed that when people first met him, they wouldn’t like him. So he was always trying to prove himself to others, trying through various ways to show that he was someone worth knowing. I’m pretty laid back and easy going and usually make a half way decent first impression. I told him I assumed that people liked me when they first met me, but I was afraid that if they really got to know me they wouldn’t like me. So I was somewhat driven to keep up the friendly banter and not let people get too close, hoping they wouldn’t find a reason not to like me.
Well, neither of us is a horribly dysfunctional person and these insecurities weren’t controlling, but this conversation was a great eye opener to the reality that we all struggle with feelings of inadequacy. We all wonder at times if we are worthy of other’s love and respect. The problem is that if we rely on the opinion of others to give us a barometer of who we are, we will be imprisoned by the fear of what other people think.
That is why the story of God is so beautiful. The only one who truly knows us inside and out loves us enough to expend all the resources of heaven to rescue us from the misery of our self inflicted wounds and persistent drive to ignore Him and do it our own way. And then, even more than that, he desires to live in an eternal relationship of love with us and include us as partners in what he is doing. Talk about self worth.
The problem, of course, is that we have to take this all on faith. While God’s Word is crystal clear that these things are true, it is sometimes hard to trust them when our kids are rolling their eyes at us, our spouse is complaining about yet another thing we forgot to do, or a colleague at work looks at us like we’re an idiot. Because this is true, we have to spend time with God in order to calibrate our lives according to his belief in us and we have to walk with each other in such a way that we acknowledge the struggles while pointing each other to the truth of who we are in Christ. It is out of this kind of community that we will be able to live out the roles God has for us in his Kingdom.
1 comment:
Danny, I appreciate the blogging you have been doing. I have been carrying your blogs around in my mind these few weeks rolling them around and seeing what I come up with.
I have known many people over the years that have been oftentimes overly self-critical, myself included. Sometimes I dwell on things I have said, or something I have done, or the way I might have been mis-interpreted by others. I have always believed that the quality of our lives is strongly influenced by our perception and our self talk. So why do I dwell on insignificant things like this? I think that you hit the nail on the head with "we have to spend time with God in order to calibrate our lives according to his belief in us...". It reminded me that he alone knows our strengths and weaknesses and that maybe I have not given the Lord FULL authority over my life. Through staying in his word, fellowship at church and in our small groups, and hopefully improved prayer quality, I desire to hand over FULL authority to our wonderfull counselor.
Thanks and keep the good stuff coming.
MoonF18
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