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Lies We Believe About Self-Esteem
When we seek God's approval and affirmation,
rather than the approval of others, we are set
free. |
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When we seek
God's approval and affirmation, rather than the
approval of others, we are set free.
How do we find
peace regarding who we are and how we are
perceived?
If we try to
cover up our “defects” we may be harboring
resentment toward God.
When we
compare ourselves with others, we take our focus
off of God and place it onto other people.
When we reject
His design for our lives, we are not likely to
trust God, the Designer. |
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AFFIRMATION
Seeking His Approval and Affirmation Sets Us
Free
When we seek God's approval and
affirmation, rather than the approval of others,
we are set free.
Do you ever feel worn out from
worrying? Many people who have fallen into a
sinful pattern of worrying expend vast amounts
of time and energy trying to please other
people. They go to great lengths to gain other
people’s approval because they have not yet
learned to seek their affirmation from God. In
this installment of Dr. Dunlap’s series on
self-identity, he reminds us that we must
understand the biblical principles regarding
self-identity.P>
In Psalm 37:8
the psalmist warns,
Fret not yourself; it only leads
to evil doing.
One of the most grievous
consequences of the sin of excessive worrying is
that it leads us to forsake God and resort to
our human ingenuity. Anxiety makes us doubt
God’s lovingkindness.
When we choose to worry about
anything - we doubt God’s lovingkindness.
In his
devotional book Morning and Evening,
Charles Spurgeon sheds light on this sinful
tendency:
We labor to take on ourselves our
weary burden, as if God were unable or unwilling
to take it for us. He who cannot calmly leave
his affairs in God’s hand is very likely to be
tempted to use wrong means to help himself.
Christians are commanded to seek
God’s approval above the approval of our fellow
man.
Many people
who have fallen into the sinful habit of
worrying expend vast amounts of time and energy
trying to please other people. They often fret
over imagined negative responses that people
will have toward them. They go to great lengths
to gain other people’s approval because they
have not yet learned to seek their affirmation
from God. Their anxiety grows out of their lack
of understanding of the biblical principles
regarding self-identity.
Self-identity
may be defined as the wisdom to see - ourselves
- as God sees us, and the determination to live
in such a way as to gain His approval rather
than the approval of our fellow man. The writer
of Psalm 100:3 declares,
Know you that the Lord is God. It
is He Who has made us and we are His.”
Must we “feel good about
ourselves” in order to live a successful
Christian life?
Most
Christians do not understand the truth regarding
the concept of self-identity. The author of a
recent article in Ladies Home Journal magazine
announced, “Feeling good about ourselves may be
the cornerstone of our well-being.”
The topic of self-esteem
frequently surfaces among both Christians and
non-Christians alike. We have only to pick up a
newspaper or a magazine, or tune into a
television talk show to realize how popular the
self-acceptance issue has become.
We must use God’s Word to sift
through all the misconceptions about
self-esteem.
Several
commonly held beliefs about self-esteem are,
nevertheless, unbiblical in their origin. Let us
consider the following statements:
I must believe in myself and feel
good about myself.
I have to stand up for my rights.
I need to fulfill myself by
realizing my creative potential.
I deserve to have security and
significance.
Christians
must examine comments such as these in light of
Scripture.
Does the Bible
actually instruct us to regard ourselves as
“worthwhile human beings” as some Christian
leaders have claimed? Do we truly need “a
healthy dose of self-esteem and personal worth?”
Does God want us, as someone has suggested, to
“get past” the notion that we are unworthy
sinners, so that we can fully accept the saving
grace that God offers in Christ? Should
Believers participate in the proposed “New
Reformation” that supposedly focuses on “the
sacred right of every person to self-esteem?”
These questions are worthy of
further scrutiny. The goal of our investigation
will be to establish and examine the biblical
principles that teach us that our self-identity
is rooted and grounded in the Lord Jesus Christ. |
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SELF-IMAGE
Deceptions Regarding Self-Identity
How do we find peace regarding
who we are and how we are perceived?
Do you consider yourself a victim
of poor self-esteem? Have you ever wasted time
and energy worrying that other people will not
accept you? Tragically, many Christian
counselors assign the diagnosis of “low
self-image” to countless numbers of clients. In
this series on self-identity, Dr. Dunlap exposes
several popular but unbiblical opinions on the
topic of self-esteem.
An alarming
number of people today consider themselves
hapless victims of low self-esteem. They waste
their time and energy worrying that they are not
good enough and that other people will not
accept them. They live with the paralyzing fear
that they are doomed to a life of rejection.
Many of them believe that their problem is
rooted in the fact that they suffer from a “poor
self-image.”
Christians hold many popular but
unbiblical opinions on the topic of self-esteem.
Because our
natural inclinations often lead us to wrong
conclusions, we need to examine the biblical
view of self-identity. It is, regretfully, a
well-kept secret in today’s Christian community.
The first
natural assumption that leads some Christians to
an identity conflict is the belief that although
we are sinners, we are still basically good
because we are created in God’s image.
The truth is that God’s restores
His image in sinful people only through their
genuine conversion to Jesus Christ. A similar
deception is the claim that although people make
mistakes they need to affirm their dignity and
assert their rights. We read in God’s Word that
every person alive has a sinful nature and he or
she needs God’s grace and forgiveness.
God, our Creator, designed us
before time began and He foreknew every detail
of our lives.
Many people
wrongly assume that their birth and the families
that they were born into were the results of
chance. Christians, on the other hand,
acknowledge the fact that God designed their
existence from the very beginning of time. They
are also aware of the truth that God
predetermined the specific families that they
would belong to, in accordance with His perfect
will for their lives.
We would be amazed to know how
many people struggle with feelings of
inferiority.
Many
Christians believe that their physical
appearance and abilities are solely the result
of the factors of heredity. This is a
particularly harmful deception.
God fashioned every person in His
mind before He laid the earth’s foundation. He
prescribed their unchangeable features in order
to best achieve His purposes in each of their
lives.
People often
spend years wishing that they could look like
someone else. They believe that if they could
only “look better” their new appearance would
deliver them from their feelings of inferiority.
The truth is
that every individual has his or her own
struggle with self-identity. Often the people
who we think are least likely to be dealing with
such a struggle are the ones who have the
greatest problems. They have simply learned to
mask their feelings of inferiority.
It is a common
occurrence for people who have physical and
mental defects to view them as cruel handicaps
that they must cope with. Someone who has
learned to view his or her handicap from God’s
perspective understands that the Lord will
faithfully use it to develop strength of
character in his or her life.
God is not finished with us yet.
People who do not understand
biblical self-identity may attempt to hide their
feelings of inferiority by asserting their
personalities.
Other people may try to gain
acceptance by accentuating those physical and
intellectual attributes that society seems to
value most.
The wiser approach is to view our
weaknesses as a daily reminder that we belong to
God. We should be aware that we are still very
much a work in process. We must be determined to
gain God’s approval by concentrating on the
inward qualities that He values.
Our “defects” can be transformed
into a powerful message for Jesus Christ.
Some of the
greatest Christians who have ever lived believed
initially that they were powerless to correct
what they thought were certain unchangeable
physical or mental “defects.” Their testimonies,
however, bear witness to the fact that when they
yielded their “defects” to God and asked Him to
develop their inward character their outward
features took on new meaning. The result was
that their lives honored and glorified God. |
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SELF-IDENTITY
What Drives the Perfectionist? What Causes
Self-hatred?
If we try to cover up our
“defects” we may be harboring resentment toward
God.
Do you tend to be a
perfectionist? Do you often criticize yourself
and struggle with feelings of self-hatred? These
may be signs of deep-seated bitterness toward
God. In this series on self-identity, Dr. Debbi Dunlap explains that certain evidences surface
in the lives of people who have not appropriated
the biblical principles of self-identity. He
urges us to strive to fulfill God’s universal
ideal—to be conformed to Christ’s image.
Many
Christians today would attest to the fact that
they struggle with the problem of “poor
self-esteem.” Employers regularly hire special
consultants to teach their employees how to have
a good self-image. Self-esteem programs from
kindergarten through high school encourage
students to “believe in themselves.” Yet,
despite all the emphasis that our society places
on the importance of having a healthy
self-image, we find no command in Scripture to
esteem ourselves highly. In Romans 12:3 the
writer admonishes us
Not to think more highly of
ourselves than we ought to think.
We read these
words in Philippians 2:3,
With humility of mind, regard
other people as more important than ourselves.
Someone who claims to hate
himself is actually bitter toward God.
Certain
evidences surface in the lives of people who
have not appropriated the biblical principles of
self-identity. People who constantly criticize
themselves, or who claim to hate themselves are
actually guilty of deep-seated bitterness toward
God.
We find this
explanation in Ephesians 5:29,
After all, no one ever hated his
own body, but he feeds and cares for it.
Such an
individual is careful to take care of his
personal needs but he is clearly unhappy about
the way that God made him.
A “perfectionist” does not
understand the biblical principles of
self-identity.
Perfectionism
is another underlying attitude that indicates an
ongoing identity crisis in someone’s life. A
person who is a perfectionist or an
over-achiever attempts to prove his or her
personal worth in order to compensate for his or
her sense of inadequacy.
The Lord has promised us that He
will be strong in our weakness. We find our
personal worth only in Jesus’ finished work. God
assures us in His Word that we are complete in
Christ Jesus. It is His saving grace alone that
completes us—not the works of righteousness that
we have done.
Boasting and
pride may also be outward indications of a
person’s inward feelings of inferiority. Paul
asks a pertinent question in 1 Corinthians 4:7,
Who makes you different from
anyone else? What do you have that you did not
receive? And if you did receive it, why do you
boast as though you did not?
The sin of
comparison always leads to feelings of either
superiority and pride, or inferiority and
ingratitude.
If we self-consciously try to
cover up our “defects” we may be resentful
towards God.
Self-conscious actions or
statements that are meant to “cover up”
unchangeable physical and mental defects may
also reveal bitterness and resentment toward
God. Awkward attempts to hide these defects are
inappropriate.
We should,
nonetheless, try to minimize any defects that
are changeable, such as crooked teeth, which
detract from our life message for Jesus Christ.
Christians must not accept the
world’s standards of beauty and success.
We cannot
attain security or self-satisfaction by
achieving a universal outward ideal either
physically, intellectually or emotionally. No
such ideal exists. The world, of course, thinks
differently. We are often tempted to compare
ourselves with the attractive models and movie
stars that parade before us on magazine covers
and the big screen.
God does not,
however, consider our external features to be
very important. We find an enlightening physical
description of the Lord Jesus in Isaiah 53:2:
He grew up before Him like a
tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to
Him, nothing in His appearance that we should
desire Him.
God does have a universal inward
ideal for every person to fulfill. We should
seek to develop godly character in our lives. We
read in Romans 8:29 that we should be conformed
to the image of Jesus Christ, God’s Son. |
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Overcoming Anxiety Concerning Who We Are
When we compare ourselves with
others, we take our focus off of God and place
it onto other people.
The sin of comparison is one of
the major causes of worry and fear in a
believer’s life. We know that God works in the
lives of His children in many various ways. Yet,
we sometimes look around us enviously, as we
watch God’s hand of blessing in other people’s
live. In this series on self-identity, Dr.
Dunlap reminds us that we should be grateful for
the differences that exist among our brothers
and sisters in the Body of Christ—not threatened
by them.
The writer of
Psalm 139:16 eloquently states, “Your eyes saw
my unformed body. All the days ordained for me
were written in Your book before one of them
came to be.” The Lord designed each one of us
and He prescribed all of our days before we were
born.
God will be faithful to complete
the good work that He began in us.
God begins the
process of developing the character of Jesus
Christ within us at the moment of our salvation.
He faithfully continues that process throughout
every spiritual pilgrimage until the day that we
die. Paul assures us in Philippians 1:6,
Being confident of this, that He
Who began a good work in you will carry it on to
completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
When we compare ourselves with
others, we shift our focus off of God and onto
people.
The sin of
comparison is one of the major causes of worry
and fear in our lives. We know that God works in
the lives of His children in various and unique
ways. Yet, we often look around us enviously, as
we watch God’s hand of blessing in other
people’s lives. When we do this, we take our
focus off of God and we begin to compare
ourselves with other people.
We are guilty of the sin of
comparison when we feel inadequate in the
presence of people who appear to be more
competent or attractive or even more intelligent
than we are.
We find this
stern warning in 2 Corinthians 10:12, “We do not
dare to classify ourselves with some who commend
themselves. When they measure themselves by
themselves and compare themselves with
themselves, they are not wise.”
When we seek God first He causes
everything else to fall into its rightful place.
God has an
inward ideal for every Christian—the character
of His Son Jesus Christ. He may withhold from us
a stable family, outward beauty, natural
talents, or particular abilities in order to
develop certain inward qualities in our lives.
We read in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “Though our
outward man perish, yet the inward man is
renewed day by day.”
Our self-identity, happiness,
peace, joy and contentment grow out of our
willingness to experience God’s inward ideal for
our lives. Jesus promises us in Matthew 6:33
that if we seek His kingdom and His
righteousness first and foremost, He will add to
our lives everything else that is important.
We should be thankful for the
differences among Christians, not threatened by
them.
God forms
Christ-like character within us when we respond
properly to life’s problems. We experience
fulfillment in life, as we become a unique
message of His character. God instructs us to be
living epistles of His love, known and read by
all men.
We should not
be threatened by the differences that exist
among Christians. We should, instead, thank God
for the differences that we observe in
appearance, abilities, parentage and social
heritage. They are God’s way of emphasizing and
amplifying His unique message through each of
our lives.
The degree to which we accept
God’s design for our lives determines the
effectiveness of our Christian testimonies. We
must learn how to respond correctly to our
God-given limitations.
We should seek to discern the
benefits that we have reaped from any
difficulties that we have gone through
physically, emotionally, socially or mentally.
When we attach
new meanings to old “defects,” we realize that
they are marks of God’s ownership, which
constantly remind us that we belong to Him. God
has bought us with a price and we should
joyfully glorify Him in all that we do. |
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God Has a
Plan for Our Lives
When we reject His design for our
lives, we are not likely to trust God, the
Designer.
Do you know Christians who seem
to be bound by the sin of self-centeredness?
When we do not understand the biblical
principles of self-identity, we are unable to
love others selflessly. Do you consider yourself
a victim of poor self-esteem? Have you ever
wasted time and energy worrying that other
people will not accept you? Tragically, many
Christian counselors assign the diagnosis of
“low self-image” to countless numbers of
clients. In this series on self-identity, Dr.
Dunlap reminds us that when we focus on our own
fears, inhibitions and disappointments, we
cannot minister God’s love to other people.
An epidemic of
anxiety, fear and worry has infected our
society. Many Christians struggle with what has
been called an “identity crisis.” They do not
understand how to view themselves as God views
them. Unbiblical teaching on the topic of
self-image is one of the greatest contributing
factors to the pervasive panic that has gripped
the Christian community.
People who have rejected the
design of their lives are unlikely to trust the
Designer.
A person who
does not understand the biblical principles of
self-identity tends to manifest certain
attitudes in his or her life.
The writer of
Ephesians 2:10 tells us,
We are His workmanship created in
Christ Jesus for good works.
Someone who
has failed to grasp this truth is unable to
trust God. If a person has rejected the design
of his life, he will not place his confidence in
the Designer.
We disobey God when we compare
ourselves with other people.
Many people lodge complaints
against God because of their unchangeable
features such as physical characteristics,
talents, abilities, parentage and social
heritage. Such an attitude is shortsighted and
communicates ungratefulness toward God.
Christians who are bitter and who harbor grudges
against their Creator do not comprehend the
scriptural definition of self-identity.
When we
compare ourselves with others and when we long
to change aspects of our lives that are
unchangeable, we are guilty of the sins of
resentment and ingratitude. Consider the words
of Romans 9:20,
But who are you, O man, to talk
back to God? Shall what is formed say to him who
formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’
A person who
places too much emphasis on clothing fashions
may be seeking to cover up the fact that he or
she has rejected God’s design of his or her
physical features. In Matthew 6:25, Jesus
specifically warns us about paying undue
attention to clothes:
Therefore, I tell you, do not
worry about your life, about your body, or what
you will wear. Is not life more important than
food, and the body more important than clothes?
When people do
not accept themselves as God created them to be,
they cannot compensate by dressing outlandishly
or immodestly.
Many Christians convince
themselves that they are “shy” when the truth is
that they do not understand biblical
self-identity.
Christians who
do not have a biblical self-concept often do not
reach out to other people. They hide behind the
excuse of shyness when the root problem is more
accurately a fear of what other people might
think of them. When we fear other peoples’
opinions, however, we often cause them to
reflect our attitudes back to us.
God is not pleased when we are
withdrawn and turned inward. We must learn to
identify this warning sign of an identity crisis
and then we need to take specific steps toward
becoming others-centered.
Believers who
do not understand their identity in Christ are
unable to love others selflessly. They are so
focused on their own fears, inhibitions and
disappointments that they cannot minister God’s
love to other people.
We read in Matthew 19:19 that we
are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Yet we
will be bound by the sins of selfishness and
self-centeredness until we yield ourselves
completely to God. When we come to understand
the truth that we are image-bearers of our
Heavenly Father, we will realize our infinite
worth as His children. |
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