Take a Look at Yourself – Part One

Jesus alone is capable of meeting one of the basic needs of your life.  If you are a normal person, you understand what the Swiss physician and author Paul Tournier meant when he said everyone has an “inexhaustible need to be loved and a continual fear of not being loved… The truth is that God alone can fill the affective need of men; God alone is always there, with His limitless love.”

When you enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, then you know you are perpetually unconditionally loved and He is always there when you need Him. ALWAYS!

You ought never to think of yourself apart from God. If you do, you get an incomplete and distorted concept of yourself.

Test this fact by answering one question: “Do you like yourself?”

Does your action contradict your answer?  Do you say “yes,” but do you so dislike yourself that you often wear masks because you are afraid people won’t like the real “you” professed by you to be liked?

Self-esteem is an expression so labeled in our present society. There are terms worthy of our use and which we need to consider. They are self-image and self-worth. Do you have a good wholesome self-image? That is, one neither given to self-inflation of self-effacement; not phoned to be egotistical or self-condemning.  Do you properly view yourself?

Dr. Robert Magee, founder of  “Rapha” in his book “Search for Significance,” says most people consider their self-worth by the formula: Self-Worth = Performance + Other’s Opinions.  Simply stated, I must be approved by certain others in order to feel good about myself. That is the prison in which many people are held hostage. Namely, your opinion of me and my performance determines how I feel about me.

Some people are so insecure they have to compensate for what they are by what they have or what they do.

Some have to wear a certain clothing label or they are timid about going out into public. After all, everyone else is wearing that label and if I don’t I will be different and disliked. It might even take a certain shoe in athletic or social circles.

Start today by setting the standard for self-acceptance based on your relationship with the Lord. Frame this theme on the wall of your memory, “God made me and God don’t make no junk.”

That leaves no room for egotism or cause for inferiority.