Self Worth

Where does your self worth come from? What should be the basis of our self worth? If we have the wrong starting point we won’t end up at the right point. Many people in our area like to visit San Diego. Who would start out their trip to San Diego by driving to El Paso first? We took the long way to Holbrook once. Traffic was bad on the freeway so we took an alternate route to Sedona. We took the little detour to Sedona to purchase something, decided rather than backtracking to the freeway we would go up Oak River Canyon. What should have been a 6-hour drive via the freeway with detour to Sedona turned into a 10-hour extravaganza! Society would tell us that reason we have feelings of worthlessness and problems with self esteem is that our parents and teachers didn’t make us feel good about ourselves growing up. Maybe it is because your boss, friends, co-workers don’t make you feel good about yourself. That may well be true in some cases but as a general policy it is a pretty shaky foundation. Maybe you feel worthless because you just don’t think you measure up to your own standards for behavior, job, possessions, and physical appearance. If we base our sense of self worth on how others feel about us, how we feel about us, or how we think others feel about us, we’re going to be tossed around like a boat at sea in the middle of a storm without an anchor. So as with other things our self worth should be based on an unshakable foundation and that foundation is God and His Truth.

According to Genesis 1:26 we are created in the image of God. We are not just higher animals as evolution teaches. Evolution strips of us the innate dignity we have as image bearers of God and mars our relationships with others. If you allow the concept that we are all image bearers of God to really make inroads into your life, I guarantee that you will see other people differently and treat other people differently. Maybe not consistently but you will end up different. You will end up treating other peoples like you want to be treated! The Golden Rule doesn’t make sense if we aren’t beings created in the image of God.

The Psalmist tells in Psalm 139:14 that each of us is fearfully and wonderfully made. The human body is so intricately designed I still get amazed even after all this time of studying and working on the body. God says He has revealed His existence in the created world (Rom 1:20) such that no one has an excuse to not know God.

God told Jeremiah that He knew Jeremiah before he was even in his mothers belly and had ordained him to be a prophet to the nations (Jer 1:5). So God knows us before we are even conceived because He is outside of time. He knows everything about us before we were even a twinkle in our parent’s eyes. He knows our gifts, our strengths, and our weaknesses-nothing about our life takes God by surprise. We might end up surprised but He never is surprised.

So what does God think of us? Well, we know from the Bible that if we are outside of Christ God considers us enemies (Rom 5:10) and sinners worthy of death (Rom 5:8, Rom 6:23). The Good News is that we don’t have to be enemies of God. God thinks so much of humanity that He stepped into time, became human, and was born, died and rose again to redeem us and to provide a way to be reconciled to God. Obviously God thinks quite a bit of us-He made the ultimate sacrifice for people of all times and all places. He died for those who love Him and those who hate Him. Do we do nice things for our enemies? Not so much most of the time. He planned on making this sacrifice from before the foundation of time (1 Pe 1:20).

What about our feelings? Well maybe some of the feelings are justified and maybe some are not-we need to take careful stock of our lives and make sure we are diligently seeking after God and doing whatever He has called us to do for Him in this world. If we are then our feelings stand a good chance of being wrong. The Bible tells us that the heart is deceitful and wicked, who can know it? (Jer 17:9) So we shouldn’t be basing our self worth on our feelings or anyone else’s for that matter.

When we belong to God, life doesn’t necessarily get easier; sometimes it gets tougher! God promises to be there by our side, helping, guiding and comforting. Matthew 6:25-42 reminds us of how God cares for the earth and the animals so how much more will He care for us. Verse 34 cautions us to only concern ourselves with the day we are in and not to worry about the tomorrow because each day has enough for us to concern ourselves with never mind tomorrow. He will never leave us or forsake us (Heb 13:5) and no one can take us out of the hand of God (John 10:28-29).

Christ told us that our foundation matters. Remember the parable of the wise man that built his house on the rock with a deep foundation and the foolish man who built his house on sand? The house that was built on rock, with deep foundations could be battered in a flood but did not fall. The house built on sand was completely washed away. We can build on the solid rock of God’s truth and overcome that which comes our way or we can build on the shifting sands of public opinion, worldly philosophy, or our own feelings and be destroyed.