How Should a Christian View Himself?

The weight loss commercials are just running rampant on television. In case you hadn't noticed that. I even saw that Dan Marino was into the gig this year, and for men trying to push his particular brand of weight loss. This is something we have to go through every year once January first hits, because people make New Year's resolutions, and they want to lose weight. And they want to... all the companies want to sell either their exercise and fitness equipment, or their weight loss and diet plans. And so we're kind of in the middle of that. Probably we'll be tailing off in the next few days, and everybody will go back to their normal habits. This is not a sermon about weight loss or exercise, but I use that just to show how a big... certainly it's a big market in big industry. But the reason... a large part of it is because of the way people feel about themselves. And it comes down to image and how we look. And beyond even how we look, really what's at the heart of so much of the concern and some of the anguish that comes over weight loss, image, and diet, and even the way you see it, the way it's all pitched, is the way we feel about ourselves. If we could just lose 250 pounds, then we would feel better about ourselves, or even 50 pounds. And that's true. And nothing... I'm not knocking losing the weight, and that's fine. But if we look at the desire there and what really is being marketed, it is this idea of the way we feel about ourselves. And the way we feel about ourselves is something that hits home to every one of us, our self-image or our self-esteem, if you want to look at it that way. When we look at how we look at Christianity and understand Christianity being a religion of love, and we are to love God with all of our heart and all of our soul, we're to love our neighbors as well, how does a Christian express in actions and words love towards others and experience the love toward himself at the same time? The Bible teaches us that a person can only be a Christian by repenting and acknowledging our own inadequacies before God, and that's a key matter of repentance and coming to conversion and baptism. But it also leads us sometimes to the way we emphasize and how we look at ourselves. In other words, how should a Christian look at his or herself? Should we spend our lives just constantly whipping ourselves, flagellating ourselves into a submission or into repentance, harboring feelings of worthlessness, fighting feelings of worthlessness? That's something that affects all of us in one degree or the other, and especially young people a lot these days, and suicide rates among young people are quite high because of their feelings about themselves, their image, their self-esteem. How are we supposed to feel about ourselves as Christians? This is a big subject, and it gets a great deal of attention in education circles, in pop psychology, popular psychology. Oprah talks a great deal about it in regard to how we feel about ourselves. Over the years in the Church, you and I have heard, and I've given many different sermons, and in those sermons we'll talk about and hear about pride. We'll talk about selfishness as being a root of evil. And after going through that so often, we sometimes have to come back and ask ourselves, if I feel good about myself, am I being selfish? Am I filled with pride? What's the right balance in that? We look at a scripture like Matthew 22.

We see what Christ says here. We begin to get a view of things in Matthew 22. In verse 34, when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer asked him a question, testing him, saying, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. That statement summarizes the first four commandments of the Ten Commandments and how we love God.

In verse 38, he said, This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets.

And so the second commandment, loving our neighbor as ourself, sums up the other six commandments, in terms of the details there as to how we relate to other people, how we love our neighbor. But notice what Christ said. He said, This is a great law that you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

We love our neighbor. We love our fellow man. We love the person sitting next to us. But we also are to love ourselves, as our contradiction in terms there. Not really. God does not contradict himself in his word. We read in the Bible, you know, that we are not to love the world or the things of the world, but the things of the world are passing away, and we are to hold the world at arm's length away from us and to maintain a godly view toward the world. We read a scripture like this, and it tells us to love our neighbor as we love ourself. We're bound together in this particular instruction here. This gets into a view about God, really, and how God looks at us and how God looks at the world. If you would, go over to the well-known scripture in John 3. If there's any scripture that we learn when we're young and is so often quoted, it's John 3.16.

Many of you could quote that right now. John 3.16. And it's a very important principle right here. It says, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. And so we're told here that God loves the world, and He loves the world. He continues to love the world. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. These two verses really strike at a very important view about God and tells us something about God and how God looks at this world today. Because it says that He loved the world. And He loves the world that He gave His only begotten Son. But in that relationship, as it developed from the Logos to Christ to His death, benefits the whole world through the love of God. And then we're told as well in verse 17 that God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

And so then we really begin to understand, and we should when we think about that, how God looks at this world. He loved the world, and He doesn't condemn the world. Does that mean then that God's not going to judge the world? No. We know from so many scriptures and the prophecies, the book of Revelation, that there is going to come a time of judgment upon the world. But even in that judgment of the time of the day of the Lord, and the tribulation prior to Christ's return, that judgment is not a condemnation. A condemnation speaks to an eternal judgment of being separated from God for all eternity, which is not God's plan. Because we just, as we've read in verse 16, God loved the world, and He sent His Son into this world to die for it, that we might have everlasting life. When we understand the full plan of God through the resurrections, and the great white throne judgment, and all of the plan of God, we know that the judgment that God would bring upon the world will ultimately be turned around to a time of ultimate salvation through His plan, through the knowledge of the resurrection. And so He's not going to condemn the world. And what that really speaks to about you and I, is that we have to be careful we don't condemn the world.

So often, if we take a rather hard-nosed approach to the world, and a condemning approach, and our message, and our tone, and as a church, it often reflects probably a lot about how we feel about ourselves.

It's enough just to read the judgments of sin against sin and unrighteousness, and to point those out, personally, collectively, as a church, it's not our job to condemn the world because God doesn't do that.

And striking that fine balance is extremely important. And of course, looking at this helps us to develop a view about God. And that is what is so important about understanding this matter of self-image, or self-esteem. You might not see the connection to it, but stay with me. Hopefully, by the end of the sermon, you will see the connection. Because, again, I ask, how are you and I, as Christians, supposed to love ourselves? We just read in Matthew 22 that we are to love our neighbor as ourself. How are we to do that? How are we to love ourselves as our neighbor if we really understand God's Word? If I love myself, we might ask, won't I just be filled up with a lot of selfishness? If I overly love myself and hate my neighbor? What should a Christian's sense of self-worth really be, and his self-image? How should we feel about ourselves? So, what we're going to talk about today is self-image or self-esteem.

Now, I recognize that for me to talk about self-image and self-esteem runs a great risk of destroying my reputation.

But let's plunge into it. Let's get fluffy. Self-esteem and self-image is kind of a soft subject today. I mean, there's all kinds of talk, and if you want to hear about that, turn on Oprah at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

Or The View. Well, don't turn on The View. Turn on Oprah before The View, but if you have to, don't even turn on Oprah. But anyway, shows like that, books, pop psychology, it's a big business. But it's not something we should shy away from. In fact, it's something we should understand. But what we're going to go through this afternoon is a foundation and a basis of self-esteem or self-image that really roots us in the Bible and helps us to put a proper perspective upon it. Because it's not the same as selfishness. It's not the same as being self-centered. Selfishness is an unrealistic viewpoint of ourselves. A selfish person only cares about himself and not the other. They approach every situation with the idea of what's in it for me. And a selfish person loves himself so much that he really can't love his neighbor because he doesn't see his neighbor as being a valuable person. The neighbor is a digit or a widget.

It's a mark. It's a... the neighbor is... or the other person is someone to market to, somebody to sell something to, and then move on to the next sale.

It's a very materialistic approach. Anyone who's in sales, anyone who's in marketing, certainly to approach that in those fields from a Christian perspective, you've got to be, you know, I think always put a check on yourself that you don't violate certain principles. You can be a Christian and do that at the same time. When you have the self... the interest of the customer at heart, you'll go a lot further. But selfishness, self-centeredness, is putting others down because you or I think that we're superior to that person. And that's the danger we run into. It resents someone with more talent, someone with more opportunity, someone who may be better looking, or someone who owns more stuff than we do. That's what... that's where we get into the problems of self-centeredness and selfishness. A person with a proper sense of self-worth is realistic about their own abilities. Realistic. We know who we are. We know what abilities we have. We're honest about what we have, what we don't have. We are realistic about what we can accomplish and what we might not be able to accomplish in a particular situation or within our overall life goals. We are realistic about that. And we see life as a chance to learn and to develop, to grow, to become a better person. God gave each one of us a sense of value or worth when He created us. And we have to root ourselves in that understanding above all things. Let's go back to the book of Genesis, chapter 1. And let's look at a couple of scriptures here that really is the basis for our self-esteem and our self-image. Genesis chapter 1 and verse 26. We know this very well. God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and the cattle and all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created Him and male and female He created them. We're creating the image of God. Now, we know that verse and subject that we are created in God's image. And we can look at that from many different angles. But today, let's look at it from this angle of God working with us in a spiritual sense and what He has done in His creation and what these verses are telling us. First of all, God does not feel bad about Himself. He feels very good about Himself. He experiences perfect joy and contentment. And He made us and is making us in His image. We are conscious. We think. We're creative. We feel happiness, sadness. We're capable of love because we have those qualities. In fact, when you really analyze it, the fact that we can yearn for those qualities and attain those qualities is a very important proof of God and His existence. But that's another subject. When we look at what God said about His creation here, He said that His creation was very good. When He came down to the end of what He had accomplished at the end of the sixth day, He said, it is good. It is good. It's not bad. He didn't say, oh, you know, He didn't think, oh, it's good, but I don't want to get caught up in pride.

So I don't want to be accused of being self-centered. So it's half good. Or I could have done better. I'll do better next time. He said, it's good.

He looked at everything that He had created, and He said, it is good. He didn't tell Adam and Eve to feel bad about themselves. You know, we don't have all of the story of what went on there, but we don't find that being done. And what He created is good. Now, when you move through the story, chapter two kind of recapitulates it, but in chapter three is where the rubber hits the road. Because in chapter three, something else enters in, and that is a different spirit, a different attitude, that of the serpent, Satan, Lucifer.

And he slithers around the tree trunk, or up the tree trunk, hangs down, pops down from the limb, whatever it was. And Eve didn't have the good sense of the Eden question, the idea of a talking snake. But she didn't know any different because, as far as she knew, all snakes talked.

And they slivered, as the Disney cartoon says. But what happened here is really fundamental to this issue. God gave Adam and Eve freedom. He gave them free will. Now, that's another big subject that gets into a kind of a philosophical, metaphysical approach of free will. What is free will? Free will is nothing more than freedom. I prefer to use the term freedom in this discussion, because God gave man freedom, freedom to choose, freedom to choose for himself.

That's at the heart of it. This is in chapter two, where God says, you can eat everything from the tree of life. Just don't take the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And then he steps back and he gives man freedom, which is the same freedom we have today. All freedom is inherent in this story. Every human freedom is right here. And any man, any religion, any political system, any philosophy, anything that takes away human freedom, your freedom to choose before God to obey, to follow his way of life, or infringes on your fundamental, what I call a fundamental fact of freedom.

Any system that impinges upon that is not of God. God's true religion gives us freedom. Freedom from sin, freedom from a lot of things, but freedom to choose, in this case here. And this is what Adam and Eve had. They had the freedom to choose. Now, you and I know what they did. They chose, after a little bit of argument and doubt here, they began to choose. Because Satan began to ask certain questions that instilled doubt and to question what God was doing with them.

But it's the aftermath that's important to this discussion here. Because, as we said, Adam and Eve were good. They didn't feel bad. There was a point for however long that they had, if we can say, good self-esteem. They felt good about themselves. They felt good about where they lived. They felt good about their marriage. They felt good about life as they knew it, that had it, whatever it was, and to whatever degree we could relate to it.

But they felt good about it because God said everything that He created was good. But then, down in verse 9, we find something happening. Verse 8, after they had taken to the tree the knowledge of good and evil, God came to visit, came around, and verse 8 tells us, Adam and Eve hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. They hadn't done this before. And God called to Adam and said, Where are you? Verse 9.

And He said, I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. Now verse 10 is really a classic description of the way you and I act at times and have acted, the way a lot of people who don't feel a proper sense of respect and value of themselves get to. Because Satan began to mess with their minds. Satan began to say, No, it's not this way, quite this way. God meant this. And he knew that if you did eat of this, then something else is going to happen.

He began to, as we say, mess with their minds. And the result was sin. And that's what sin always does. It messes with our minds. And when you and I commit sin, whatever it might be, if we're tuned into a conscience and God's Spirit is working with us, then we know something is wrong. And if we resist that, then there are going to be other things that will take place. If we resist repentance and we begin to compromise or begin to justify or whatever else, sin messes with the mind.

Satan was messing with something that was good. And it's been the whole story ever since. Because you look in verse 10, and it says, Adam said, I was afraid. Fear. Phobias. To use the Greek term that we use today.

Phobias. He was afraid where he had not been afraid before. He was afraid of God. He was afraid of what he had to face. Maybe he was afraid of his wife, his partner. Maybe he was afraid he'd run into that talking snake again. And he's just afraid of himself because he'd made a decision that created a feeling he hadn't had before. Whatever. He was afraid, and he said, I hid myself. I don't want to face it. And that's the whole story in a nutshell of the problems that we have about the way we look at ourselves in life.

We get caught up with fear, and we feel worthless. We feel inferior, and we may handle that in different ways. We may overreact by being aggressive, by being sarcastic, by being obstinate, by putting people down to make us feel better. There's all kinds of mechanisms that are available, and we can handle those, to make ourselves feel better and to deal with fear about an inadequacy that we have.

We feel worthless because we don't understand who we are as God's children, because we have a messed up image of God. God created us in His image, and He said that it was good.

Sin came along and messed with the mind, and messed the whole picture up. And you and I are the generations-long recipients of that. We come down to our life and our times, and we have to deal with it. And we spend our life, all of our lives, grappling with this. But it's important that we get the right perspective. And you won't hear this from a lot of the popular approach to the subject of self-esteem or self-image that is out there today.

Losing the weight can be good for us physically, and it can help us in many ways emotionally and whatever else. But if we are not tied into what God says about our image, into a proper image from God's point of view and the value that He gives to us, then all of that will still not accomplish the main goal.

And that is a proper sense of value of how we are invaluable in God's sight. That's where proper self-image begins, from the value that God has vested within us as beings created in His image. When we start there and stay there and keep coming back to this point throughout our life, no matter what we battle, no matter what we face, this is where we get the answer.

We can read whoever we want to read, whatever we want to read, and study whatever may be popular for this year or two years from now in terms of an approach to life and life skills and psychology and all of that. That's fine. There's lots of valuable things to pick off of those trees that are out there, and I picked them off, and you do too. But whatever it is, it's got to match up with this fundamental fact here. And when we don't have that, we have problems. Because when a person feels worthless, he or she will carry often that out in destructive behavior. Girls often act that out in promiscuous behavior and will sleep around in sexual promiscuity because there's a feeling of worthlessness. Maybe it comes from the way they were treated at home. Very often it does. There's a big school of thought that there's problems because of a lack of proper connection with a father, the father or a father within one's life. And there's a sense of worthlessness, so there's this quest for value. There's this quest for feeling worthwhile, and it can lead to other consequences as a result. Many times people use drugs or alcohol because they're trying to avoid feelings of worthlessness. Again, low self-esteem. A young boy, or sometimes a girl, but very often young boys will act up in school because they've already decided they're stupid. They've been told that at home. They act up at school and won't even try to learn. My wife sees this all the time in her teaching. Young seven, eight-year-old boys who are looking for attention. And they have behavioral problems in the classroom, but those problems go back to the home environment. And in some cases, it's just not good. And they've been told by a parent, or by a lack of a parent, that they are not worthwhile. And that gets into some very large problems. Others try to compensate for feelings of worthlessness by making themselves the center of attention in various ways. Sometimes a lot of the excessive body piercing and tattooing that is a craze today can be traced to that. Bizarre hairstyles and clothing. It certainly gets attention. It certainly gets attention. But you know, at times when if you kind of scratch the surface or listen or even talk to people who have done these things to their body, you find that there is a human being there. And there's sometimes a softness that is not seen by the piercings in their tongue or their nose or what's hanging out or what's all over their body. I've seen that. Some of the kids we've had from church families at camp, and I remember two or three years ago being stuck in O'Hare coming home from a trip one time and waiting for the plane and the lounge area. And there were two or three young people all pierced, tattooed, the black and everything. And you kind of look at it and you want to, hmm, do I want to sit here? But it was only a seat, so I sat down. And I didn't feel threatened or uncomfortable, but over the course of an hour or two, you listen to their conversation and you begin to pick up why. They're like, they look like that on the outward side. You begin to pick up certain clues that inwardly, they're not quite as bizarre as they look, but there's something else that is at work there as they are looking to feel good about themselves. But this is some of the problems that come out when we don't have a proper image of ourselves and feeling of worthiness.

A positive sense of self-worth comes from understanding God's purpose for making us, because it's God's plan to save us from worthlessness. That is His plan. We come into this life and we're dealt a certain hand. Parents, social economic status, where we live, things we have no control over, and those things begin to shape and mold us, and they will shape and mold everyone and have every one of us. And I started to say at the beginning, this is not just a girl subject, guys. This is for guys as well, because you and I have our image of ourselves, and we feel self-esteem too, or lack of thereof at times. It's a male and a female issue. But what God's plan is to save us from worthlessness, a true sense of worth, comes from understanding that purpose in our lives. Look in Luke 12. Luke 12. Here, Christ tells us that God places value on birds. Verse 6, "...are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins, and not one of them is forgotten before God." And it's not the pretty birds that are chosen here. It's a sparrow. Not the prettiest one in the bird theater. He says they are worth something to God. And not one of them is forgotten before God. The very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore. You are of more value than many sparrows. Christ said, God sees every one of us as having worth more than the animals, within which God has even, by nature, designed a system of care and provision for them. We're the only part of the creation that can have a relationship with God, and He has a great sense of value. We are designed to feel good about our abilities, our character, and our accomplishments. In Matthew 25 is the well-known parable of the talents.

Matthew chapter 25. We all know this parable of the talents, where the Kingdom of God here is said to be like a man traveling into a far country who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, and to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability. And immediately he went on a long journey. Christ is here, the man that travels into a far country. We are the ones that receive certain talents. And it goes on to show how these individuals went out and used those talents to multiply what they had and came back with more, all except one person. The use of the word talents here means that it's a talent as a unit of money. But since it's a parable, talents is really a symbol, really of talents, skills, abilities that we have, what we may be born with, and those that we can we develop, talents that we have, and talents that God gives to us. And each of us is a special part of the creation of God. There are over six billion people on this earth, and there's no one just like you. Think about that. And there have been billions that have gone before us, and there's not been one person just like you or me. We are unique. That in itself should tell us something about how God looks at us and what God is doing. Our specific set of physical features and abilities are unique, and God sees that as a measurable value. And you look at this parable, and you see that someone out and doubled what they had, except the last person. You know what happened with one man, who we are told, had received one talent, verse 24. And he came and he said, Lord, I know you're a hard man, reaping where you've not sown and gathering where you've not scattered seed. And notice what verse 25 says. What did he say? Verse 25. I was afraid. Where did we just read that? Back in Genesis 3, Adam said, I was afraid, God. Fear, phobia. This man hid his talent. He didn't do anything with it. He went and buried it and came back and brought it dusty, corroded, and gave it back and said, here it is. I was fearful. I was afraid and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, you have what is yours. This man, because he didn't see the value God placed in him because of his fear.

That was more than just a fear of God. He had a lot of other hang-ups. Sin had messed up with his mind and he couldn't get beyond that. He couldn't get beyond his upbringing. And what his dad had said to him when he was eight years old, he couldn't get beyond what his mother had said to him when he was 12 years old.

Or maybe it was a teacher when he was 14, or she was 15, looking for someone to understand, and she couldn't get beyond that. And she was fearful.

And her mind was messed up. And so she just went with him. She didn't see the value. He didn't see the value of what God had placed on him and in him. He took pride. He took no pride in what God had given, and he did nothing with his life. You and I have been designed to succeed. And we've been designed for happiness. But if we are afraid, if we're fearful, just about even of stepping out and doing something different, we are in danger of squelching the talent that we have.

It's so important to be able to move beyond that. To not live our lives in fear of failure. Reality is that no success in life comes without some fear of failure. We have to risk in order to accomplish anything. To grow, to develop as a person, to learn a skill, to learn math, to learn science. We have to take a chance. And we have to work out a problem. We have to work at an issue and risk being set back, risk being fairing and finding out that we maybe just don't have it or that we need to work a little harder. We find out certain things about ourselves. When a person has the right sense of self-worth, they can look at themselves with honesty and admit when something is accomplished.

Or makes a right decision is made. Or admit when we have a God-given talent and feel good about it. We don't have to feel boastful and prideful. We don't have to feel superior to anybody else. We can admit what we have and do it. It is just as bad for a person who is good at something to say, to hide it because of the peer pressure and to not make good grades in school. So you slough off and do not make the grade because for whatever reason, the kids at the cafeteria table or on the playground don't value good grades. And so a person with the ability to make the honor roll, to make National Honor Society, to get a scholarship, doesn't do it in order to fit in. It's just as bad in that way as someone who is overly prideful and boastful because of the abilities that they have. And how often does that happen? We learn and grow, and we become more valuable as a person when we do that. A true sense of worth comes from understanding that we're designed to live in relationships. And if we accept our own worth as a creation of God, then we can accept the worth of the other person. And that's how we love our neighbor as ourselves. But we have to, sometimes it's true that we just have to first, in a sense, learn how to love ourselves properly. I think we wrap ourselves around each other and, you know, say what a good boy I am. Mr. Armstrong used to do that to illustrate self-love and in an inordinate sense of it. He would literally wrap his arms around himself and go off on that to make his point. But we have to love ourselves in a sense of understanding that we have value to God before we can really love our neighbor. Because that's what comes down to the relationship that we have. We have to accept our own worth as God's creation and accept the worth of others as part of that creation. When we have a proper sense of self-worth, we're going to see ourselves as a child of God and know that God loves us. And once a life lived that is pleasing to Him, we're going to live according to that plan. In Hebrews chapter 2, there are a couple of verses here in Hebrews that, again, show us how God looks at us. Beginning in Hebrews 2, in the section that talks about the very purpose for our human life, where God is bringing many sons to glory in Hebrews chapter 2. Beginning in verse 10, it says, "...for it was fitting for Him, for whom were all things, and by whom were all things, and bringing many sons to glory." This is really the purpose of our lives. Hebrews 2 and verse 10 connects with Genesis 1 verse 26, where we're told to be created the image of God. To be created the image of God, for you and I, means that we are being brought as a son to glory, as God is bringing many sons, ultimately, to the glory of eternal life in His family, as a member of His family. That's the image that God is shaping and molding us in. And the captain of our salvation is made perfect through sufferings, verse 10 and verse 11, "...for both he who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren." Verse 11 tells us how God looks at us. He's not ashamed of us. You know, shame is a part of another phobia. Shame is what leads a young woman to starve herself to death with anorexia and an eating disorder or bulimia. Shame, because their thinking gets messed up because of, again, our culture and our society, that they're too fat. And so they literally starve themselves to death, and it becomes more than just an eating matter of eating, whatever. It's a psychological issue. Those that deal with that understand.

And they literally cannot, some of them cannot, stop from that path of self-destruction.

Karen Carpenter, the 70s pop singer, is an example of that. I mean, she had all the money and the attention and people who cared and loved her, and she destroyed herself, unfortunately. That beautiful singing voice that she had. Shame. Christ is not ashamed of us.

We should not be ashamed of ourselves in any way. This is how God looks at us. Again, this is where the matter of image and value and the esteem we have is built off of that. And if God looks at us with value and has placed value in us as His creation, then that's something to note and to build upon. In chapter 11 of Hebrews, and verse 16, and this, these come down to the first pause here of these people of faith, Abraham and Noah and Sarah.

And in verse 16, it says of them, now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

Again, just to look at the fact that God's not ashamed of us, those that He has called and whom He has vested His Spirit, and the value that we have to God, He's not ashamed of us. We cannot afford to be ashamed of ourselves. Again, when we build off of that, we're building true self-esteem, proper self-esteem that can help us meet the challenges that we deal with, and we can begin to look at one another. Parents can look at their children, the value that is there, and respect them. You know, what we just what we read back in Matthew 22 of loving our neighbor as ourself is one of the fundamental principles of child rearing, that every family should operate by, that the parents should love their children as they love themselves. And it begins again with that understanding of what that life is that we begin or beginning to mold as they are born and shaped by our example, by our love, by our care, by who we are. Tremendous opportunity every time a child is brought into this world for a family to apply that principle, to love them as we love ourselves. So often, again, the problems that develop within families, the strife, the conflicts that eventually arise as children become more independent and assertive, grow into adolescence, work off of an inability to understand these fundamental values right here of what God is doing to us and how we are created His image. It is good. And when we bring a child into the world and to our family, that is good. But if our own sins, our own fears, the things that we have been afraid of and have never really addressed in our own life as 30-year-old or 40-year-old adults begin to take over, it will affect the relationship there and that closest of relationships within our life. So we have to understand a proper sense of self-worth isn't self-centered.

It's not focused just on ourselves. A person with a proper sense of worth is more willing to sacrifice him or herself for others because we understand the value of the other person. We understand our own value and that's the basis of valuing our own femininity and our own masculinity. We have a proper sense of self-worth. We take pride in character and positive, godly accomplishments. Character is not a word that you often hear in connection with this discussion about self-esteem because character gets down to values. Godly character, godly accomplishments imply that there are godly values and if there are godly values then we're getting down to absolute standards and in our world of multiculturalism and diversity training and all, we don't want to admit that there's one set of values better than another set of values. That's at the heart of all of that. But true self-esteem is going to have a proper pride in developing godly character based on God's values, teachings, and his law, and his eternal word, and have positive accomplishments in them. To have proper self-worth means that we plan for the future development of character and accomplishments by the choices that we make early on, that we choose wisely, we choose to live rather than to die and begin a process toward death. A person with a proper sense of self-worth is going to have a realistic view of his or her abilities in relationship to others and recognize that we are all special and a unique creation of God and that others are unique as well. And that's called acceptance. Acceptance is a matter of where we come to ourselves about who we are and what we are and what we have to build upon. And we're not envious of others, we're not jealous of others because they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, or they were born into a rich family, or with better looks, or with a better body type. And, you know, we have to struggle along with our inferior type of body type as we look at it, or have been conditioned to think because of our society around us. But we begin to, we have an acceptance of what we are and what we can become. We don't necessarily just say we're going to stay where we are. Acceptance does not mean that, you know, it's just as I am, Lord, and there's no matter of overcoming sin. Acceptance is not a matter of accepting sin.

That's not what I'm saying. When we accept who we are and what we are, then we have the ability to begin to move on, and it's going to affect our relationships. I've told the story many times of the Allied Van Line mover that moved us on one of our trips, one of our moves, I think it was from our Pikeville, Kentucky, moved down to Tennessee back in the 1970s. And the Allied Van driver was packing us up, and over the course of the afternoon I got to talking with him, and you know, he found out I was a minister, and of course he was a truck driver, and we were comparing jobs and what we do, and he said, yeah, he said, I learned long time ago. He said, I realized long time ago that I was never going to be Roy Rogers or Gene Autry riding off into the sunset with a pretty girl in the back of my horse. He said, I was going to be a truck driver, and this is my this is what I chose, this is what I am, and he said, I like what I do, and I'm good at what I do. And it was a refreshing conversation. I've always remembered it. Whatever you are and become, and whatever you find yourself doing, the acceptance is you recognize the talents and strengths that you have, and you maximize those. You reach forward, you grow, you develop, but you accept in a sense what's been given to you, and you build on that. And you don't get filled up with fear of what you're not, the fear of what somebody else is, and what you can't have, the fear of what you might do if you try and you fail, you fall. All of those fears are what hold us back. Again, a sense of self-worth and a realistic view of our abilities. It's a matter of acceptance. Let's look at a few steps in growing in a sense of self-worth. Make a list of the things that you'd like to accomplish, and who you'd like to be, or what you would like to become in your lifetime. Lists are great things.

First step until a lot of accomplishment is to make a list, and a set of goals. That might be number two here, setting a realistic goal and do the work to achieve it. No matter what you read, who you read in terms of self-help, self-improvement, Stephen Covey, all the other types of gurus that are out there. Everybody's got a self-help book, Walk into Borders or Barnes and Noble. You've got a whole table full of people you've never heard of writing you a book to tell you how to improve your life with diet, with exercise, with better mental thinking, whatever it might be. There's good in all of it, wheat and chaff in all of it. Certain principles are run across all of them. And in all my reading over the years, this idea of making a list, setting some goals is right at the top. One of the first steps to ever accomplish anything that you've got to, it seems, first write it down. The writing of it is by itself is not going to make it happen. You've got to then move forward. But it's something that about if you don't write it down, if you don't make that list, then it's not going to happen. I mean, if it's nothing more than just going a trip to the grocery store, you've got to have a list. Then you got to know where that list, they got to remember to take that list. Then you got to remember to look at that list. Debbie makes all kinds, she's a good list maker, and she's a good German. And she makes her grocery list, and she always really does really well if she takes that list herself and goes to the store. When she gives it to me, anything can happen. My Irish, Scottish nature just kind of goes wild at times. I might go out the door and not even take the list. I may take the list, put it in my pocket, and get to the front door of Meyers and think, oh, where's my list? And I can't find it. Thankfully, I've got cell phones.

And you call back. Or you take the list, and you not only buy what's on the list, but you buy a lot of things that aren't on the list. And when I do that, I'm really in trouble. But that's our grocery shopping story. But you have to have a list. Years ago, John Robinson gave a sermon about dreams, and having a dream list of the things that you want to do, the places that you want to go. Sounds like a Dr. Seuss book, I know. It even rhymes a little bit, doesn't it? But I've always remembered his sermon. And I've still got that dream list. I've checked off a few things. I've added some other things to it. The places I'd like to see, the things that I'd like to do before I take up the rocking chair. Everybody ought to have a list. A dream list or a list of goals as to what we want to accomplish with their life. God made you to have a sense of pride in what you do. We're geared that way. We're hardwired that way. When we work or play whatever it is, it's important to do our best. And don't care if it's not as good as someone else, or if we're not going to go quite as far as another person. When we know that we have done our best, there's a sense of self-accomplishment and a sense of good that we feel about it. We should always work to do our best. If it's to make the A, if it's to make that sales quota, it's to finish the job and to finish it on time and to finish it right and as requested, that's how we should strive. Because that will give us a sense of accomplishment and that adds to a sense of worth and value. But we've also got to try. Nothing feels worse than not trying or delivering substandard. Not on time and less than requested or promised. Or making a lower grade when you know with just a little bit more effort and work, starting earlier, you could have made a better grade. You could have made an A.

And then you begin to rationalize and justify and mess with your mind and you get afraid. And our mistakes begin to mess with our mind. There's a great quote from Teddy Roosevelt.

He said, far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the great twilight that knows not victory or defeat. The great twilight that knows not victory or defeat because we haven't taken the first step to try, because we haven't worked at it. We don't succeed and we don't fail, but we become sidelined bystanders in life.

And then don't be overly critical of yourself. We all make mistakes. Nobody but God is perfect. It's all right to encourage yourself, to show a certain amount of appreciation. As I said earlier, don't say that I'm good at math when you're not, but on the other hand, don't say that you're not good at math when you are.

You'll experience a sense of worth when you say that you've worked hard and done the best that you could. And if you can raise that bar of improvement incrementally throughout the year, throughout the season, throughout your life, you will be accomplishing and you will be successful. And you will feel better as a result of it. That's what's so important and so valuable in this whole process of taking ownership of what God has given to you, your talent. Unhappiness comes from wasting what God gives us. For whatever reason, for whatever fear we may have, and whatever it boils down to, that's where it begins and where it ends. God's way develops character and lasting happiness and a sense of worth in our lives. Sin is what makes us feel worthless. Maybe our sins, maybe somebody else's sins. But we've got to always recognize it when and where it is and move away from it. Remembering that God gave His Son to die for us. Because He loved us as part of this world and He doesn't want us to feel worthless. But it all begins with understanding that we are created in the image of God. That sin messes with our minds and brings in fear and all of the resultant problems of our life if we give into that.

It's okay to have a proper view of what God is doing with us. And when we do, we'll understand that God is creating something in His own image. And what God is creating in His image is good.