Loving Others as Yourself

Well, good morning, everyone. January is the month, if you'll notice, on television where you're inundated with weight loss ads. And it seems the majority of them, although this year I've seen more from men, but the majority of weight loss ads usually seem to target women and yet Dan Marino was pushing his version of the weight loss program this year, the former Miami Dolphins quarterback. But you have New Year's resolutions, and this is the big time of year when gym equipment, workout equipment, weights, and all these fancy things go on sale at Sears and all the various places because people have ideas of making changes in their life and losing weight especially is just an obsession with the American society because I think studies show we are largely overweight. Now, this is not a sermon on being overweight or anything like that, but really I use that as an example to illustrate, I think, what we are talking about and what the merchandising is really marketing is the idea of how we feel about ourselves and how we look, but also, more importantly, how we feel about ourselves and the idea, obviously, and there are connections to health and physical looks and all of that tied together in impacting what we might call this idea of self-esteem or self-image or how we look at ourselves. We all have self-esteem. We all have an image of ourselves. We deal with that in various ways. It's been formed and shaped by our parents, by our environment growing up, by what we've done with ourselves, what we haven't done with ourselves, what continues to come upon us as adults, and the successes, the failures, the ups and downs of our lives all impact this idea of how we feel about ourselves, whether it's positive or whether it's negative. How should a Christian feel about himself or herself? Is going around with feelings that our lives are subpar or, in some cases, that some people feel just absolutely worthless? Is that how we should approach it? How is it that even those who are not baptized, those of you that may not have within you God's Holy Spirit working in that way, how are you supposed to feel about yourself? Psychologists and educators have espoused the ideas that the main reason for bad behavior in children and especially in teenagers is low self-esteem. That is a predominant part of the studies and the explanations for behaviors of children and especially adolescents. If they feel bad about themselves, they're going to act out the aggression that they have toward other people. Why they feel bad about themselves is a whole other story and study. Some of the conclusions of the self-esteem movement have come under criticism as people go back and forth on the issues. As they look at gangs in the inner cities and those gangs that commit violence against non-gang members, some of the feeling is that they feel extremely good about themselves and have high esteem and still work out aggression upon other people. We hear sermons about pride. We hear sermons about selfishness as a root of evil. Sometimes over the years we have perhaps developed the impression within the church that if we feel good about ourselves, we're being selfish and we necessarily shouldn't focus on that.

When you put some basic scriptures together, you begin to really understand how God wants and tells us to look at ourselves. Over in Matthew 25, we can begin there. I'm sorry, Chapter 22 of Matthew. In verse 34, I found the clock in this room. The weeks we've been in here, I wondered, is there a clock in here? I found it. I'm the only one who can see it. It's right up there. That's good. I ran off and left my watch at home this morning. I had my cell phone off over there, so I can't even look at that. Did I tell you that when it went off that week that it was a member whose father had died?

Did I tell you that? That's what it was. So you'll forgive me for that. Anyway, all of that's off, but I can see the clock up there so I know when to stop. Matthew 22, verse 34, says, 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?

Jesus said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. That sums up the first four commandments. Then the second great commandment is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. That sums up the other six of the ten commandments. But it says, On these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets. Verse 39 is a very interesting statement. It says, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And it focuses really in two directions, love toward our neighbor, but love for ourselves.

And when you look at a scripture like this, then we are not only to love our neighbors, but we're also told that we have to love ourselves. Now, is that the type of love that ends up in selfishness? It ends up in a false sense of pride, overly focusing upon ourselves? Is that how God wants us to look at ourselves? Now, you can read in the Bible that we are not to love the world or the things of the world. We read in the Bible that the world is passing away and the spiritual values of the kingdom of God are all that will endure. How do we hold the world at arm's length, the things of the world, the values of the world, and yet maintain a godly view of the people in the world?

Because it says we love our neighbor as ourselves in that sense. To do that involves that we understand exactly how God looks at the world as well as ourselves. You know, in John 3, the well-known scripture here in the third chapter of John touches on this a little bit in terms of approaching the world and really understanding a view of God.

In John 3 and verse 16, the well-known scripture that says, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God loves the world, for God so loved the world. And that's not just in the past tense. God does love the world. And yet, as I said, we find in other passages that we are not to love the things of the world.

The apostle John in his epistles was very, very clear about that. And we are not to love the world. Christ had other statements about the values of the world as well. But here in a statement that really talks to us about God, it says God loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that he was willing to give him up, that his death would allow us to have everlasting life.

Verse 17 says, God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. And so again, it's not through Christ he is not condemning the world. Through Christ God is saving the world. And again, this speaks to an attitude about God and understanding how God views the world and what we should adapt and adopt. And it also helps us to understand about ourselves. We're not in this sermon talking about necessarily a view of God or even the view of the world.

It's really, we're getting to how we view ourselves. But it begins by understanding a little bit about how God tells us to view the world as he says, love the world, love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We first have to understand how God really approaches that. I got a letter from an individual in response to the biweekly letter I sent out, mail out to the World News subscriber list that subscribed to this e-newsletter that we sent out and in the letter that I had recently written asking everyone to pray for our President in the spirit of how Paul instructs us in 1 Timothy 2 to pray for leaders and pray for those that are in authority.

And I got a nice letter back from someone that was encouraged by that approach rather than a condemning approach to the world that was taking a positive approach toward obviously a very grave situation and a great deal of pressure on the world seen upon our President and upon our country. But it begins by praying for them regardless of our political point of view.

This prayer for our leader is not partisan and political in nature. So I appreciated the fact that they saw how we're wanting to handle the gospel, the Bible, prophecy, and things like that and not in a condemning manner. Christ here says that Christ did not come into the world to condemn it, but that through Him it might be saved. Now, that doesn't mean that there's not judgment and there's not righteous standards and that there will not be a time of judgment.

Christ is going to bring a judgment upon the world. The book of Revelation is very, very clear about that. But even that judgment leads to not condemnation in terms of an eternal condemnation, but ultimately God's plan will be brought to pass and even the world that will be judged in the time of the tribulation will ultimately have an opportunity through the grace and the mercy of God for eternal life and accepting the salvation of Jesus Christ. So that's the ultimate end. And with that point of view, we understand a right approach toward this world, and that should help us get to a proper point of view about how we as Christians are supposed to love ourselves and to feel about ourselves.

Because if we're supposed to love our neighbor as ourself, then how do we love ourselves? If I love myself, some might ask, will I just be filled up with selfishness? Will I be filled up with pride? So what I want to examine this morning is the question of how a Christian develops a sense of self-worth and how it is that we should feel about ourselves. Now, that's an important matter to get into at times because we are all impacted by it. Even us men, even though we're not necessarily caught up in a weight loss craze or exercise craze at any particular time or necessarily wanting to always get in touch with our feelings, let's face it gentlemen, ladies, all of us, we all have an image of ourselves.

We all have esteem. We all have self-esteem. Is it healthy? Is it strong? Is it in line with some of the principles that we see from the Bible? Is it how God looks at us? Because we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Quite frankly, if we can't love ourselves in the right way, then we're not going to be able to properly approach our neighbor. Anyone beyond that neighborhood or the world in general, and quite frankly, it will impact our view of the world. These things need to be from time to time understood. Some might consider a sermon like this to be a kind of a soft sermon.

Well, yeah, whatever. You want to label it. Maybe it is a little bit soft from one perspective, but quite frankly, it gets down to some of the harder aspects of our calling and our relationship with our view of God and how He is working with us. Because whether we want to admit it or not, we all have a view of ourselves. The question is, do we have a realistic view?

Because really, it is important that we do have a realistic view of ourselves. Because a proper sense of self-worth isn't the same as selfishness or being vain. Selfishness is an unrealistic viewpoint of ourselves. A selfish person cares only about himself or herself. Every situation that we approach from that point of view is from the point of view of what's in it for me. That is a normal reaction. We have Mr. Moss over here who is a marketing guru for the company that he works for. Every person that gets into marketing or sales knows that you have to find out what it is that the person wants to answer the question, what's in it for me?

You figure that out, you're going to be successful at marketing and sales. But a selfish person loves himself so much that he can't love his neighbor because he doesn't see his neighbor as being a valuable person. His neighbor just may be a digit or a widget or a cipher or a mark or a commodity. That's that type of selfishness, is always putting other people down because of a feeling of superiority. Maybe it's out of necessity that that superiority comes on, but it leads to a resentment of others with talent, resentment of others who have opportunities, maybe better looking, more successful, or just own more stuff than they do.

And that creates certain feelings of ingratitude and selfishness. On the other hand, a person with a proper sense of self-worth is going to be realistic about their own abilities and happy with who he or she may be as a person and sincerely wanting to take every effort and opportunity to improve their lot in life, to improve themselves.

It leads to a healthy approach to life as a chance to learn and to become a better person, not necessarily to get it over on someone else, the neighbor, the other family member, the older sibling, the feeling left by parents who themselves, perhaps, did not know how to properly instill a sense of love within a family. You see, God gives each one of us a sense of value and worth from the very fact of our creation.

Where does our worth and our value begin? It has to begin again with God. So much of this all goes back to that. And when we approach it from that point of view, then we see where we get our image, our self-esteem, and we see how God looks at that. Let's turn back, if you will, to Genesis 1. In verse 26, let's begin. When we look at the very creation of human beings, we see this fundamental point that is, again, familiar to us, but it has to be our beginning point in this whole discussion.

And that is, we are made in the image of God. Verse 26 of Genesis 1, 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 over 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. Male and female, he created him. And so we're made in the image of God.

God doesn't feel bad about himself. God has a pretty healthy self-image.

He's full of joy. He's full of contentment. And he makes us and made us in his image.

And the spiritual work that he's doing with us is to create us within his image.

And is he going to author that to be a bundle of insecurities? A bundle of phobias?

Where do our fears come from? Where do the things that torment us in the deepest part of our psyche, where do they come from? You know, we're conscious and we think we are creative. We feel happiness and sadness. We're capable of love because God has those qualities. God looked first at the first people that he created, Adam and Eve, and he said that his creation was very good at the end of that sixth day. He didn't tell them to feel bad about themselves. He said it is all good. And he gave dominion, which is rulership and its responsibility over everything else that was created in the physical realm. And God also, here in these initial verses, we find he gave all of us free will. Free will is a term that is gets a little philosophical, gets a little bit fuzzy at times.

I sometimes just like to use the word freedom. In the past, I've called it the fundamental fact of freedom, the three F's that God gives us. God gives us freedom. He gave that at the very beginning. It is the gift of God. At every point and departure in life, you and I have freedom.

And any one person, any government, any system, any philosophy, anything that rips away the freedom that God gives to us is not right. Because God gives us a free will, freedom of choice.

And that's fundamental. And it's important, even on this issue of our self-esteem and of our image, because we have the freedom to make choices, and every day we make choices. And so often, it's because of making bad choices that we might wind up with a terribly flawed image of God.

And that's why we feel bad. That's where the bad feelings begin. When you look at the story here, we find really a key to this whole issue in chapter 2 and chapter 3 especially, because Adam and Eve did not have bad feelings about themselves. Remember, God said that He created them and everything that He created was good, created in His image. They didn't have bad feelings about themselves until we come to chapter 3 and we find that Satan began to mess with their minds. And Satan began to do the thing that Mr. Cobb was talking about in his sermon to ask questions. But from a negative point of view, it was to throw doubt on God. It was to cast doubt on what God had instructed them and what God had said. You begin that in chapter 3 right on down here as he said, as the serpent came and he said, has God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden.

And the whole story begins here. Satan begins to cast doubt. But they didn't feel bad about themselves. God didn't design Adam and Eve and humanity to go through life feeling worthless.

That happened when Satan began to mess with their minds because when Satan began to cast doubt upon him, it led them to make a decision to take of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, something God had said don't do. God said take of the tree of life. He gave them the choice and they chose poorly. As the famous line from the Indiana Jones movie said, they chose poorly.

And their minds began to be altered. But what about in their minds? Look at what we're told in the story. They began to feel bad about themselves. Their self-esteem began to plummet and they began to hide from God because in verse 8 we're told that when God came walking in the garden in the cool of the day, Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of God among the trees of the garden. They didn't want to face him. They felt guilt. They felt shame. They felt remorse. They felt confusion. Probably felt anger. Adam was angry at Eve. Eve was angry at Adam and they were both angry at Satan. But you know what? They probably didn't even know it was Satan. They probably, by this point, had even forgotten that that serpent slithering around in the tree.

They just were mad. They were frustrated. Just like people today are frustrated. They're angry. They feel life has not dealt them a good hand. They have self-esteem problems. They can't get it together. And they have all these fears and frustrations and phobias and they don't know why.

Because the invisible source of the deceiver is not able to be seen.

I wonder here at verse 8 if Adam and Eve even remembered having that conversation with that talking snake. They were probably already deceived about that and already busy arguing among themselves. And they hid from God. In verse 9, God said to Adam and the Lord called to Adam and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. Fear. Look at that word in verse 10.

Fear. Fear. I was fearful. Phobias. That's the Greek word that we toss around today. The person's got phobias. Agoraphobia. Clostrophobia. Fear of this, fear of that. Adam and Eve became fearful because Satan began to mess with their mind. We feel worthless. We feel fearful today just like they did because Satan has messed with our mind. Satan and his society and this world, we might feel worthless because we don't understand who we are as God's children because we have messed up images of God. We don't really see ourselves created the image of God. We don't see God working with us in that way in a spiritual sense. This is where image begins. Self-image, personal feelings, self-esteem. It all begins with this image of God. In Genesis chapter 1, we are created in His image. That is the image we have to have. But we don't because this world messes with our mind. Satan puts and injects fear. When a person feels worthless, very often it will lead to destructive behavior. A girl might sleep with many boys because she feels worthless anyway. And that happens so often today because she's been given a sense of worthlessness by a mother, a father, by others. And that behavior, promiscuous behavior, might make her feel a little bit better momentarily, but inevitably it leads to even stronger feelings of worthlessness. A person will turn to drugs, to alcohol, because they're trying to avoid feelings of fear, worthlessness, image problems. A young boy begins to act up in school maybe because he's already decided that he's stupid, because he's been told that at home. My wife teaches elementary school every week as a substitute teacher. She comes home with the stories. There's a trailer park that's part of the community. And usually the stories she has are the kids from the trailer park, the trailer park stories. Some of the life issue problems that spill over into those kids who are six, seven, eight years old. And the behavior problems go back to the parents. They go back to what's happening in the families. And I should be fair, it's not always the trailer park kids. There's some very, very expensive homes in our neighborhood, too, and she's had kids with problems from those expensive homes as well. But it's so sad to see it in a seven or eight-year-old kid. And they've already been conditioned to certain feelings, and those issues begin to be acted out in the classroom. It becomes the teacher's issue, the counselor's issue, the principal, and the community issues. And from year to year, those things just continue to be there. Sometimes we try to compensate for feelings of worthlessness by making ourselves the center of attention. And some of the best comedians have developed in our world because they wanted to be at the center of attention. When you study some of the biographies of the best comedians we've had, that's where they got their start. And they had some problem childhoods and families, and they overcompensated by that by entertaining and by telling jokes and telling stories and making people laugh. And first one thing led to another, then they became millionaires with a star on Hollywood Boulevard in Southern California. That's happened over and over again as well. Sometimes that desire for attention takes different turns.

Sometimes you see them start to abuse their body with body piercing, bizarre hairstyles, bizarre clothing styles that act to agitate adults, whatever the adults might be in their world, in order to get attention.

I've sat next to some of those situations at the airport over the years, and I remember, you know, just I was talking, I didn't talk with them, but I sat next to two or three young kids who at the airport in O'Hara one time that were body pierced tattoos and, you know, hair all skewed. And I just listened to their conversation as we waited for the flight. And, you know, through the course of the conversation and bits and pieces that I couldn't help but overhear or pick up, they were decent people. But you could tell that there were some other issues there, and their dress and their behavior was a desire for some other type of attention.

But yet that appearance puts you off. But they're looking for that or someone to help them feel good about themselves. So it takes different forms, different types of behavior. A positive sense of self-worth comes from understanding God's purpose for making us. God's plan is to save us from worthlessness. A true sense of self-worth comes from understanding that purpose that God has for our lives. Let's look in Luke chapter 12.

Christ took a backdoor approach to tell us this by the example that He used in Luke 12, beginning in verse 6.

Luke 12 and verse 6 says, Are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins? And not one of them is forgotten before God.

But the very hairs of your head are not made of the same.

But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows.

And so He takes a different approach. He kind of comes at it obliquely here to tell us that we are of extreme value to God, that God, through His creation, has taken care of and made sure that the animal world is taken care of because He values them.

We can talk about the law of nature, and we can see certain aspects of savagery within the animal kingdom. There's no doubt about that.

But when you look at the basis of that, and what Christ is saying here, even birds, you know, they're taken care of by God's design. The systems are built in, and it all works toward that anyway. But He says, do not fear. In other words, don't be afraid. Verse 7. What was it that Adam and Eve had when they sinned and Satan began to mess with their mind? Adam said, I'm afraid.

I'm fearful. I got these hang-ups, God. I got these hang-ups about you because of the way I was raised.

Something happened in my childhood, Adam said.

Now, you might be thinking, did Adam have a childhood? Well, as he learned, just like a child does, he came to a certain point. And however long that story took place there in the first few verses of Genesis to where they finally made that decision, we don't know if it was days, weeks, hours. The point is, he learned, and he learned a bad lesson that scorched him. And he was afraid.

He was afraid of authority figures. That's why he hid from God. He was afraid of ministers.

He was afraid of school principals. He was afraid of anybody wearing a badge, a uniform.

He was just fearful. Here in verse 7, Christ said, Do not fear. You are of more value than many spiros. We're designed to feel good about our abilities. We're designed to feel good about our character, about our positive accomplishments. That's really how God designed us. He doesn't want us to be fearful. We are of infinite value to God. That's where it all begins. And when we get that squared away in our head, we can begin to build something. In Matthew 25, the well-known parable of the talent. Matthew 25. This parable begins in verse 14. The kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them.

And to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his own ability, and immediately he went on a journey. And so this story that is to tell us about the kingdom of God, how it works, and how our life works in this world and in this physical life, in advance of the kingdom, how this life is to work to prepare us for the kingdom, the spiritual reality of that kingdom, is what this parable is all about. And he uses the word talents, which is really a talent was a measure of money, like a dollar or a euro or a dinar. But it's a unit of money. But since this is a parable, talents is really a symbol of talent, skills, abilities, and unique qualities that God has given to each of us, because each of us is a special creation of God. There's over six billion people on this earth and there's just one person like you. That's it. And there have been billions who have gone before us, and not one of them have looked like us. It's a marvel to think about. You know, even when we might see somebody, oh yeah, that person really looks like somebody that I know. You've seen people like that and think, boy, but they're not exactly. I watch, I don't know how many of you know David Register, one of our elders works at the home office now. Every time I see this newsman on Fox News, Major Garrett, how many of you, Major Garrett, watch Fox News? Fox News? I keep saying, whenever I see him, I say, that's Dave Register's twin, long lost twin. But it's not. He's different.

There's six billion people today, and not one is the same. We're all different.

Your specific set of features and abilities are unique, and God sees that uniqueness as something of immeasurable value. He sees that as something that is a part of his work, that he is going to ultimately, whether in this age through his calling or in the age to come, he is going to work that talent in the individual to bring them to his kingdom. God sees us that way. That's what this parable is all about. Now, you know that the individuals given the talents all but one increased what they did. The others set goals, had accomplishments, some more than others. Some doubled. Some didn't quite do that well. But they all increased the talent that they were given.

But there was one who didn't. There was one who was afraid in verse 25. It was the person who received the one talent who came and said, Lord, I know you to be a hard man, reaping where you've not sown, and gathering where you've not scattered. Look at verse 25. Here we find that word fear again. He said, I was afraid. I was fearful. I was like Adam. I messed up in my mind.

Satan had scrambled my brains around. And I was fearful. And I went and hid your talent in the ground. And look, there you have what is yours. And he failed. God says, you know, you're not going to be there. He said, take from him the one talent that he has and give it to the others. And cast the unprofitable servant into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This man failed because he didn't see the value of what God had placed on him. He didn't see that he was of infinite value to God. He didn't even see the one measure of value and worth that God had given him. And he didn't build on that. He was afraid. He was angry.

He didn't like people. He didn't like banks. So he went and hid in the ground.

He'd grown up during the Great Depression.

And he didn't trust banks. My mother was like that. She grew up in the Depression dirt poor, and she did not trust banks. I think I've told you the story. My dad was selling out his business back in 1969. And he had a Texaco gas station. And after 25 years, he'd had enough of it, and he started selling. He was going to get out of that business and work for a construction company.

He had some debts. He just let the business dwindle down. And so he began to sell off the tools and machinery that made up a gas station in those days. You don't find those things in a gas station today. You have to go to a full shop to repair a shop. But he had lots of it. He'd sell a jack. He'd sell a tire balancing machine. He'd sell other pieces of equipment and get $40, $50, $100. He'd bring it home and give it to my mom. Where did my mom put it? She'd go downstairs into the basement, open up the old international harvester freezer that we had, pull out the Folger's coffee can, roll it up, put it down in there, and put it back in and go back upstairs. The next day, my dad brings more money, she'd do the same thing over again. She didn't trust banks.

And my dad owed some money to the bank. That was another part of the story. But anyway, she wasn't going to make sure the bank wasn't going to get any hands on that.

So when it was all said and done after he closed up and sold out everything, my dad said, well, Joe, how much money do we have down there? I think we need a new car.

And so she went down, pulled it all out, rolled it all out on the kitchen table, and there was enough money to go out and buy a brand new Oldsmobile and pay cold cash for it.

Now, I don't recommend that as a way of investing your money today. You want to at least get interest on that. But that's what my mom did. She was fearful of a bank, of authority. And this man here, the one talent man, didn't even increase his talent. He was fearful. He was afraid. So each of us has been designed for something else, though. We have been designed for success and for happiness. So many times we live our lives in fear of failure.

The reality is that no success in life comes without work and some failure. Every life is going to have that. But when we have a proper sense of self-worth, we can look at ourselves with honesty and admit that we can accomplish something. We can do something. We may not be the CEO. We may not be the governor. We may not make it and have the 40 gazillion acre resort home that we see on HGTV that some people build. But we can have success. We can have accomplishment. And we can feel good about it. And we can feel good about it from a right perspective.

We don't have to envy someone else that might have more.

We don't have to be angry at somebody else or angry at God. We have to understand what God is doing and how He will help us. It's the learning and growing that makes us a more valuable person.

It's the positive approach. A true sense of self-worth comes from understanding that we're designed to live together in relationships. That's why Christ said, Love your neighbor as yourself. And if we accept our own worth as a part of the creation of God and what He's doing with us, then we'll be able to accept the worth of others as part of that creation as well.

And it should lead us to a healthier, more subtle, kindlier approach toward others.

And when we have that approach, it's going to change our life. A proper sense of self-worth is going to change our life. Because with that proper sense of self-worth, we're going to see ourselves as a child of God, again created in His image, who knows that God loves us and wants us to live a life pleasing to Him and that God is pleased with us. You know, remember the sermon I gave a few weeks ago about the different views that people have of God, the God view. Some look at God as authoritarian, some look at God as aloof, some look at God as just completely benevolent, non-judgmental. And the surveyor said that if I know how a person views God, I will know a great deal about that individual. Well, when it comes to this area of having proper self-esteem, having a proper view of God and how He looks at us is critical. In Hebrews 2, the book of Hebrews, there's a couple of places I want to point out how God looks at us. In Hebrews 2, verse 10, in this section that talks about God's purpose and plan for us in bringing many sons to glory, it says, it was fitting for Him for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering.

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.

Do you ever stop and think about that verse? God's not ashamed of us.

God carries no shame toward us. Christ is not ashamed to call us His brother.

He would not walk across the street to avoid us if He saw us coming down the street.

He'd sit down next to us at the table. He'd greet us. He would not ignore us.

He would not be ashamed of us because He has a proper view of what we are and what we are doing.

Chapter 11 of Hebrews, chapter 11, and verse 16.

At the end of this first listing of these heroes, these heroes of faith, 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.

It's our faith as we exercise faith in obedience to God, as we exercise faith in resisting this world, even enduring the persecution that comes from obeying God, wanting to be like God, to the degree that, as others in these examples of faith did, it brings us to a point because of that, God's not ashamed of us. We may be the poor. We may not be the wise. But God is not ashamed of us. He's not ashamed to say, hey, that's my person. That's the one whom I've called and in whom I am working. And He is working for us. That's where a proper image, self-image, and self-esteem begins.

And if it does, we're not going to be self-centered. We're going to have a proper sense of worth that's willing to sacrifice ourselves for others because we understand also that same value in others. But that's the basis of valuing who we are as women and men, our femininity, our masculinity.

Having a proper sense of self-worth means we're going to take proper pride in character and positive, godly accomplishments. Character is not a word that so often comes up when this self-esteem talk, fuzzy talk, comes around because it's hard or it implies a little bit of value judgment. And one thing some people in some schools of thought don't want to do today is to get into value judgment. That one set of values is better than another set of values because then that gets into inequalities and that then, you know, upsets the whole multicultural cube that we've constructed for ourselves in our world today. But character and positive, godly accomplishments are an important part of having a proper sense of self-worth and self-esteem because that's going to help us plan for the future and the future development of our character. We're going to have a proper sense of worth that's going to get into the realistic viewpoint of our abilities in relationship to other people. We're going to recognize that we are special as a unique part of God's creation, that others are unique creations of God as well.

And that's where we get into the idea of acceptance.

One of the great lessons of maturity is accepting who we are, accepting the family we were born into, the social strat, if you will, that we were either placed in and have developed to at this point in our life. As I say, we come to a certain point like the the allied van, moving man that moved me from one of my moves in years past from Kentucky down to Tennessee, I believe. I had an allied van man that was moving, packing up our goods in Pikeville, Kentucky, and he spent his years on the road moving people, driving a truck. We got to talking about his job that day that he packed us up and he said, yeah, he said, I learned long ago I wasn't going to be Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, riding off into the sunset with a pretty gal on the back of my horse. He said, I realized I was going to be a mover, a truck driver, and I made my peace, and I'm happy. He was happy with what he did, and he came to accept himself. He was probably one of the most well-adjusted truck drivers I've ever run across in my life. But we come to accept where we are, who we are. Not that we accept failure or we accept substandard character, but we accept other people. We accept who we are in a right way as unique creations of God. That doesn't excuse bad behavior. That doesn't excuse sin, but it's dealing with dealing here with our the basic building blocks of how we love our neighbor as ourselves. Okay, so don't interpret acceptance. We shouldn't interpret acceptance as non-judgmental or just accepting someone as they are. That's not the issue here. It's accepting ourselves as creations of God, and with that as the beginning point, we can work then toward the various steps of growing in a sense of self-worth.

It's important, brethren, to develop that understanding of what it takes. What are some of the steps that we can take to grow a sense of self-worth? Well, we can make it number one. We can make a list of things that we would like to accomplish and what we would like to become in our lifetime. Call that your dream list. Call that your action list. Call that your goal list.

We all, many of us, have had dream lists. I still have a dream list, by the way. John Robinson gave a sermon on dreams years ago, and I still have a dream list. We ticked a few things off of it a year and a half or so ago and added some other things to it. But it's important to have a list of things we want to do and to accomplish. Secondly, it's important to set goals and do the work then to achieve them. Every measurable goal is going to require work. You have to ask what it is you want to accomplish and write it down. So many of the experts say, and there is value to this, that the first step in accomplishment is to write it down. That doesn't by itself accomplish the goal or the task, but to write it down is a first step. For many of us, it is the most necessary step to write it down and then seek help from those who can help us to accomplish those goals. We're all goal-driven in many ways. I go a couple of times a year, I kind of get in my own mode where I go back through some of the books I have on my shelf or some of the tapes that I have on my iPod that help to talk about getting organized or accomplishing things and getting things done. I have to do that. I guess I'm that type of person. My wife is not. She is by nature.

She makes her list. She gets them done. She moves forward. I have to keep reminding myself and go back through certain books or methods that the guys, you know, the Coveys and the others have developed over the years just to refresh my mind and to help me do what is necessary to keep things focused, keep things on track, and to achieve the things that I need to do. Thirdly, realize that God made you to have a sense of pride in what you do. When you work or play, always try to do your best. Don't care if it's not as good as someone else. When a person knows he's done his best, he feels good. Forget the advice of the Lombardis and the Bobby Knights and the not-headed, overachieving jocks who think that winning is everything or the only thing.

Now, winning is important, and I hope the Colts win tomorrow.

But if they don't, I still win because I really like Tom Brady. So, even if the Colts don't win, I'll be pulling for the Colts. If New England pulls it out, I still like Tom Brady. I like Tom Brady because he wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and he was a fifth-round draft pick, and he became a three-time Super Bowl winner the hard way. He had to, as the old commercial was, he had to earn it. And that's what I like about him. But I like Peyton Manning and the Colts, too, so I'm going to be pulling for them tomorrow. But for you and I, for most of the masses of life, it's important that we know that we've done our best. And whatever accomplishment, then that's our winning. And we have tried. And that is it. Teddy Roosevelt has a famous saying, goes like this, many quote in a situation like this, that Teddy Roosevelt 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.

To strive and to even be defeated can be a victory. If we learn and we move forward, we keep pushing forward. There's a proverb that says that the righteous man may fall seven times, but each time he gets up, and we keep moving forward. Another step is to not be overly critical of yourself. We all make mistakes. Nobody but God is perfect. It's all right to give yourself encouragement and appreciation. Now, don't say that I'm good at math when you're not, and you haven't really put in the time to learn the equations and the formulas, but you'll experience a sense of worth when you say that you've worked hard, and you do the best you could. Don't say, I'm not good at math when you are good at math as well, just to make yourself fit into a group. If you're good at math, say it.

If you've read the great books of the Western world, don't be afraid to say it.

Don't deny it just to fit in with a person or a crowd or a group. It's important to take ownership of what God has given to us, the talent that we do have, the strengths that we have been given.

Unhappiness comes from wasting what God gave to us. That's how we grow in true godliness. That's how and why it is so important to do that. God's way developed character and lasting happiness and a sense of worth. Sin is what makes us feel worthless.

Remember that God gave His Son for us. That's what John 3.16 says. God so loved the world.

And we can even put ourselves in that. We don't have to say that that means the unconverted. That means others beyond the church. No, that means us.

That God loved us so much that He gave His Son for us. And He doesn't want us to feel worthless and burned out. He looks at us and He sees a special child, a son or a daughter, that He's working His character and His purpose and His plan in. He sees what we can become, not what we are, not what we've been. He sees what we can become. And that's what He is working to develop within us, all of us. So the answer is to keep that image of God firmly placed in our mind and to eliminate the fear and not to let those fears and phobias overcome us. We're all created in the image of God and that is the ultimate source of our value and hopefully a true godly self-esteem.