Journey into Lightl

I am currently involved in mentoring a small group of medical students. It is part of a program to help them to integrate their faith into their future medical practice. The curriculum we use for the mentoring portion is the book, The Search for Significance.

Why would we use this book? Why is it important for medical students to know where their significance comes from? Why would over two million people have read this book?

Medical students, like us all, need to feel significant. God made us this way. The problem is that most of us search in all the wrong places for significance.

We often believe that we are significant if we are strong, a high achiever, or approved of by the powerful. However, we never seem strong enough, or achieve enough, or approved of enough to be satisfied that we are significant (Proverbs 27:20).

God says, that these ways are “broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). These are false ways to becoming significant. They do not satisfy because they are not God’s way to be significant.

God’s way is for us to live in the reality that we are already significant! We do not need to search for it! “You are precious, you are honored, and I love you” God tells us in Isaiah 43:4.

But we say to ourselves, ”This is crazy! This doesn’t make sense! This is not how my life works!”

Of course our life doesn’t work this way. “For My ways are higher than your ways,” says God (Isaiah 55:9). His way is to give us significance as a gift for being his child.

However, we have been trained to earn significance. Medical students in particular have been trained to earn significance through their achievements and the approval of society. “Who needs God to be significant?” they may say to themselves.

So, how can we find significance God’s way? How can we call off the search for it? How can we learn to accept our weaknesses, the disapproval from others, and failure to achieve our goals and still regard ourselves as significant?

Keep in mind it is a journey of a thousand miles. But it does begin with one or two steps. Let me suggest a couple of them.

First, buy and read the book, The Search for Significance.

Then, ask God to help you to recall any incident during the day where you felt insignificant. Imagine yourself back in each of those scenes and thank him for his gift of significance to you.