Journey into Lightl

I was talking to a friend the other day and asked him to imagine how his life would be different if he believed that he was always important. He immediately responded and said that he would be more of a risk-taker. He would be more honest with himself about the condition of his business and be willing to fail in trying to grow it.

You see my friend did not view himself as always being important. He felt that his worth was on the line everyday. He was not living in the reality that he will never be more or less important than he is today (Isaiah 43:4).

He is like a lot of us Christians. We are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession” (1 Peter 2:9), and yet we live like we still need to prove ourselves everyday. Can we imagine how our lives could be different if we saw ourselves the way God sees us?

If we were to imagine it, here are some examples of how our lives could be different:

• We could better stand up to bullies knowing that they can’t lay a glove on us as to our worth.

• We would have much less fear in our lives living in the presence of God’s loving gaze.

• We would be free to fail knowing that our worth will never decrease.

• We would be free to lose control knowing that he is carefully watching out for us.

Yet, most of us live like paupers when we could live like royalty. We refuse to see ourselves as God sees us. Why is this so?

There are several reasons. May I suggest three:

One is that we have failed to reckon that a lot more changed at salvation than just going to heaven someday. God also gave us the challenge of seeing ourselves as having great worth and being deeply loved. It is ours for the living. But most of us won’t live it. We are lazy. It takes too much work to see ourselves differently.

We are also afraid. This business of never losing worth no matter how many times we fail seems too “pie in the sky.” It is scary. So, we refuse to follow God into the Promised Land and fight the giants that resist our living like royalty.

A third reason is that we are fooled. “There is a way that seems right to man, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12). We think that our collection of idols will do a better job of making us feel loved and important than accepting God’s gift of love and worth. The great Deceiver has fooled us along with the rest of the world (Revelations 12:9).

So, if we do not want to be like the rest of the world, how can we better see ourselves as God sees us? One thing we can do is to start with a vision. “Without a vision the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18). We can be motivated to seek living in this reality, as we can imagine it. Imagining and then living in the reality of always being loved, valued, and accepted will change the way we do life.

Another thing we can do is to wage war over the habits and spiritual forces that hold us in bondage to our low self-esteem. We are royalty! We need to live that way.

We need to ask God to take away our self-image that needs to succeed and always be approved of. We then need to ask him to replace it with living in the reality of always being loved, special and forever accepted. “If by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13).