eople rarely come to Christ
if they do not have a healthy loving relationship to affirm their
sense of self-worth and dignity. Without some degree of self-caring
or self-esteem, most people will not respond to God's love, mercy,
and grace. A lot of people have experienced abandonment or
rejection with its resulting anger and depression, and have
difficulty responding to a heavenly Father who is loving, caring,
nurturing, and accepting.
Healthy
self-worth, self-acceptance, self-esteem or self-love requires being
nurtured from healthy relationships. Often the primary
relationships we had as a child did not provide us with adequate
nurture for development. When this occurs, a variety of emotional
and behavioral problems can develop. Children develop positive or
negative personality characteristics that attract or repel others'
attention. The emotional and behavioral problems usually encourage
more rejection. In defense of ourselves, we create unrealistic
forms of self-love (narcissism, arrogance, superiority complex,
proud boasting, or false humility) to substitute for the void left
by the lack of others' love. The negative cycle continues until
interrupted through a loving relationship. Unfortunately, our
children will often produce self-esteem problems the same or similar
to our own. The iniquity of us all visits our children and their
children. A dysfunctional cycle begins this way but God has an
answer for those who seek Him. He can restore us.
All the
significant relationships in our environment affect our
self-esteem. Our hope is to hear, see, and feel the love, value,
and acceptance being affirmed by God, even though we are imperfect
and sinful. We all need someone to tell us about and show us God's
love, and show it to us as well.
The grid of our
life experience skews the world for us. People sometimes doubt,
question, and reject us. Most of us question our self-worth because
we are instinctively aware, at some level, of our sinful
tendencies. We do not measure up to others' standards, God's
standards, or our own aspirations. The performance trap often
captures us in its web. We are all trying to win others' approval
and acceptance.
One of the
greatest needs is to have relationships with other people. People
need people! We need to learn how to overcome rejection by others
and ourselves. We need to take responsibility in the creation of
our own feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, and inferiority, in
order to build a healthy biblically based self-esteem. Some
rejection is self-induced. We need to identify how we create our
own self-rejection through negative self-talk, negative
self-picturing, negative self-feelings, and negative self-behavior.
We need to learn to change this negative pattern into positive and
spiritually healthy self-acceptance, self-affirmation, self-esteem,
and self-image.
People with
healthy self-esteem utilize the four sensory experiences
positively. That is, their self-talk is encouraging, their
self-picturing is accurate and positive, their self-feelings are
acceptable and appropriate, and their self-behavior is constructive.
What people think
and believe about themselves reflects directly in what they say,
see, feel, and do. Without God's help, people will not grow into
healthy Christians who know, accept, love, and share themselves.
The sequence of
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that lead to healthy self-esteem
is the focus of the process that leads to healthy self-esteem. In
order to understand the building of healthy, biblically accurate
self-esteem, we must understand the concept of the sanctification
process. The biblical concept of self-love includes the following:
(1) accepting I am a child of God who is lovable, valuable, capable;
(2) the willingness to give up being the center of the world; and
(3) recognizing the need for God's forgiveness and redemption. The
answer is Christ-esteem. This esteem is a result of accepting
myself. I am what I am, a person made in the image of God, a saint
redeemed by God's grace, and a significant part in the body of
Christ.
The believer’s
basis for Christ-esteem rests upon their scriptural identification
with Christ, to build, develop and integrate into their daily
routine, God’s view of who they are ‘in Christ’. In order to get
an accurate concept of normal Christian self-esteem, we need to use
a balanced approach using biblical principles and concepts. We will
use a balanced approach using character-building techniques that
establish our ‘identity’ and ‘position’ ‘in Christ’. Everyone needs
to use what they think, hear, see, feel, and do as a sensory
resource in building Christ-esteem. People need to learn how to
translate what they are hearing, seeing, feeling, doing, and
thinking into successful practical daily life in their personal and
spiritual relationship with people and with God.
There are four
goals which we should be concerned with: (1) learning to build
healthy self-esteem based on my relationship ‘in Christ’; (2) to
allow my ‘position’ ‘in Christ’ to be fundamental to the resolution
of my problems; (3) to grow to maturity in my self-esteem before I
help others; and (4) to establish the contributing issues concerning
my healthy Christ-esteem.
Everyone needs
help to uncover their resistance to change as well as develop
resources through which they can understand and live out the
Christian lifestyle. We need to learn to do things differently if
we are going to change, but first we must learn to think differently
if we are going to change our behavior. In the case of a
non-Christian, their corrupt nature needs change through spiritual
rebirth. Simply modifying behavior will not last and only leads to
frustration. People who have developed a relationship with Jesus
Christ can suffer from self-depreciating concepts. The basic human
needs (for knowledge, vision, feelings, and actions that affirm his
or her value Christ) are fulfilled ‘in Christ’-centered
relationships.
When we attempt to
have our legitimate needs met through a source outside of the riches
we have ‘in Christ’, we miss the mark. When we know, accept, love,
and share who we are, we do not need to prove who we are to anyone.
We are complete ‘in Christ’, and help people by assisting them to
consider who they are ‘in Christ’. When a person understands who
they are ‘in Christ’, they will want to explore what they are
listening to, looking at, feeling for, or acting out. People will
consistently act in a manner that they believe to be true about
themselves. Therefore, we see the outward manifestation of a
person's heart acted out in their life. A sinner will continue
sinning, while a saint will occasionally sin but will not continue
in their sin.
There are four
dimensions that we need to explore before we help others. We need
to take time to inventory and confess our sins, to know who we are,
and to understand how our self-talk, self-perceptions, imaginations,
feelings, desires, and behaviors cause us to yield to temptation.
When we deal with our own depravity, we develop the humility. We
can become servants, knowing that everything we have comes from the
Father of us all, through the sacrifice of His Son.
To guide us in
knowing and accepting who we are ‘in Christ’, we must become aware
of ourselves. There are four sense modalities primarily used in
everyday life: (1) listening, (2) looking, (3) feeling, (4) acting.
We must experience ourselves through our observations by asking
yourself, ‘What am I experiencing at this moment?’ The experience
is becoming aware of the four senses, e.g., ‘What am I saying,
hearing, seeing/imagining, feeling/sensing, doing/behaving?’
When we become
aware of what we say and see, and how we feel and act in a given
moment we can begin to understand ourselves in a new way. We need
to become aware of our feelings when we take action, what we were
saying to ourselves, or what we were seeing when we felt or did
something. When we become specifically aware of our thinking, we
begin to get understanding.
Remember, the way
in which the senses influence each other is the process we use to
live in the community. The way we process the information affects
all of our relationships. We must learn how to recognize the
communication barriers, where we have trouble speaking and hearing
others. Then the steps in accomplishing a goal will be easier, and
we will be competent in knowing what steps we need to take in order
to be successful in whatever we attempt.
ACCEPTING AND LOVING
OURSELVES
Healthy
relationships characterize love. That is, by accepting other people
with all their spots and wrinkles, we reveal the love of God. This
means acceptance without trying to change them because change is
impossible until we become aware of and experience God's love toward
us. (1 John 4) To discover and accept ourselves is a necessary
prelude to accepting others. Without loving and valuing ourselves,
we love and value others only in word without the thought and intent
of our hearts that empowers love. Pure and undefiled love is to
esteem others more highly than ourselves, and to regard their needs
more highly than our own. We need to know that God loves us without
regard to our human frailty and weaknesses. As children of God, we
need to know even through the testing of our faith, that God loves
us.
We need to
surrender to God and allow him to live through us. When we
understand how God's Spirit is working to renew our minds through
our senses, we will be able to help others become aware of how God's
Word can renew their lives. Every one needs to hear, see, feel, and
do, knowing that God is working all things out for our good. In our
relationships, God can inspire, speak, show compassion, and work
through us.
We need to
recognize the process and order in which we use and store
information. Once we comprehend the sequence, we can begin to
change the content of negative thought processes and initiate
changes by providing hope. This is fundamental in our task to
encourage ourselves and others to live, love, learn, and cope, using
God's resources.
‘The just shall
live by faith,’ we live ‘in Christ’ when we allow God to supply all
of our needs through Christ Jesus, the risen Savior. Allowing
Christ to live through us is a step of faith. It no less than
thinking, seeing, hearing, feeling, and doing God's will by trusting
Christ to live His life through us. God is faithful and he will do
it. Jesus said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you. I will be
with you even to the end of the age!’ Jesus will be with us
affirming that He will stay with us in our journey. As children, we
learn to crawl before we walk, sometimes repeatedly over the terrain
until we finally master some skills for living.
As God's children,
God loves us and values us beyond anything we could think, see,
hope, feel, or imagine. The challenge before us is to help people
tell, see, feel, and act as lovable, valuable, and capable creations
of the God who has called them to forgiveness, redemption, and
service. The first step is to discover, accept, love, and believe
who we are as God's creation. The second step is to uncover the
thinking, feeling, behaving patterns that keep us in a
self-destructive, vicious cycle. The third step is to begin
exploring and discovering how we can grow in our relationship with
God and with other believers. This we do through the use of the
following exploratory questions.
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