How to Change Your Self-Image
& Boost Self-Esteem
Why changing your self-image
is so difficult and yet so important
This webpage in Serbian/Croatian (srpski/hrvatski), Part of this Webpage in Russian
For most of my life Ive thought it was safe to let my self-esteem flounder. I even thought it would make me more Christlike. I thought I was being biblical aligning myself with Scriptures emphasis on humility and dying to self. It turned out I was wrong. Very wrong.
Whereas dying to self and to conceit honors God, being crippled by low self-esteem dishonors our Savior as much as caving into satanically-inspired condemnation. Letting ones self-esteem drain into the gutter is akin to trashing a divine masterpiece that the Lord of Glory sacrificed his life to restore. Thinking we are being holy by beating ourselves up grieves our crucified Lord no less than if we thought physically beating ourselves would help secure our salvation.
I say this not to put you down but because my passion and Gods is to expose as hellacious lies everything keeping you oppressed. Jesus stressed that he came not to judge or condemn but to save (Scriptures). In New Testament Greek, save (sozo) means to rescue but it also has connotations of healing, restoring and making whole (proof). Many Scriptures confirm that it is central to Gods purposes that his children be edified (proof). In the original Greek the word used means to build up. To be restored, parts of a building might need to be torn down but the goal is to strengthen and beautify, not to leave it in ruins.
Gods plan is not to humiliate you but to make you the mirror image of his glorious, eternal Son to make you as magnificent and precious as he is:
Romans 8:29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son . . .
2 Corinthians 3:18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lords glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory . . .
1 Corinthians 15:49 And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.
Ephesians 4:24 . . . put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
Gods purpose is not to break you but to restore you; not to crush you but to build you up; not to put you down but to lift you high.
To be afflicted by low self-esteem is as frustrating and disheartening as being thrown into a deep pit with sides so appallingly slippery that, after many attempts, escape seems impossible. Most of my life is testament to how oppressively difficult it is to stop sliding back into that dark hole, but please do not duplicate my mistake of thinking God approves of your torment.
Sensitized by my own pain, my heart goes out to you if you despise yourself or feel everyone looks down on you or you think of yourself as useless or doomed to keep failing. But do not for a moment imagine thats how God sees you. If you are convinced it is spiritual to suffer that way, perhaps you are right, but the spirits involved are evil.
Psychobabble or Spiritual Truth?
Humility and dying to self are vital to our spiritual life. They radically change our self-image, but not in the way we might expect. They involve dying to our view of ourselves and living according to Gods view of ourselves, which is far higher than most of us can grasp. If you poured enough thought into the matter you would conclude that even if the forgiving Lord were displeased with us, his disappointment would affirm that our Almighty Helper, who knows us better than we know ourselves, emphatically believes in us and is certain we are capable of higher things.
The thrilling reality is that God thinks more highly of us than we dare dream. The sobering side to this is that when we fail to reach moral heights and achieve whatever great things God has called us to do, he does not think, Well, it doesnt really matter, he/she is hopelessly incapable anyhow. No. The Bible is clear: our failures grieve God and even anger him. The Almighty holds us accountable because he knows that in union with him we could have done better.
Our longsuffering Lord is quick to forgive, restore and empower but that does not mean he deems our failings inevitable. On the contrary, divine forgiveness means our offenses were so indefensible that the holy Son of God had to be tortured to death to pay the penalty we deserve. Forgiveness allows us to be reunited with the holy Lord so that next time we will do what God expects of us and begin soaring to our astounding potential.
If achieving in life what God wants of us is seen as many journeys, a negative self-image is like having to walk each journey lugging a load on our backs, and the worse our self-image, the heavier the load. A positive self-image, however, is like having a bicycle to go on those trips, and the more positive the self-image, the stronger the tailwind.
Discovering the Real You
Are you honoring the God of truth by continually seeking to understand and accept as reality the stupendous transformation Christ has made to your destiny, spiritual status and in every part of who you are? Or are you insulting and grieving the One who sacrificed everything for you by rejecting Gods truth and believing what Gods deceitful spiritual enemies say about you as they whisper slanderous lies in your ears and speak through people who momentarily become their puppets? If even Simon Peter, who passionately loved his Lord, was so capable of becoming the devils spokesperson that Jesus had to tell him, Get behind me Satan! (Mark 8:33), we must continually check the spiritual source of every opinion. The lies we choose to accept end up becoming the lies we live.
Grubs become butterflies not because of what they do or deserve but by an act of God. For them to imagine they had made themselves better than grubs would insult God, who did it all. Nevertheless, for them to regard themselves as still grubs would likewise insult the God who transformed them.
The extent of our godliness is limited by the degree to which we see everything including ourselves as God sees it. Gaining Gods perspective is a lifelong challenge but it starts with the realization that the Holy Lord is the God of love who sees everything through eyes of love. And equally thrilling is that the Almighty not only made us in his image but in Christ invested everything to ensure we can be like him.
To view anyone no matter how depraved with contempt is to utterly fail at Christlikeness and expose oneself to divine wrath. Every speck of conceit must be replaced with tender compassion toward anyone still enslaved and/or blinded by sin. If . . . when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly, (Romans 5:6), we must honor the ungodly as being of infinite value, and never forget that we had been equally dead in sin (Ephesians 2:1), an enemy of God (Romans 5:10; Colossians 1:21), . . . separate from Christ . . . without hope and without God, (Ephesians 2:12).
In the words of Paul, At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another, (Titus 3:3). Note that Paul included himself in that quote. In fact, he called himself the worst of sinners, (1 Timothy 1:15) even though he said of his past that as for legalistic righteousness [he had been] faultless (Philippians 3:6).
To consider ourselves better than someone is to court disaster. The arrogance of man will be brought low and the pride of men humbled, (Isaiah 2:17). Nevertheless, Christ did not sacrifice his all so that we would hobble through life maimed by feelings of inferiority. The crucified Lord agonized in our place not so that we would grovel but so that we might be restored; not so that we would feel hopeless failures, continually lamenting past blunders but to give us hope; not to hound us over what miserable wretches we are but that our joy may be full.
Humility and dying to self are the gateway not to languishing in abysmal self-esteem but to becoming divine royalty as children of the King of kings. Those who humble themselves are exalted. Those who have died to self, have come alive to God, and by losing their life they find it in all its fullness (Scriptures). For them, self-righteousness (which is really false righteousness) has been replaced by real righteousness and self-reliance has been exchanged for divine empowerment. Those undergoing this transformation are no longer blinded by pride and self-infatuation but neither do they see their new selves as worthless or useless or hopeless.
Where We are Headed
This webpage is not yet another of my attempts to restate all the facts about Gods astonishingly high opinion of us. It focuses on why, instead of transforming our outlook, these thrilling truths bounce off us and how we can change this tragedy. The goal is to help remove blockages to fully accepting all these truths so that they finally set you free.
What makes me so wrong in having believed that low self-esteem is of little consequence, or perhaps even a good thing, is that our self-image is so fundamental that it defines reality for us. It is our North Star, the critical reference point from which we plot the course of our entire lives. If I get wrong where I am, my mistaken belief will cause me to misidentify every landmark around me all the way to the horizon. Then I will plot a course that will lead me even further away. Likewise, if we get our self-image wrong, we will be completely lost and not even know it. And that is such a scary predicament that most of us prefer not to question our presumptions.
Should, for example, I think everyone despises me, I would interpret it as an act of spurning me if people typically go about their normal business without interrupting everything to make me the center of their attention. To my warped thinking, peoples normal shyness, fear of rejection, preoccupation with their own concerns, and so on, would prove I disgust them. Even if a few people actually went out of their way to say nice things about me, I would dismiss it as an act of insincerity (forcing themselves to be polite, feeling sorry for me, trying to manipulate me, etc.) or based on ignorance (not really knowing me, being poor judges of character, and so on). As a final resort, if anyone acted in a manner I found impossible to squeeze into the categories just mentioned, I would interpret it as the exception that proves the rule and would probably even find perverse satisfaction in restoring my equilibrium by deliberately recalling events that seem to confirm my distorted self-image.
A woman e-mailed me, saying, I was born with an eye condition that left me legally blind in one eye. Due to the lack of sight the eye always turned in. I have spent a lifetime feeling like a freak and finding it impossible to believe people who told me I didnt really look that bad. In my forties I finally received surgery to straighten the eye, but in my mind nothing had changed. I am 57 now, and still struggle with this issue. She had come to regard herself as unattractive because of that eye and this way of seeing herself had become so entrenched that it stubbornly refused to change even after, as far as her appearance was concerned, a total reversal of the condition. This is sadly typical of the enormity of the battle we face.
So to summarize: for each of us, our self-image seems rock-solid reality and, rather than conclude that we have got it wrong, we interpret everything else to fit our conception of reality. The disturbing thing is that almost all of us have a wrong or distorted self-image, which leads to a wrong or distorted understanding of just how important and loved of God we are and how enormous our divinely empowered ability is to achieve great things in union with our Maker and Redeemer. This mistaken view, in turn, undermines our faith and withers our joy in God.
I keep seeing people whose lives have been ruined, or at least crippled, by a distorted view of themselves. For just one example, a heartbreakingly large number of women have confessed to me that they ended up in appallingly abusive marriages because their self-image prevented them from believing they deserved to be treated with kindness, gentleness and respect. Even more people could have glorified their Maker by becoming great achievers, but instead wasted their lives in the sewer of mediocrity, simply because they had been deceitfully enticed into the snare of seeing themselves as incompetent.
How We Got in this Mess
With few exceptions, our self-image is not a perspective we have carefully and rationally investigated, but something picked up primarily when we were easily influenced little children. We gained our self-image from our guesses about how we supposed certain people thought of us. These people happened to be very significant in shaping our lives but, like all people, they were very fallible, as was our ability to perceive how they really viewed us.
Family members, family friends and, in some instances, neighbors can profoundly influence us. In my case, however, and perhaps in yours too, I have only recently begun to wonder if I have underestimated the negative impact my school teachers had on me.
We were too young to know any different, but we virtually turned these significant people in our lives into our God our infallible source of truth. The real God is now challenging us to make him our God, and redefine our sense of reality according to who he says we are, rather than the person we have presumed we are a presumption we have clung to for virtually all of our lives.
Even if your need to redefine your self-image were less desperate than most of us, you would still benefit immensely from the change. Just a small change, however, can seem a scary mega shift. Our whole perception of reality is threatened. It means admitting that we really have been lost and everything we thought was real, was an illusion. Rather than come to terms with that, most of us stubbornly hold on to our twisted and battered self-image; refusing to believe that we have got wrong something so fundamental, even though it was something thrust on us as a child, not an opinion we have carefully much less, prayerfully thought through.
Most of us have for so long presumed that we are of little value that we have cemented this lie into our self-image, worshipping it as truth, our North Star. The implications of retaining this false self-image are terrifying, but do we have the courage and sense of adventure to engage in the mega shift of a radically new self-image, or will we remain in the security of the familiar, even though it keeps us floundering in the mud of mediocrity and despair?
All of us even those with the best parents were brought up to accept a false self-image. Though we are unlikely to have thought of it as brainwashing, we might actually have been subjected to what amounts to relentless brainwashing during our most impressionable years by authoritative-sounding accusations that we are hopeless or stupid or other such lies. This so powerfully shapes ones self-image that victims accept it as truth and subconsciously reject anything that suggests otherwise.
Sometimes battered self-esteem results from obvious mistreatment but for some of us it can be perplexingly more subtle. If this interests you, see this short note: The Devastating Effect of Minor Things.
Whether it be from the way highly inadequate, but significant, humans in our lives have verbally or even physically assaulted us, or from much more subtle sources, many of us end up concluding that we are unlovable, and so we interpret everything else in life according to this lie. For instance, our head might tell us that God passionately loves us, but our heart will screech the opposite and refuse to accept the reality of Gods love. Nevertheless, despite what everything in your experience might shriek at you, the truth is astounding: you are of infinite value. That seems beyond belief, so Ill have to explain.
If we stumbled upon natural diamonds in a wilderness, most of us would ignorantly walk over them and treat them as dirt, having no clue as to their value and how exquisite they would look if expertly cut and polished. Likewise, most people might walk all over you and treat you as dirt, having no clue that you are priceless. Only God sees your true worth because he alone has the astounding expertise to polish you into an exquisite jewel. It matters not what you can do or how others see you. All that matters is the staggering power of God to transform into something of breathtaking beauty what everyone else thinks is a worthless lump.
A diamond is just a piece of rock. It cant love, talk or think. You cannot eat it, cook with it, hunt with it, keep warm with it, and so for centuries vast numbers of tribal people considered diamonds worthless. A diamonds worth is based not on what it can do but simply because of what people are willing to pay to have it. You are far more precious to God than tons of diamonds and he paid a far higher price than all the wealth of a million earths the willing sacrificial death of his holy Son to have you as his best friend.
Like a huge diamond, your worth is not based on what you do. You are of infinite value because of the infinite price the God of the universe willingly paid for your friendship. And if he has invested so much in you, he will treasure you and cherish you for all eternity.
For your entire life you might have been surrounded by people who were unable to see your value, like primitives who cannot see the value of a diamond. But Gods view of you is astonishingly different.
Who are you going to make your God your source of truth who determines your self-worth? Will you assign that role to the ignorant savages around you, or to the God of infinite wisdom and knowledge who gave his Holy Son for you?
It is not humility to regard oneself as trash; it is an affront to the Lord of glory who sacrificed his very life to exalt us to a status so mind-bogglingly high as to outclass even angels (1 Corinthians 6:3; Hebrews 1:5,14; 1 Peter 1:12). It is nothing short of despicable, ugly pride to forget that we are what we are only through the undeserved mercy of God, but it is equally shameful to forget how much the Lord of lords has done for us and how highly he has exalted us. Yes, without Christ we would be as useless as a withering branch severed from a grapevine, but how dare we think of ourselves as being without Christ when he has sacrificed everything to make us spiritually one with him!
Without Christ, everyone on this planet is a disgusting failure, hopelessly evil and incapable of ever pleasing God. Without Christ, the best of us is ruined, repulsive to God and deserving of nothing but an eternity in hell. But none of us need be without Christ! It is insulting to God to treat yourself as if Christ were a failure; as if all the astounding things he has done at such enormous cost to transform you have achieved nothing.
To deny all the honor that God has bestowed on you through Christ is not humility; it is dishonesty.
God sees you in a vastly superior way to how anyone else is able to see you. He looks upon you with eyes of infinite love and faith. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. He sees beauty that others miss because of his beautiful, love-filled heart. In his eyes, you are unique and irreplaceable.
Furthermore, what he can achieve in partnership with you is mind-blowing, simply because he is God. When, like a brush to an artist, you yield to the omnipotent Lord, human incompetence dissolves in divine competence.
We need to stop, as it were, deifying our opinion of ourselves. He alone is humanitys Judge; not you, nor anyone else. Only his opinion matters. His opinion is the only one that will stand the test of time and eternity. The great challenge is to keep moving closer and closer to seeing ourselves as he sees us. Anything else will hold us back and disappoint our Lord.
You are divine royalty a child of the King of kings who is the Almighty Lord of the universe. And God wants you to know it and live it.
Why Change is So Difficult
Feelings often run contrary to reality. Consider how even a conservative list names well over a hundred different phobias. For each one, a situation could be engineered whereby a phobic feels terrified (i.e. feels exceedingly unsafe) when he is actually perfectly safe. Consider, for example, the terror of someone with a fear of snakes having completely harmless snakes slithering over him. This intense feeling occurs even when the person is rationally convinced the snakes are harmless. Simply accepting the truth is a huge achievement but life remains highly challenging when everything within you keeps shrieking the lie that you are in danger.
Literally hundreds of anxiety-ridden people write to me in torment because of highly convincing, but false, feelings of guilt. This is not merely highly unpleasant; believing those false feelings erodes their relationship with God because they mistakenly suppose their guilt feelings indicate that God must be angry with them, and we all instinctively shrink from anyone we imagine is angry with us. Heres a little of what I have written about this condition:
Anxiety acts as an alarm that goes off within us indicating that something is seriously wrong and causing our brain to keep seeking the reason so that it can be corrected. Clinical Anxiety, however, means that the anxiety is driven not by a rational reason for concern but by a chemical imbalance.
When, for example, a fire alarm goes off, it sounds the same regardless of whether it was triggered by an actual fire or by a technical malfunction. Since a false alarm sounds exactly the same as when it is triggered by genuine danger, it is very tempting to feel disturbed about the alarm continuing, even when you have checked and confirmed that there is no danger. So it is with your anxiety. Unfortunately, for as long as you suffer from this anxiety you will just have to keep reminding yourself that it is a false alarm and get used to it blaring and being unpleasant and refuse to treat it as if it were real.
When anxiety is a false alarm it is not only disturbingly unpleasant, it can confuse us spiritually. Anxiety feels like a torturously guilty conscience that keeps nagging away no matter how utterly we are divinely forgiven, cleansed of all sin and made holy by faith in Jesus. God has promised to forgive all the sins of everyone who puts his/her faith in the forgiving power of Jesus sacrifice. Since anxiety is far too incessant to be ignored, however, it is hard not to slip into believing the persistent, overwhelmingly strong feeling, rather than keep stubbornly believing Gods promise. Add to this the fact that anxiety keeps telling us that something is seriously wrong when everything is actually fine, and the foundation to our entire relationship with God believing that through Jesus our past failings no longer hinder our relationship with God is under attack. The spiritual confusion can be serious if we cave in to believing our powerfully deceptive feelings rather than resolutely clinging to raw faith in both Christs eagerness to secure our full forgiveness and his ability to do so.
If you are afflicted with an anxiety disorder you will be filled with guilt feelings and anxiety but the key is to learn to live with such feelings and neither fear the feelings nor believe them. This will be a tough battle because your feelings will be very intense and seem so real, but all of us are called to live by faith and not feelings.
For those with Clinical Anxiety, living by raw faith is much harder to do than for other people, but it is like a coach making his star athlete engage in much heavier training than others it will end up making him stronger than others, even though during tough training sessions he will seem much weaker than those who are lazing around. It is like a runner lugging heavy weights on his back of it feels as if it is weakening him but it will actually end up making him stronger if he keeps struggling on.
It is with good reason that we are called to live by faith, not feelings. Again to quote myself:
The enemy of our souls is the master deceiver because that is all he can do. The devil cannot change reality. He cannot change the fact that God loves you with all of his unlimited love and that Christ died for the sins of the entire world, which has to include every sin you have ever committed. So all he can do is mess with your feelings, hoping that you will start to believe them rather than believe in the cleansing and forgiving power of Christ and the love of God.
Steadfastly clinging to a belief in the integrity of God and his Word in the face of powerful feelings that scream the opposite is needed if we are to break the delusive power of a false self-image.
Feelings are just feelings, but they can be devastatingly convincing. One man, reaching out to me for help, put it this way, My stomach turns into a wad of tangled barbed wire if I ever perceive that I may have said or done something that would cause someone else to think poorly of me. I am also horribly intimidated by successful people.
The strong temptation is to lazily accept our feelings as our inner conviction our source of truth rather than continually striving against the flow of our feelings whenever they surge contrary to what Gods Word declares is reality. Staggering against the torrent of our feelings is a hard, discouraging slog. Especially in the early stages, little progress seems to be made against the oppression, and the moment we ease up we find ourselves being swept backwards again. Will you keep pushing toward the heart of God the place of truth where you can finally be free from the lies that hold you back?
Other Pressures Affecting Self-Image
Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. . . .
Our self-image should be fresh and God-breathed. Instead of being putrid with the stench of the past, it should sparkle like a new day and continually inspire us to new heights, like Jacobs divinely-inspired name change from heel grabber or one who trips up to Israel, he who prevails with God (Genesis 32:28).
For so many of us, however, our self-image is a ghost from the past. We should have left it behind long ago but it continues to haunt us and hold us back. It remains like a repulsive parasite that has been sucking the life out of us for so long that we accept it as part of us.
Although the past figures strongly in a mangled self-image, however, there can also be contemporary factors that keep our self-image weighing us down instead of lifting us high. To explore this, let me share a portion of what I have written elsewhere:
Because self-image is so critical and is affected by other peoples opinions:
Your entire life ends up limited by how you suppose other people think about you.
Lets refine this still further:
This addition is critical. It explains why many people can receive an abundance of heart-felt praise and encouragement and it doesnt do a thing for them. Even if literally millions of people were to think the world of them, they would still feel lonely and unloved and be haunted by an abysmally low self-esteem. Praise is wasted on them because they have no idea whether anyone would praise the person they really are. They have concealed a secret about themselves precisely because they think usually wrongly that the truth would completely alter everyones view of them.
Keeping guilty secrets is not only sentencing oneself to solitary confinement in a dismal dungeon of ones own making, it is continually sacrificing every shred of self-esteem to pay off an invisible, ever-demanding blackmailer. Hiding guilty secrets devastates our self-esteem, tricks us into feeling unloved and nags us as an endless source of angst. We typically feel forced to perpetuate the torment because we are terrorized into believing there is no viable alternative. But painless escape routes actually exist. For help in finding them and receiving the comfort you deserve, I beg you to see How to Find Relief from Guilty Secrets.
We can go one step further in our maxim about what determines our self-image and the life we end up living:
How you live is limited by how you think others whose opinions you respect would think of you if they knew everything about you.
Some people respect their own opinions so strongly that they are little influenced by the views of others. As Christians, the opinion we most respect should be Gods. In theory, no other opinion should matter to us. In practice, it is difficult for us to believe God thinks a certain way about us if we (probably mistakenly) suspect that all of Gods earthly servants would think otherwise if they knew all there is to know about us.
Of course, even the refined maxim does not define who you are, but it determines your self-image. It is what you end up genuinely believing about yourself. And to stop acting in complete conformity with ones self-image is as unlikely as continually acting out of character. The self-image God wants Christians to have the one he has painstakingly portrayed in his Word is a continual inspiration that fills us with zest for life. The self-image our spiritual enemies want us to have is an oppressive straightjacket.
Let me pose this challenge: What will you accept as your authoritative source of truth? Will it be your guess of what fickle, fallible humans think of you people whose knowledge of you is at best superficial and who cannot see the future? Or is your authoritative source of truth what the all-knowing Judge thinks of you? To which will you assign the right to be your guiding light, the final authority in declaring who you are and what you can achieve in life?
When All Else Fails, the Best is Still to Come
Even for those who keep looking, however, finding trustworthy friends in their locality might occasionally be impossible. For example, I do all I can to support people who have multiple personalities. It is often heart-wrenchingly difficult for them to find ordinary people they can unburden themselves to and reveal their condition. The average person would freak out, letting their imagination fly to ridiculous extremes, suddenly fearing the person is dangerous, has demons, or whatever.
No matter what, however, there is always one Person who truly understands you, and what is particularly thrilling is that this Person is the only one whose opinion truly counts because he alone is always right. Every view other than his will end up proved wrong.
To explore the exciting implications, let me plunder something else Ive written:
You are passionately loved. In the eyes of the one Person who really counts, you are special. To other people you might be just one of thousands, but not to the One who made you. You mean so much to him that what God wants with you is like a perfect marriage in which you can enjoy each other forever.
Believing in the opposite sex does not make one married. Neither does believing a creed give us the right to live with God. It is not enough to walk down a church aisle. True marriage is believing in someone so completely that you commit all that you are, and all that you have, to that person for life. Your Maker is eager to be that devoted to you, but for marriage to work, the commitment must be mutual.
If a street kid married a millionaire, she would get his riches and he would get her debts. He would be tarred with her shame and she would gain his honor. For this to happen, she must turn from rival relationships and bind herself and her meager possessions to this man in marriage. Everything he owns would become hers, if she lets everything of hers become his.
Similarly, if we entrust to God everything we have our time, abilities, relationships and possessions he will reciprocate, embracing us with divine extravagance. We hand our depravity to Jesus, relinquishing even our fondest sin. It becomes his. Thats what killed him. In return, Jesus sinless perfection envelops us, enabling us to be on intimate terms with the Holy God.
In entering this love pact, we give God the right to do whatever he likes with our assets, but the Owner of the universe makes his riches available to us. We trade our talents, for his omnipotence; our attempts to run our lives, for his unlimited wisdom. We give him our time on earth and he gives us eternity.
In every way we benefit from this proposal and God gets the raw end. But God is in love with you. He wants this holy union more than you can imagine. Dont break his heart and miss out on the ultimate human experience by holding back.
When Diana Spencer married Prince Charles, instantly she was royalty. Suddenly, she was rich, famous and important. She was one with Charles. His assets and honor became hers, as much as they had ever been his. That is rather like your transformation, the moment you were born again. Your status and assets skyrocketed, although at the time you were only vaguely conscious of the enormity of what happened. (For a little more about the staggering benefits of your union with Christ, see Spiritual Riches.)
After that famous wedding, Princess Diana underwent a second, much slower and uneven transformation. Step by faltering step, a shy, plainly dressed girl gradually became a confident, sophisticated, superbly dressed woman who captured the admiration of millions. That second change was only possible because she firmly believed in the reality of the first transformation that she really was royal, rich, important and famous. Had she kept telling herself that she was insignificant, that she had no right to Charles money, that nothing she did was of any consequence, she would still have had much, but that second change would never have occurred. As it was, she would probably have blossomed further, had she been able to feel more secure in Charles love and in the acceptance and approval of the royal family.
As I stumble to find words to describe the breathtaking transformation of your spiritual prestige and your inner self, let me quote from more of my writings:
We Christians are like paupers ecstatic because we think we have inherited $10,000, when weve actually received $1 billion. We live chronically impoverished lives and the less we know of our spiritual inheritance, the greater the tragedy.
The gulf between who you think you are and who you really are is so serious and so beyond normal comprehension (Ephesians 3:19-20; 1 John 3:1-2) that whereas some psychiatric patients have delusions of grandeur supposing themselves to be ridiculously more important than they really are you and I suffer the opposite problem. What God did within us, without us even knowing it, was so staggering that even Christians with dangerously inflated egos suffer from what I call delusions of insignificance.
The psychiatric definition of a delusion is a false notion that cannot be altered by reasoning. Thats why I could write a million words and the implications still wont hit home without supernatural revelation. A major task of the Holy Spirit is to help us grasp the enormity of the transformation that has taken place within us (John 16:14; 1 Corinthians 2:9-15; 1 John 4:13; Ephesians 3:3-5; John 14:26; 16:13). It is vital that we keep probing the Scriptures (2 Corinthians 4:6-7) and pleading for spiritual revelation as to who we are in Christ.
Drown the doubts, insecurities and guilt feelings. Cling to the emphatic Word of God that affirms that Gods estimation of you is far too immense for human fame or shame to budge it (e.g., Galatians 2:6; Ephesians 6:9; Job 34:19). Whether the high point of your Sundays is counting the souls you have won or counting the specks on your pew, the King delights in you.
What has happened is so far beyond our expectations that even after glimpsing a little of who we now are, we keep reverting to our old self-image. You are so different to what you once were that it will be a long, uphill battle just to turn your thinking around until your thinking is consistently even in the right direction, to say nothing of it being as far as it should be.
It is so frustratingly easy to let go of the truth about Gods view of ourselves and slip back into our former depressed thinking. Keep praying for a revelation. Keep trying to claw your faith higher. Keep pushing out the million doubts. Keep flooding your mind with the glorious truths that will set you free. And rest in the certainty that Almighty God has invested everything even the death of his precious Son to ensure you make it.
Our current mindset and self-image took our entire life to form and harden. To reverse this and create a new self-image corresponding to how the King of kings sees us is a long and laborious process in which it is perversely easy to slip back into our old dreary mode of thinking. In a flash we changed in Gods eyes from a debased child of the devil to an exalted child of God. For us to catch up with this in the way we view ourselves, however, is a slow, arduous slog. In fact, we will need to keep working on it for the rest of our lives.
To help you understand your current dilemma, permit me to quote from another of my webpages:
The baby had tried everything to break free. It had strained with all its might, pulling in every conceivable way, hour after hour, day after day. The huge stake refused to budge. So, rather than mindlessly keep trying to do the impossible, it did what at the time was the intelligent thing: it gave up trying.
The baby grew into a powerful beast. Convinced by bitter experience that whenever it is tethered there is no point trying to resist, it never bothered to determine whether anything had changed. So it suffers indignities, even though, if only it could grasp the fact, it could easily rip up the peg and trample those who sought to dominate it.
As an adult, it finds itself bound not by a stake but by a powerful psychological force. This powerful force has been given several names, one of which is Learned Helplessness. It has been the subject of much research by psychologists because, in one form or another, it binds millions of people.
The amazing spiritual transformation that has occurred within you makes you like that powerful elephant. Because the change did not feel dramatic and your memories of what you used to be like are so vivid, however, it is disturbingly easy not to realize what you are now capable of and end up acting as if you were weak and helpless even though you are actually the exact opposite. The result is a devastatingly strong mindset keeping you from heights you have no idea you are capable of. Like a skinny anorexic believing she is fat and dangerously starving herself, the mindset might seem ridiculous to observers and easy to ignore but for those convinced that it is real, breaking free from its stranglehold is formidably difficult.
Blockages to Changing our Self-Image
Blockage 1: Underrating Gods Opinion
Since we are naturally driven to continue accepting as reality whatever view of ourselves that we have long held, we can even find ourselves despising Gods opinion rather than having our perception of reality shattered. Even if we accept that God sees us in a better light than other people do, we can tell ourselves such things as, Oh, hes just God. He has to love everyone. Im not in heaven; I have to live on earth. Gods opinion doesnt matter much down here.
Whenever we idolize someone elses opinion, we dethrone God in our lives and worship a creature rather than the Creator.
Ponder the thrilling implications of these Scriptures:
Exodus 23:22 If you . . . do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you.
Isaiah 40:17 Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing.
Isaiah 45:24 They will say of me, In the LORD alone are righteousness and strength. All who have raged against him will come to him and be put to shame.
Isaiah 54:17 no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me . . .
And consider these hints at how significant Gods view of us is:
John 5:41-44 I do not accept praise from men, but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. . . . How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?
Romans 2:6-8 God will give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.
Romans 14:4 Who are you to judge someone elses servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
1 Corinthians 4:3-5 I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of mens hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.
Galatians 1:10 Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
1 Thessalonians 2:4,6 We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts. . . . We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else. . . .
We should keep moving toward the point where no ones opinion matters to us except Gods. He alone is Truth.
When it comes to being swayed by the opinions of significant others in our lives, we Christians must be so thick-skinned as to make crocodiles weep with envy. The devastating reality is that not just being maligned but being hated is an integral part of following Christ.
That seems the last thing people who already feel bad about themselves would want to hear. But as much as it might seem to smother all glimmer of comfort, it doesnt. It only demolishes false hopes that will end up collapsing anyhow, allowing us to build in its place genuine hope that will never let us down.
Lets investigate.
I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me, said one of the greatest prophets to walk this planet (Jeremiah 20:7). The arrogant mock me without restraint, but I do not turn from your law, sang the psalmist, who later said they have smeared me with lies, (Psalm 119:51,69). Gods chosen spokespeople were as welcome as slugs in cabbage soup. As Christianitys first martyr told the Jews, Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? (Acts 7:52).
Consider our Role Model. The Pharisees, says Luke 16:14, . . . were sneering at Jesus. Of course, the Perfect One faced far worse than mere contempt. Every casual reader of the Bible knows that respected spiritual leaders publically pronounced him to be demon-possessed. What we might have missed, however, is that this happened not just once but repeatedly. Since the gospels cite only a small sample even of Jesus miracles (John 20:30-31; 21:25), it is unlikely that they go the extreme of providing an exhaustive list of times when Jesus was slandered this atrocious way. Even when limiting ourselves to recorded instances, however, the accumulative impact is staggering. To this we can add that it was so commonly believed that he was insane that his family came to take charge of him (see Demon-Possessed and Raving Mad).
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath, says Luke 6:7. This went way beyond an attempt to smear Jesus name and accuse the Holy One of sin. What made it terrifyingly serious is that breaking the Sabbath, like adultery (John 8:5), was a capital offense (Exodus 31:14; Numbers 15:32-36). And these appalling accusations about Jesus being a Sabbath breaker kept on coming (Luke 6:2 Luke 13:14; Luke 14:1-3; John 5:8-16; John 9:14-16), as did the grave charge of blasphemy (Mark 2:7; John 10:33). In fact, people were so incensed with him that throughout his ministry there was an attempt to kill him by pushing him over a cliff (Luke 4:29) and at least two attempts to stone him (John 8:59; 10:31) until finally the nations top theologians, spiritual leaders and legal experts sentenced him to death for blasphemy (Mark 14:64).
If the one we follow was so despised even by respected people, we can expect no less:
Matthew 10:24-25 A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household!
Matthew 24:9 Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.
Luke 6:22 Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.
Luke 21:16-17 You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. All men will hate you because of me.
John 16:2 They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God.
We must be like Moses who, by faith, regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward, (Hebrews 11:26) and should never mimic those who loved praise from men more than praise from God, (John 12:43).
In fact, Jesus said:
Luke 6:26 Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.
And to the Pharisees he said:
Luke 16:15 You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in Gods sight. (Emphasis mine.)
Pleasing God and winning peoples approval are popularity polls apart.
What keeps duping us into esteeming human opinion above the Lords is our difficulty in grasping the immensity of Gods love and the total cleansing and divine acceptance that Christs sacrifice has brought us. It seems too good to be true that the Lord of perfection would be more forgiving than fickle, error-prone humans. We keep sliding into the foolishness of thinking that human approval is easier to obtain and more permanent than Gods.
How many humans are as eager as God to give you an instant clean slate, wiping all memory of your past blunders? How many have sacrificed everything to secure your full forgiveness? How many keep believing you are capable of completely changing, no matter how long and entrenched your past string of misdeeds? How many are immovable in their loyalty and commitment to being totally faithful to you? How many see in you the divine glory of Gods eternal Son?
To truly live, free yourself from slavery to human opinion.
Blockage 2: Fear of Pride
My own mistakes confirm that sincere Christians can erroneously think that by putting themselves down they are avoiding pride.
As already emphasized, I passionately believe in humility and dying to self but both of these include dying to our own self-image our own perception of truth and how we think others see us and accepting Gods view of ourselves as the only valid one.
It is not humility, but the height of arrogance to treat our own view of ourselves as more accurate than Gods.
We must understand the nature of true humility and rid ourselves of all false conceptions. Permit me to adapt what I have written elsewhere:
The issue of pride and humility is a deathtrap strewn with confusion and false concepts. Lets clear this minefield before anyone else is hurt. Well begin with the analogy of a lamb in Bible times.
Pride says, I can find better pasture than the Shepherd. Ill always find water. I can handle lions, and bears are probably a myth invented by the Shepherd so he can dominate me. Thats dangerous.
Godly humility rejoices in the certainty that the Shepherd knows best. Having abandoned faith in itself or in luck, it puts all its hope in the Shepherd, believing that to leave him out of sight for a second is to flirt with disaster. This virtue hugs the Shepherd, delighting in his every whisper, feasting on his goodness. Sometimes humility is led over rocky terrain but ultimately it enjoys the best pasture and the highest security. Not only is it not mauled by predators, it produces the best wool and the best offspring. It sometimes staggers up hills to stay with its Shepherd but it frolics in the warmth of the Shepherds love.
Theres an attitude masquerading as humility, however, that beats itself miserable. Im dumb. Im ugly. Im hopeless. Give no room to this imposter.
Just to be sure you have grasped the difference between this beautiful quality and the ugly imposter that beats oneself up, let me quote from something else Ive written:
James 4:6 . . . God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
For most of my life, scriptures like this filled me with such dread of the dangerous trap of pride that I felt driven to avoid it at all costs. Tragically, this commendable attitude got me nowhere. My godly intentions were sabotaged by such a mistaken understanding of pride that all I managed was to fall into false humility. I wrongly thought I could foster humility by thinking negatively about myself. To my horror, I eventually discovered that false humility is itself a form of pride.
I correctly understood that if I thought I could achieve anything of lasting value without Gods help, or if I thought I were moral enough to gain Gods approval outside of Christs forgiveness, then humbling myself involved lowering my opinion of myself. My mistake was in wrongly concluding from this truth that the basic ingredient of humility is having a low opinion of oneself.
Godly humility flows not from thinking lowly of oneself but from seeing things through Gods eyes. Pride is having the audacity to disagree with God. It is saying I know more than the God of the universe; my puny intellect knows better than the Almighty; the God of truth is wrong and I am right.
Since the God of love sees you as lovable, and true humility involves taking Gods assessment of everything as gospel, humility requires you to see yourself as lovable. If God sees you through eyes of love, how dare you see yourself in a different light, as if your perspective is right and your Creator and Savior is wrong? If God forgives you, to refuse to forgive yourself is to have the audacity to imply that you have higher moral standards than the Judge of all the earth; that you are holier than the Holy Lord. Isnt that the very pinnacle of pride? Please avoid this deadly trap.
Make God your God by agreeing with him. He says you are the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). Dare you exalt yourself above God by disagreeing with him? Stop wounding yourself by squandering your faith on a lie, thus robbing God of faith that should be invested in him. Refuse the sinful, pride-filled path that deceptively seems humble but is actually implying that you know better than the Almighty. Set yourself free. Embrace Gods truth.
Matthew 11:29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
He was only telling the truth, you protest.
Yes, Jesus is the Truth he said so himself but when you put yourself down, you are not declaring Gods truth. Instead, you are mimicking the devil who is the accuser of our brothers, (Revelation 12:10) and you, too, are among the brethren he would love to accuse and this accuser is a compulsive liar (the father of lies John 8:44).
We might be tempted to disqualify Jesus as a role model because he was divine. The apostle Paul, however, was certainly not divine but under divine inspiration he wrote:
1 Corinthians 4:16 . . . I urge you to imitate me.
1 Corinthians 11:1 Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
That itself sounds far from putting himself down, but if the Word of God tells us to imitate Paul, lets examine how he saw himself. Even though he called himself the least of the apostles (1 Corinthians 15:9) and less than the least of all Gods people, (Ephesians 3:8) and so on, the apostle had a robust self-image. For more details, see Jesus Self-Image & Pauls.
Blockage 3: Expecting God to Change our Self-Image
A dangerous mistake is to presume that God should do for us things he expects us to do. To suppose God should change our self-image or boost our self-esteem is like thinking God should read the Bible for us or give up smoking for us or provide us with an income while we waste our lives away watching daytime television.
We must pray in faith for revelation but to try to use faith-filled prayer as a license for laziness or disobedience or for rejecting biblical revelation is to provoke God. For example, James rightly tells us to pray in faith for wisdom (James 1:5-6) but it is a grave error to suppose this means we can disregard or reject everything else Gods Word tells us about what we must do to gain wisdom. Over and over Proverbs tells us to seek wisdom (Scriptures). Seeking is the opposite of standing idly by waiting for the thing we want to drop into our laps.
It is never a case of either pray or seek: we are to prayerfully seek. And it is faith that motives people to keep seeking: the belief that they will find whatever they are seeking. Jesus lumped together asking and seeking:
Asking and actively seeking are not alternatives; they are inseparable. Receiving involves asking the right person: God. And finding involves searching in the right place: Gods Word.
Life changing revelation involves internalizing the Word of God: meditating on it, memorizing it and living it.
The psalmist prayed for revelation:
But we have no chance of seeing wonderful things in Gods law if we fail to read and absorb it.
Note how the inspired psalmist gained his wisdom:
Someone has said that God is the worlds fastest chess player its always our move. It is disturbingly easy to squander valuable years waiting for God to move when he is waiting for us to move.
Earlier I mentioned Jacobs name change. If you felt envious when reading about it, you have forgotten that it came about not by Jacob lounging around but by wrestling with God all night (Genesis 32:23-28). And even then it was up to him to accept this name change and live up to it.
God has already done his part. He loves you. He made you in his image, and despite sin marring the perfection he created, he is using everything that touches you to transform you into the very image of Christ, and he already sees in you the beauty and glory that will one day be visible to the entire universe.
2 Corinthians 3:16,18 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. . . . And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lords glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 5:17,19,21 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! . . . God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting mens sins against them. . . . God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Yes, God has already done his part: your part is to keep believing it. Over and over, Jesus commended or chided people according to how much faith they exercised (see Faith is Our Responsibility). God holds us accountable for how much we believe. Our Lord is way too intelligent and righteous to praise or rebuke people for something that is entirely Gods doing. As in the parable of the talents, God gives but then it is up to us to use and develop it.
Our Lord does not condone laziness. The same God who made our bodies made our spirits. Just as no pain, no gain is an unchangeable truth in the physical realm, so it is in the spiritual.
Our goal should be to consistently see ourselves in a way that truly honors the God who loves us and has re-made us. If, however, it takes enormous amounts of practice irksome repetition to become a concert pianist, a tennis star, or whatever, we cannot expect perfecting our self-image to come easily. Any want-to-be champions who consider countless hours of repetition to be beneath them will languish in mediocrity. No matter how naturally gifted they are, they will be left behind by those willing to put in the effort.
Regardless of how bitterly farmers might complain about sowing being boring and repetitive, and no matter how long it takes before they see the benefits, the fact remains: those who sow little, reap little (2 Corinthians 9:6; Ecclesiastes 11:6; Proverbs 6:10-11). And this truth is preserved in the most spiritual of all books: the Bible.
Although the Almighty occasionally does things for us that take no effort on our behalf, he is too loving and wise to regularly do this for us. This is because, despite what we might think, God doing it all for us turns out not to be in our own best interest. I explain why this is so in a link at the end of this webpage (Lifes Mysteries Explained).
Blockage 4: Leaving it to Other People to Determine our Self-Image
Thinking it is the role of others, not us, to boost our self-esteem and encourage us is as foolhardy as letting every decision in our lives be determined by the flip of a coin. Letting other peoples opinions or whether they ever get around to expressing any good opinion they have of you determine your self-esteem or your emotional well-being or your motivation, is on par with relinquishing control over your own life and destiny and signing it over to other people.
No Longer the Person People Think You Are
Your old guilt-ridden self is dead and buried. Thats the most wonderful news anyone could hear! Gleefully devour the Scriptures that make this announcement to the world! You are a totally different person to the one who sinned. Just as you are utterly innocent of the sins of another person, so you are innocent of your past sins. The devil has no more right to accuse you for Charles Masons or Jack the Rippers sins than for your past sins.
2 Corinthians 5:17 declares you to be a new creation a totally new person because of what Christ has done. The old you has vanished. The person you are ashamed of, the one who was defeated, who sinned, who didnt radiate the beauty of Christ, is dead. You are someone new, a completely different person to the one who, like all of us outside of Christ, had reason for shame.
Satan could accuse you as much as he liked for Hitlers sin or Fred Nerks folly, but the accusations would be meaningless. You would ignore them because you know youre not Hitler or Fred Nerk. Likewise, he can accuse as much as he likes the person you once were, but you can ignore it. That person is dead. Its not you. It was someone else who did those shameful things. You have a whole new identity. The new you, the person you now are, is pure and holy and righteous and filled with the beauty of God; a prince or princess a child of the King of glory heir to the riches of God, someone in whom God delights and is proud of.
No one likes being slandered and that is what Satan is trying with you, but its a case of mistaken identity. Satan is accusing the wrong person. The person hes accusing is dead and buried with Christ. Just ignore him.
Imagine youve just moved into a new apartment. It so happens that the previous tenant died after foolishly amassing a huge debt. The day after moving in, theres a knock on the door. Its a debt collector claiming you owe quarter of a million dollars. Youve got the wrong person, you tell him.
I was given this address, he replies.
Maybe so, but Im not the person who owes the money.
No, this is the address, alright!
The person you want is dead!
Look! Ill bring the full weight of the law down on you!
Please do! you reply, The law will prove Im not the person you claim I am.
Suppose this goes on day after day. Each time you could slam the door in his face and refuse to listen to his groundless accusations. Or you could choose to waste hours every day arguing with him. Or you could meekly listen to all his insults and foolishly begin to believe him. No alternative would be entirely pain-free. And none of them would change the fact that you are innocent. But clearly some responses would be far more upsetting and disruptive to your life than others.
This, of course, describes your situation, and that of every Christian. You live at the same address as the guilty person your body. But the person living at that address is a new tenant. No matter who comes knocking at your door, the law (of God) is always on your side. God pronounces you innocent. Its up to you how much you let the Accuser annoy you. You wont be able to stop him knocking at your door, but its your choice whether you keep ignoring him or invite him in and give weight to his lies. Either way, you are still innocent, but why put yourself through unnecessary torment?
So the old you, the person who had reason to feel dirty, ashamed and inferior, is dead. Christ now lives in you Christ in all His beauty and purity and perfection; Christ in all his goodness, splendor and favor with God. A little girl, when asked how she dealt with temptation, said that when the devil knocks, she sends Jesus to the door. Thats what you can do. Christ has taken up residence within you. The previous tenant is dead. Christ now lives at your address. You dont even have to worry about trying to forgive yourself, because the real you, the person you now are in Christ, never did anything that needed forgiveness. The old you, the person who needed forgiveness, no longer exists.
Sadly, overuse of the term born again has sapped this mind-boggling expression of its power. It is such an astounding concept as to be almost beyond our powers of intellect to grasp. What more powerful way could there be to convey the fact that, spiritually, you have no past? You werent even born when the things your mind accuses you of took place! You cant get any more innocent than that! What a miracle! What a display of love, for God to do that for you!
(If the sins that haunt you happened after you were born again, dont be disturbed. Once repented of, later sins, like surgically removed tumors, are no longer a part of you. They are a dead issue, a non-event, consigned to the same fate as pre-conversion sins; wiped from heavens data banks.)
God has promised you everything mentioned in this webpage and much more, but he never promised you would feel it. Father God expects his children to place their confidence not in their fickle feelings, but in the integrity of the one who lifts the sun each morning. The Christian religion is rightly called the Christian Faith. Faith is paramount.
When Jesus successfully resisted every temptation hurled at him in the wilderness, Scripture says Satan left him, not for forever, but for a while (Luke 4:13). Through Jesus, we too, can have spectacular victories over Satan and he will withdraw, for a while. Hell skulk into his hole to lick his wounds, but hell be back. Thats not because of any inadequacy in you. He did the same with Jesus. When the battle returns, youll need to rush to my webpages (see The Ultimate Cure for Guilt listed in the links at the end of this page) to once again take your fill of Scriptures liberating truths with which to resist the awful, deceptive feelings and accusations hell try to land on you.
I also suggest you pamper yourself by regularly reading the following Scripture:
Romans 6:3-12 Or dont you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.
Our self-image is of extreme importance because it has serious spiritual implications. For example, an entire generation of Israelites missed out on the promised land and ended up dying in the wilderness because they saw themselves as grasshoppers (Numbers 13:33) rather than as people who are empowered by Almighty God.
They based their self-image not on what God said about them but on their past (slaves in Egypt) and on their guess as to how others saw them. Actually, despite their seemingly logical guess that others viewed them as insignificant, even that was mistaken. (Joshua 2:9-11 For more on this amazing story, see The Power of Self Esteem: Bible Proof.)
The way we think of ourselves has become a deeply entrenched habit. Any habit is difficult to break, let alone one that has hardened by very many years of constant repetition.
A Critical Key
Picture a little childs brain as a virgin jungle of thorny bushes. When the child has a thought, it is like bashing his way through new territory, leaving behind a few footprints and a few broken twigs. Every time he takes the same path, that faint path becomes a little more pronounced and easier to take. As he slowly matures, it becomes a well-worn track and eventually a road, and finally a super-highway, along which thoughts effortlessly zoom. For his thoughts to go in another direction, however, is like having to bash his way through virgin jungle again. And if the new thought is not regularly repeated, the faint track is quickly overgrown again, so that he is likely to get lost, even if he makes the huge effort to try to force his thought in that direction. This is a crude analogy of what modern research has discovered actually happens to the structure of ones brain.
The great tragedy is that most of us who have suffered unhealthy childhood brainwashing end up perpetuating the process by repeating to ourselves over and over the very putdowns that others have told us, even long after these people with flapping gums and shriveled hearts are out of our lives.
Once started, beating oneself up becomes as easy as sliding down a slippery glacier on a mountain. It is climbing back up again that is such a hard slog.
It becomes an automatic, almost uncontrollable, response to normal slipups to berate oneself with such putdowns as Im an idiot! Im a useless waste of space! I can never do anything right! Everyone hates me! or whatever becomes ones favorite way of tearing strips off oneself. This degenerates into a deeply ingrained habit, as strong and cruel as heroin addiction and as difficult to break.
What feels true to us largely depends on what we have told ourselves over and over. If we have spent years programing our minds to accept something as truth, reaching the point where the exact opposite feels true will be enormously difficult.
If, as we said earlier, a negative self-image is like staggering through divine assignments with a load on our backs, every negative thought about ourselves adds a grain of sand to our load, and every positive thought removes a grain. Our dilemma is that if through our entire lives we have added dozens of grains of sand almost every day, it will take very many positive thoughts day after day, week after week before we are likely to notice even a slight reduction in our load. And what makes it even more challenging is that adding more negative thoughts about ourselves has become an unconscious habit, whereas positive thoughts take immense effort. Gradually we can retrain our minds so that positive thoughts become a habit but getting there takes prolonged effort.
We are by no means doomed to keep believing devastating lies about ourselves, but for a long while we will have to keep clinging to what God declares to be true and keep repeating it to ourselves, even though everything within us yells that it does not feel true or seem true. And it means that we must keep fighting our addiction to repeating lies to ourselves and instead keep repeating to ourselves the truth, as God declares it, over and over until we have done so with conviction how ever many hundreds of times that it slowly begins to counter the incalculable thousands of times we have repeated lies to ourselves.
But is this Scriptural?
Deuteronomy 6:6-9 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Joshua 1:8 Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.
Psalms 119:11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
Proverbs 2:1 . . . store up my commands within you . . .
(Emphasis mine.)
It also gels with such Scriptures as:
Luke 10:27 . . . Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself.
Romans 8:5 . . . those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. . . .
Ephesians 4:22-23 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds
Philippians 4:8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable if anything is excellent or praiseworthy think about such things.
Colossians 3:1-2 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
(Emphasis mine.)
Making the effort to reprogram ones thought life is even consistent with Scriptures like these:
Proverbs 18:21 The tongue has the power of life and death . . .
Proverbs 18:7 A fools mouth is his undoing, and his lips are a snare to his soul.
Matthew 12:36 But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.
Ephesians 4:29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
James 3:6,9-10 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire . . . With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in Gods likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be.
If, as the last Scripture insists, it is wrong to curse anyone made in Gods likeness, it must be equally as wrong to say bad things about yourself because you, too, are in Gods image. And thoughts must be as deadly to us as words, since both we and God hear our thoughts as strongly as if they were screamed at us.
If you physically or emotionally beat up a child, loving parents would be upset, no matter which of their children you attack. Regardless of whether it is ourselves or someone else that we despise or malign, humanitys Maker and Savior takes it personally.
With a little thought, you will see how each of these diverse Scriptures is relevant:
1 John 5:1 . . . everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.
1 John 4:20 If anyone says, I love God, yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
Matthew 5:22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. . . . anyone who says, You fool! will be in danger of the fire of hell.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 . . . You are not your own; you were bought at a price. . . .
Romans 14:4 Who are you to judge someone elses servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
A powerful demonstration of how important God deems self-image is seen in the name changes he initiated, such as Abram meaning exalted father being renamed Abraham exalted father of a multitude (Genesis 17:5), his wife Sarai, becoming Sarah mother of nations (Genesis 17:5). This was not just an Old Testament phenomenon. Jesus gave people new names: Simon, he renamed Peter (John 1:42) and the sons of Zebedee he named the sons of thunder (Mark 3:17).
This is also somewhat similar:
John 15:15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his masters business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
Note also the term Christian name, which originally referred literally to the name a person receives when baptized.
You might find it helpful to do something similar. If, for example, you use an alias or nickname in emails, you might change it to something that builds your self-esteem. If you use nicknames or pet names with some of your friends, you might also seek a name that uplifts you.
For insight into another biblical example of God seeking to change peoples self-image, let me again quote myself:
Id have worried about Gideon staggering around with a size 20 head. A healthy self-image must be more important to God than I had thought. Those ego-inflating words coincided with Gideons divine call. Faith in those words apparently played a critical role in his future ministry.
Judges 6:15 But Lord, Gideon asked, how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.
God could not use Gideon until he changed his view of himself.
In fact, most divine encounters recorded in Holy Writ had the effect of highlighting deficiencies in self-image and then correcting the way they saw themselves so as to empower them for ministry. Even though the encounters were supernatural, this change of self-image still took effort on their part. The Lord emphasized how he saw them and who they were because of him but they still had to believe it.
Lets glimpse some examples.
When Moses was called to lead Gods people out of bondage he saw himself as a stuttering no-hoper who lacked what it took to fill this role. The Lord patiently gave him signs that the Almighty was with him and that others would accept his authority a stick turning into a snake and back again, a hand turning leprous and back again. Despite these miracles plus the burning bush, Moses still saw himself as incapable until Gods anger was ignited and Moses finally got the message that his low self-image was unacceptable to God (Exodus 3:10-4:14).
Isaiah saw himself as a man of unclean lips. Then a seraph touched Isaiahs mouth with a sacred coal (Isaiah 6:5-8). Thereafter he started seeing himself as having been divinely purified and no longer disqualified from holy service.
Jeremiah saw himself as too young and weak for the task God had assigned him but the Lord told him to change his self-image:
Jeremiah 1:6-9,17-19 Ah, Sovereign LORD, I said, I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.
Solomon, too, saw himself as too young and stupid to fulfill his calling, so God had to promise him great wisdom (1 Kings 3:7-12). Receiving wisdom was not enough, however. Solomon had to believe he now had the required wisdom or he would never dare use it. There are many highly capable, intelligent people who remain non-achievers because they doubt their God-given abilities. Remember how James says if we lack wisdom, we simply have to ask God for it, but he immediately added that faith is critical (James 1:5-6).
Peter saw himself as an uncouth fisherman so defiled that he should be avoided like a skunk. To Jesus, however, he was someone of immense value to God and to humanity; someone he longed for as a close friend and protégé.
Luke 5:8,9 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus knees and said, Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man! . . .
Later, after humiliating himself in a cowardly display of disloyalty, Peter slumped to seeing himself as confirmed lowlife with the backbone of a sea slug. Nevertheless, Jesus labored three times to lift Peters eyes to see himself as someone who still loved his Lord and as Gods chosen leader of the early church. John 21:17 The third time he said to him, Simon son of John, do you love me? . . . Feed my sheep.
Paul saw himself as a persecutor of heretics. First, he had to reverse this to seeing himself as a persecutor of the risen Lord and then change his self-image to someone who is on Jesus side with the strength to endure great persecution (Acts 9:4-5,16).
Defining Success
We view Jonahs ministry as exceptionally successful. Single-handedly, he saved the entire populace of magnificent Nineveh. Youd expect him to be as excited as a centipede at a shoe sale, yet his face was a good imitation of half a squeezed grapefruit (Jonah 4:1-3). His whole message had been, Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown (Jonah 3:4). Forty days later, Nineveh was celebrating and Jonah was suicidal. The envy of evangelists, perhaps, but as a prophet this man was a write-off.
Success hinges entirely on the measure used. Genuine success the synthetic varieties dont last is achieving what God expects of us. Only God can measure it. Dont gauge hurdlers by how high they jump, or pole-vaulters by how fast they run. Judge archers by their accuracy but dont apply this measure to javelin throwers. If that seems obvious its because sport lacks the mystery of real life. In the game of life spectators speculate, the Judge judges.
Eleven thousand teachers competed with Christa McAuliffe and lost. The winner of a seat on space shuttle Challenger was the envy of millions - until the shuttle disintegrated. Eleven thousand losers suddenly became winners.
In the twinkling of an eye, the first shall be last (1 Corinthians 15:52; Matthew 20:16; Luke 16:15). Until that wondrous moment, dont assume youre a loser.
Many of us are far more successful than we imagine; perhaps more than our humility could handle. It is tragic to find in the body of Christ an ear accused of failure because it cannot see, or an eye that thinks its let the body down because it cannot smell.
What the world thinks, what other Christians think, what you think, is irrelevant. Nothing matters except Gods approval. It is the sole measure of a success that stands the test of eternity.
Look at Jesus. From Bible scholars and revered spiritual leaders through to common folk, countless people considered him not just crazy and a lawbreaker but literally demon-possessed. When I finally assembled all the times this appalling accusation was made against Jesus (as done earlier in this webpage) I was shocked at how many there are. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household! said our Role Model (Matthew 10:25). See him on the cross: naked, beaten and jeered. He had not even managed to drag his cross the required distance. Even today, with the benefit of hindsight, billions mock him and/or dismiss him as irrelevant.
Will you let God define success for you and accept his declaration of what is important, or will you dishonor your Lord by beating yourself up because you do not meet the worlds criteria for success? Eternity will decide which definition is right.
The Challenge
Though my need is chronic, I doubt if the mildest affliction could be relieved forever through a single reading of this book. I expect you to feel better after a single dose but regular doses are essential for a permanent cure. So I urge you to keep this book handy, even after completing it. Long-term problems need long-term solutions. I covet a new life for you, not just a momentary easing of the pain. Experience suggests you will need this book year after year. We never reach the point where temptation leaves us forever.
Negative thoughts have been roosting in our heads, pecking away at the fruit beginning to form in our lives. Weve shooed these pests away, but they will stealthily return. Thats our cue to skim through the book again. Highlight the parts that especially speak to you or uplift you. Personalize them. Write them out. Display them. Memorize them. Add to them. Share them. Live them. They will keep the vermin away and bring you to new levels of fruitfulness.
Find ingenious ways to keep in your consciousness truths you particularly need. At work I must set and use several computer passwords. I might say to myself I can do all things through Christ, while typing the first letter of each word. ICDATTC then becomes my new password. No one could guess such an apparently random string of letters and I can remember it only by rehearsing in my mind that positive declaration every time I must use it. Perhaps you could put a little heart somewhere to remind you how much you are loved by God. There are thousands of possibilities. Finding some that work for you will be well worth the effort.
Id be thrilled if my expressions sometimes help. I have tried to shape them to stick in slippery memories. But dont be chained to my words. Using your words will help the truths become yours. And dont be confined to the paltriness of my insight. Hound God with the passion and confidence of a cherished lover until you receive your own Bible-based, Christ-centered revelations.
No matter how hot its served or how much its sweetened, second-hand revelation is as insipid as second-hand tea leaves unless the Holy Spirit comes upon you, exploding those words within you with such power that it becomes your own divine encounter. A hand-me-down word from God might bring a little refreshment, but a truth super-charged by the Spirit of God percolating through ones life is so superior that no cost is too high a price to pay for it. Fervent prayer and Bible meditation is the usual price.
Though I have prayed incessantly that this book bless you as much as it has me, I fear Im asking God to break one of his principles. Why should he command us to seek and to ask and devote our lives to poring over Scripture unless thats the way he prefers to reveal his truth? It is truths in the heart, not words in a book, that set us free. And lodging them there takes spiritual and mental effort. I crave the joy of serving you by doing all the prayer and study, but thats like trying to play tennis for you I get the healthy exercise and you miss all the fun.
Another Perspective
You might be loath to admit it but filling with pride feels good except for the nagging worry that at any moment we could come crashing down. Did you know that its not God but the devil who wants to rob us of that high? The deceiver strives to dupe us into selling our soul for a shabby imitation of the real thing.
The rush of pride in oneself is short-lived. This fizzler ends in crushing disappointment because Pride [in human ability] goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall, (Proverbs 16:18). In total contrast, being proud of the glorious Lord who lives in you, is not only exhilarating, it will exalt you forever.
Let him who boasts boast in the Lord, exuberantly declares the Word of God (1 Corinthians 1:31; 2 Corinthians 10:17). True Christians are those who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh [human ability], (Philippians 3:3; Romans 15:17). Have any of us fully tapped into the elation and fulfillment of glorying in Jesus?
Christian, what gives you every reason in heaven and earth for Christ being literally your pride and joy is that you and he are spiritually fused together; one spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17, KJV). You have merged with the infinite Lord of perfection. He is as much an inseparable part of you as your head is a part of you.
Yes, Ive already touched on this flabbergasting truth but would you permit me one last act of madness in further desperate attempts at describing the indescribable in the hope of you glimpsing a flicker of the astounding implications?
This thrillingly deep oneness with the divine soars so far beyond description, and is so unparalleled, that even the great Apostle Paul under divine inspiration felt compelled to call it a profound mystery (Ephesians 5: 31-32). Elsewhere he speaks of . . . the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory,(Colossians 1:27).
We know that we live in him and he in us, says 1 John 4:13 about this delightfully mysterious blending of the human and the divine. . . . the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world, he wrote just verses earlier (1 John 4:4). I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, rejoiced Paul (Galatians 2:20). For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God, he penned in another epistle (Colossians 3:3).
In his precious, life-giving Word, the Lord of all refers to his relationship with us as being akin to the intimacy, oneness and permanent bonding of marital union, but insists that it is thrillingly deeper than this:
1 Corinthians 6:16-17 . . . For it is said, The two will become one flesh. But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
Ephesians 5:25-32 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . . . to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church for we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery but I am talking about Christ and the church.
For more Scriptures about what occurred when you and the Infinite Lord melded into one the instant you accepted divine cleansing from sin through faith in Jesus, see Your Glorious Union with the Divine.
Part of the mystery is that, like a husband and wife, there remain ways in which you and the Almighty are distinct, and yet you are one.
In parables and elsewhere in Scripture, Jesus is frequently spoken of as the bridegroom. This invites us to hone in on the wonder and excitement and starry-eyed devotion of honeymoon lovers. He is passionate about us and eager to commit himself to showering us for all eternity with his love and all that he is. This insight is also found in Gods revelation prior to Jesus becoming part of humanity:
Isaiah 62:5 . . . as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.
And over and over and over, the Old Testament (and even the New) calls spiritual unfaithfulness adultery and prostituting oneself. In Gods eyes, endless commitment is an integral part of marriage.
It is merely on the physical plane that a man and a woman become one, and the union dies when either of their bodies die. Nevertheless, as anyone whose life has been ripped apart by divorce knows, this intertwining of lives has profound implications. Even this lesser, earthly union is so bonding, so sacred and so important to God that he sees the deliberate ending or violation of the union an atrocious offence. In the words of Jesus, So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate (Matthew 19:6 emphasis mine). Under Old Testament law, you will recall, adultery incurred the death penalty.
Humanitys Creator and Judge says that even the most fleeting sexual liaison (sex with a prostitute) makes two people one flesh:
1 Corinthians 6:16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, The two will become one flesh.
So try imagining how stupendous the consequences of our union with God must be. If the love-struck woman in Solomons Song could rejoice over a mere human, saying, My lover is mine and I am his, (Song of Solomon 2:16) how much more do we have to rejoice about!
In another webpage (You can Find Love: What your Fantasies Reveal, listed below) I detail how our incessant craving to be treasured and yet fully understood, and our ache for continual, unlimited, intimate connection with someone is both too intense and agonizingly idealistic to be fulfilled by even the best human relationship. It is actually a yearning for God. Heres a snippet from it:
If a street kid married a millionaire, she would get his riches and he would get her debts. He would be tarred with her shame and she would gain his honor. For this to happen, she must turn from rival relationships and bind herself and her meager possessions to this man in marriage. Everything he owns would become hers, if she lets everything of hers become his.
Similarly, if we entrust to God everything we have our time, abilities, relationships and possessions he will reciprocate, embracing us with divine extravagance. We hand our depravity to Jesus, relinquishing even our fondest sin. It becomes his. Thats what killed him. In return, Jesus sinless perfection envelops us, enabling us to be on intimate terms with the Holy God.
In entering this love pact, we give God the right to do whatever he likes with our assets, but the Owner of the universe makes his riches available to us. We trade our talents, for his omnipotence; our attempts to run our lives, for his unlimited wisdom. We give him our time on earth and he gives us eternity.
In every way we benefit from this proposal and God gets the raw end. But God is in love with you. He wants this holy union more than you can imagine. Dont break his heart and miss out on the ultimate human experience by holding back.
In a different webpage I made another attempt at shining a glimmer of understanding on how Christs achievements should cause our self-esteem to rocket heavenwards:
Blinding light flashes from the Throne. Creation quakes. On Heavens Throne is a shining figure robed in purity. Powerful. Majestic. Holy. Who is this mighty victor, the one deemed worthy to rule forever, the joy of the Fathers heart? You. Yes, you, the butt of jokes, the focus of Satans slur campaign.
Christian, through the miracle of spiritual rebirth, you and Christ are one. That makes his victory, your victory. Before him, every knee in every universe and dimension must bow. Thats your victory. Right now, no matter how defeated you may feel, you are enthroned with Christ as head of the universe (Scriptures).
A little boy walks tall when his father becomes world champion. Even though the boy contributed nothing to the achievement, his fathers glory exalts him, flooding him with new confidence. Total strangers give him new respect. Thats the faintest shadow of what Jesus triumph has done for us. We walk ever so tall because our supernatural union with Christ far exceeds the deepest bond between father and son, and Christs incomparable victory utterly outclasses any human achievement.
Suppose a billion dollars were deposited in joint names in a special bank account, and one of those two names is yours. All you would then need to live like the billionaire you have just become is learn how to make withdrawals.
With Christ, you have joint claim to the highest honors. His victory was for you. Heaven sees you as the champion of champions. For this eternal fact to be seen on earth, all you need do is learn how to draw on the victory that all of heaven recognizes as being yours. You need to learn how to make that victory obvious. No matter what illusions temporary circumstances might suggest, however, in the eyes of all spiritual powers, whether satanic or divine, you have already made it.
Living a holy life is simply letting Christ, who now lives inside you, express himself through your actions. Its letting run wild the divine genes (the new nature) you inherited when you were born again into Gods family. Living a Christian life is not about exercising will power, but reveling in Gods love, living the supernatural; doing all manner of things that were previously impossible for you.
It was at enormous cost that Jesus uttered the words, I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. . . . Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.
Heres how John described the cost of that statement:
John 6:66 From this time, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
Even after the words had passed his lips, Jesus could have toned it down when everyone reacted so badly and questioned him about it. But he chose not to. Why was this expression so important to Jesus?
You have probably heard the saying, You are what you eat. Not only does what we eat and drink go into us and give us life, the cells of our body absorb and convert the very chemicals in what we consume so that we end up literally composed of what we have digested throughout our lives. What a picture of our union with Christ! He not only dwells in us and gives us life, he has become as much a part of who we are as what we have eaten.
What chance have we of appreciating the extent of the spiritual transformation that exploded within us the moment we surrendered to the divine, when we can do little more than try to catch glimpses through various inadequate even if divinely inspired analogies? We must keep seeking God for a personal supernatural revelation of this mystery. Before leaving this entirely up to you, however, I would like to increase your chances of understanding by introducing you to one more scriptural way of seeing this union.
Jesus flabbergasted a sincere truth-seeker by saying, I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. . . . Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, You must be born again, (John 3:3-7).
We were not just fashioned in Gods image as staggering as that is from a spiritual perspective it is as if we have his very genes in every fiber of our being. Scripture is even so bold as to speak of Gods sperm being within us:
1 John 3:9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because Gods seed [i.e. sperm/genetic material] remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.
For confirmation that this is a reference to sperm, see Gods Seed.
And just as Christ is in us and we are in Christ, he not only gave us birth and we are spiritually growing in him (Ephesians 4:15-16; 1 Peter 2:2; 2 Peter 3:18), the holy Word of God speaks of Christ forming in our womb:
Galatians 4:19 My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you (Emphasis mine.)
Of course, in these contexts, references to sexual reproduction are metaphors but who of us would have dared use them had Scripture not done so? They scream how intimate and complete is our connection with God.
Just as we do not recall being physically conceived or born and we had to learn about it later in life, so we have to learn later what actually happened when we were spiritually conceived and born. No matter how great our ignorance of the process and implications, however, something truly sacred and staggering occurred within us the moment we yielded to Christ. As a result, we are not only currently very different from what we were before this stupendous event, but we now have a radically new potential and destiny because the Almighty has fathered us in the deepest possible sense. We are not only spiritually fused to him, there is a real sense in which we have his very DNA in our spirit.
To describe in modern terms what has happened, I am particularly drawn to gene therapy; a process whereby new genes are inserted into cells to replace defective genes. Spiritual rebirth involves replacing with the divine nature those parts of us that, through sin in our ancestry and sin of our own doing, had become hideously mutant.
At our spiritual rebirth our entire nature changed. We became a new species (see note); a new life-form so astoundingly different from the rest of humanity that Jesus put it this way: Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit (John 3:6). Were talking not just in the order of the difference between giraffes and monkeys but the difference between flesh and spirit! Scientists have genetically modified pigs with DNA from a jellyfish. That staggering gene mix is technologically primitive, relative to the act of God that Jesus was talking about.
Ezekiel uses a different lens with which to view this massive alteration of who we are, and his insight brings us to the same conclusion:
Ezekiel 36:26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
By heart, Ezekiel was referring to the seat of our thoughts, emotions and personality. Were he writing today, Ezekiel would probably have spoken of a near-total brain transplant. And note that the change is so profound that he likens it to the enormous difference between flesh and stone.
As astounding as it sounds, true Christians have been fathered by a Being from another world a Life-form so totally different that he is the source of everything good. Now that God is our Father, we bear the family likeness. As effortlessly as a childs nose begins to take on the shape of its fathers nose, so we will grow more and more like Father God, not merely because we try to model ourselves upon him but because God has transformed who we are by spiritually seeding his very own nature into our genetic blueprint.
For a little more on this, see Your Divine DNA.
The Liberation of Keeping our Eyes on our Lord
Whereas being proud of the glorious Lord to whom we are inseparably bound is as exciting as being in love, trying to be proud of who one is without God is as pitiful and unfulfilling as being in love with oneself.
To be self-serving is not just serving time in a prison of ones own making but languishing on death row. A plant reaching heavenward will thrive but one turned inward is already withering and beginning to die. Likewise, a river turned in on itself will putrefy. So it is with people whose lives revolve around themselves. The only way to run free is to turn from being self-centered to God-centered. To be self-obsessed is a needless tragedy.
Discerning Christians will have realized that parts of the earlier portions of this webpage were somewhat twisted. Only with the above explanation are some of us ready to face the reality that instead of focusing on ourselves and our inadequacies (or supposed strengths), we should fix our eyes on Jesus, (Hebrews 12:2). We should be continually reminding ourselves of, and delighting in, our God and his perfection. This is why the Bible is filled with such declarations as:
Psalms 34:1 . . . his praise will always be on my lips.
Psalms 35:28 My tongue will speak of your righteousness and of your praises all day long.
Psalms 63:6 On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night.
Psalms 145:2 Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever.
Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always.
Our top priority should be, as Jesus insisted, to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Focusing on God and living a life that revolves around him, rather than ourselves, comes naturally to everyone who loves like that.
If we fix our eyes on Jesus, we are continually gazing upon inexhaustible spiritual riches, overwhelming torrents of unstoppable love, mind-boggling wisdom, breath-taking beauty, indescribable splendor, unfathomable power, stupendous triumphs, eternal honor and unsurpassable perfection. Our spirits soar. Moreover, the endless array of captivating and desirable attributes we see in Jesus is ours because we are spiritually one with him. My lover is mine and I am his, (Song of Solomon 2:16) applies to everything about Jesus and everything about you. Through accepting Jesus swapping places with you on the cross, there has been not only a total merging of assets but of his entire being with your entire being. His honor is your honor, his triumph is your triumph, his riches are your riches, his destiny is your destiny. From his side, the contract is irrevocable and signed in blood. The extent to which you revel in this and accept it as the new you, however, is up to you.
We often recoil from seeing ourselves through Gods eyes because we have supposed that if even we or other people look down on us, the Almighty must be infinitely more critical.
It is undeniable that the Holy Lords standards are terrifyingly more exacting than our own, but we have grossly underestimated the infinity of his love that yearns to forgive and to pronounce us perfect. Moreover, we have failed to grasp how our Judge, at the incredible cost of the perfect Son of God exchanging places with us on the cross, has made it possible to pronounce us perfect, despite the appalling magnitude of our sin.
Extolling the Almightys greatness over and over and over will accomplish little if we regard God as a remote being. For continually praising God to achieve what he wants, it must be combined with an awareness that not even the deepest imaginable marital union matches the wonder of our union with God through Christ.
1 Corinthians 6:16-17 . . . For it is said, The two will become one flesh. But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
To be one flesh is superficial, relative to being one spirit. We are in Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 5:17) and he is in us (Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 1:27). We have merged with God on such a profound and intimate level that it surpasses what is humanly possible. We have explored the implications of a street kid entering into a perfect marriage with a millionaire, but this level of oneness is totally eclipsed by our union with God. Unlike human marriage, we do not part and spend much of our lives separate as we go about our own business during most days and sometimes spend little more than evenings and weekends together. Neither do we have a till death do us part relationship with God. Indeed, to die is to be at home with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8).
We have seen that, like trying to describe the Trinity, the intimacy and extent of our union with God defies analogy. We have examined several biblical efforts to describe the indescribable. Here are some more:
Psalms 3:3 . . . you are a shield around me, O LORD . . .
Psalms 18:30 . . . He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.
Deuteronomy 1:31 . . . the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son . . .
Deuteronomy 33:27 The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. . . .
Psalms 73:23 Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.
Isaiah 40:11 He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart . . .
Isaiah 46:3-4 . . . you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs . . . I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
Isaiah 63:9 In all their distress he too was distressed . . . In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them . . .
Judges 6:34 . . . the Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon with Himself . . . (Amplified Bible)
Galatians 3:27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
Romans 13:14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ . . .
Galatians 4:19 My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you
Here is something Jesus said about the role of the Holy Spirit that used to puzzle me:
John 16:14-15 He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.
Why is it so vital that the Spirit make known the spiritual riches that belong to the risen Lord, rather than simply make those riches available to us? For us, becoming spiritually one with Christ and thus gaining all that is his, is a breeze. Our Lord is so eager for this that he instantly does it the moment we are born anew. Our difficulty lies not in entering the union but in grasping the mind-boggling implications of that union. It is in this area that we need what I earlier called divine psychiatric help.
You are joined to the divine King of kings; a living part of him, as a branch is a part of a vine, with his very life flowing through you, bringing growth and fruit. The God of perfection lives in you, and you in him. The Almighty is your strength, your joy, your love, your life, your hope, your glory. His honor, his victories, his power, his perfection all that he is is yours.
To be born of God means you have, as it were, his very genes. And you are not just his child as astonishing as that is you are a part of the Eternal Sons very body (1 Corinthians 12:27). Marvel at the implications: it means that he feels everything that happens to you and it affects him profoundly. (Consider, for example, how the head the brain is acutely aware even of an itchy back, a speck in the eye, a runny nose, a stubbed toe, an insect in the ear or a burned finger.) Being part of his body means that where he goes, you go; what he achieves, you achieve. And, as a nose is part of a persons beauty, you are a part of his beauty.
The Forgotten Factor
Make every effort to avoid the trap of evaluating or treating people according to their looks, abilities, achievements, finances, status, reputation or popularity. If we let the slightest speck of this ungodly mindset remain in us, it will be a noose around our neck, choking the life out of us. Even if we get away with it for a while, we will inevitably slip into applying such criteria, not just to others, but to ourselves, and slump into despair. Unless we rid ourselves entirely of such filthy standards and see everyone through the pure eyes of the good Lord, who never judges or treats anyone by such trivia, what hope have we of consistently finding a merciful, godly and positive way of seeing ourselves?
There is no prejudice or snobbery in God, nor should there be any in us.
Worldly values are deadly lies that seem highly believable and get deep into our spirit. Like cancer, we might gallantly get rid of most of them, but to let even a speck remain, will end up devastating us. The more we succeed in loving others regardless of their spiritual, bodily, intellectual, social or financial inadequacies, the easier it will be for us to believe that we, too, are lovable.
Final Thoughts
As expressed even more powerfully in Help When Thinking of Suicide:
The infinite Lord has chosen to make your mind and body his new home. He has clothed himself with your being. When God wanted to deck himself out in new clothes to show himself in public, he chose your mind and body. He has made you his expression of who he is. Where you go, he goes, and what you do, he does.
The union between you and the divine is even deeper and more wondrous than this suggests. You and God are indivisible. As sodium (a peculiar element that explodes in water) and chlorine (a poisonous gas) chemically unite to form a totally different substance (salt), you and Almighty God have been spiritually melded together to become an utterly unique life form. His infinite intellect, power and perfection live and express themselves in you.
This melding is so total that not only is the divine Lord in you, you are in him (John 15:5; Ephesians 3:12; 2 Thessalonians 1:12; 1 John 4:13). Not only is Christ the righteousness of God, so are you (2 Corinthians 5:21). Not only does Christ reign over the universe from Gods throne, you are spiritually on that throne reigning with him (Ephesians 2:6).
You have been exalted to the highest position of power in the entire universe. Christs victory is your victory. His power is your power. His glory is your glory.
Yes, as part of your earthly mission you will endure hard times when you look and feel like a loser, just as the eternal Son of God did on his mission to this planet. Nevertheless, like him, and through him, such times might be satanically inspired but they end up being divinely orchestrated tactical moves that will culminate not just in triumph but in eternal glory.
So to despair is to be duped into not realizing who you really are in Christ. If, on the other hand, you are not one with Christ, whereby his supreme victory and power is yours, then you have been robbed, because Christ sacrificed everything for you to have it. Please dont let yourself be robbed for one moment longer. Ask Jesus right now to cleanse you from all sin, so that this union with the divine can instantly be yours. (For more help with this, see You Can Find Love: What your Fantasies Reveal.)
Doing this could literally be a matter of life or death, and if you are currently flooding with despair, your despair might just be the impetus you need to make discoveries that will propel you to a whole new realm of achievement and fulfillment. That would make this low point in life the beginning of something incomparably glorious.
So jettison human thinking. Swap your human perspective for Gods perspective. Yield to the divine plea to Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know, (Jeremiah 33:3). Forget instant results, however. Expect to have to prove that seeing things through Gods eyes to have his heart and mind is what you hunger and thirst for; the treasure you want no matter what the cost in time, effort and sacrifice. Persist in this and you will spend all eternity rejoicing over the glories this distressing time of despair has ended up driving you to achieve.
There is no higher honor and nothing as noble as soaring beyond human thinking to gain a divine perspective; being so breathtakingly close to Almighty God that you actually see through his eyes. This immense privilege can be yours. Too few of us bother to seek this thrilling and liberating experience, but God eagerly grants it to everyone no exceptions who keeps seeking it through Jesus. I plead with you not to be like the majority who are so twisted as to love darkness rather than light (John 3:19). You are capable of so much better than ruining your life with the arrogance of thinking yourself smarter and more realistic than God; supposing that your way of looking at things is right and that God is wrong. Why not release your white-knuckled death-grip on a worms eye view of life and rise to the heights you were born for? So much teeters on you attaining this lofty vantage point. Faith, for instance, is all about seeing things from Gods perspective, or at least choosing to act as if we had that revelation. We could also define wisdom the same way. Gaining such a viewpoint requires an utter transformation of our thinking.
For two reasons, dying to self is essential to see things from Gods perspective:
1. To gain Gods perspective we must die to that is, give up seeing things from our own perspective.
2. Since God is love, he sees everything through eyes of love, and Gods love is pure selflessness. Romantic love can be exceedingly selfish our heart turns cartwheels over having found someone we think will make us happy. Divine love, however, is about sacrificially giving of oneself for the well-being of others who have nothing to offer us and might even hate us.
Ironically, dying to self can mean refusing to die physically when doing so seems selfishly desirable. To die to self is to fully embrace selflessness and live for God, not ourselves. It is to obey Jesus directive: If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me (Luke 9:23). It is to pray with Jesus, . . . yet not my will, but yours be done, (Luke 22:42) when everything within us screams against going the way God has chosen. It is to declare with Paul, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20).
Dying to self means reaching the point where you treat your own happiness as irrelevant. It means choosing to do what is right regardless of personal cost. That is true virtue and heroism, and it is the honor you were born for. It is choosing to live, not in order to feel good but in order to be good; not to bring a smile to your face but to bring a smile to Gods face.
Like trying to keep a massive garden pest-free, continually repairing our self-image so that it lines up with spiritual reality is a never-ending task. Even if only partially successful, however, the result of such effort is spectacular.
We have seen that our entire lives fall into a heap when we exalt ourselves or other people as our Judge. That position belongs to God alone. It is in our interest to make God our North Star but what a pathetic reason for doing it! In the way we view everything, we should exalt God as our Judge because it is the right thing to do and because only his judgments will stand for all eternity. He truly is Judge and pretending otherwise is burying our head in the sand. Moreover, he is the Judge who loves us, cleanses us and makes us one with himself, so that his glory and perfection are ours.
One final, critical point: dont expect to be granted the gift of seeing yourself through Gods eyes if you are unwilling to see everyone else including those you despise through Gods loving eyes. Over and over God emphasizes in his Word the necessity of being as nonjudgmental and forgiving of others as we want God to be of us. As we give to others, so it will be given to us.
Lets stop usurping God. Lets dare seek his heart until we view ourselves and everything else from Gods perspective the only perspective that is true. And then the truth shall set us free.
Our spiritual enemy is the deceiver. He is insidiously masterful at making baldfaced lies look and feel utterly convincing, and the truth seem fake and unbelievable. He not only seeks to ruin us by betraying ugly sins as irresistibly beautiful and enticing, he seeks to cripple us by holding up a grotesquely distorted mirror and trying to convince us that it, not how the God of truth sees us, is who we really are.
A phobia, such as a fear of going outside ones house, can be utterly groundless and yet cripple a person. So it is with who we think we are. Will we skulk through life, cowering before a lie, or will we rise up and embrace the truth that liberates and empowers us to reach our God-given potential? Will we glorify our Lord by fully accepting the reality of what God in Christ has done for us?
Update: The Elusive Answer Finally
Years have passed since writing most of the above. Despite its length, Ive always felt something critical was missing but I could not identify it. I kept missing it because I mistakenly thought that when it comes to dying to self, anyone tormented by low self-esteem has already arrived maybe even overshot the destination. I now realize what a mistake it is to confuse dying to self with suffering low self-esteem. In fact, dying to self sets one free from that torment. For the help you need, I particularly draw your attention to The Astonishing Joy of Dying to Self but the links below are also valuable and I suggest you keep them handy.
Related Pages
Spiritual Riches: One with Christ!
How to Find Relief from Guilty Secrets
Further Valuable Help
I Hate Myself! Christian Help for Spiritual Depression, Failure & Self-Loathing Encouraging, critically important, Bible-based insights.
How Much Does God Love Me? Help when you doubt Gods special love for you. The links there are invaluable.
Feeling Unlovable, Undesirable & Unwanted
You: More Powerful & Capable Than You Thought. Christian Encouragement
The Shame of it All! Recovering from Ones Idiotic Blunders
Overcoming Loneliness: Practical Help
Feel Ugly? Could You Have a Distorted Body Image?
Theres Hope! A Sane Guide to Finding Hope When There is No Hope
Coping with Criticism and Slander
How to Receive More Spiritual Revelation
God Loves You means You Are Gods Favorite!
Hate Yourself? A page that provides many more valuable links Not to be sold. © Copyright 1985-1996, 2008, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020 Grantley Morris. May be freely copied in whole or in part provided: it is not altered; this entire paragraph is included; readers are not charged and it is not used in a webpage. Many more compassionate, inspiring, sometimes hilarious writings available free online at www.net-burst.com Freely you have received, freely give. For use outside these limits, consult the author.
Christian Help
Why Change Your Self-Image?
No matter how heart-stopping your string of failures or achievements, how highly people esteem you or despise you and how worthless or invaluable you think you are, you are divinely treasured more than you dare hope. And, through your union with the divine, what you can achieve is of such profound and eternal significance as to defy imagination.
How you live is limited by how you suppose other people would think about you if they knew everything about you.
Something stupendous happened the moment you spiritually united to Christ. Instantly, your status and potential rocketed heavenward, leaving the person you used to be so mind-bogglingly far behind that, along with every other Christian, you actually need divine psychiatric help (Ephesians 1:16-19; Colossians 1:9; Philemon 6) to grasp the merest fraction of the enormity of what has happened to you.
To restrain a baby elephant, circus trainers must chain it to a huge stake driven into the ground. When the baby grows into an adult, however, it is many times smarter and stronger. What trainers must then drive into the ground is just a tiny tent peg.
Our goal and Gods goal is for us to become increasingly Christlike. But what was Christ like? Jesus own behavior confirms that a good self-image is compatible with humility. He maintained a healthy self-image even when telling everyone how humble he is:
Matthew 7:7-8 Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find . . . For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds . . .
Psalm 119:18 Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.
Psalm 119:97-100 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts.
(Emphasis mine.)
Romans 8:28-29 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son . . .
Galatians 2:20
John 3:3; 1 Peter 1:3;23
There is often a huge difference between what is sometimes called head knowledge and heart knowledge. Put another way: what we intellectually know must be true can be very different to what feels true. Usually the only way to move from head knowledge to heart knowledge is by desperately clinging in faith to what we know to be true, and doing all we can to keep on living it and affirming it to ourselves, despite the immense pressure to plunge back into doubt.
A woman was praying for the home-fellowship I attend when she saw mighty man of valor written above me. I dont care whether you think that was of God; when she shared her experience with me it put steel in my wishbone. That boost has given me an inkling of why God speared those very words into Gideons head (Judges 6:12).
Gideon had seen himself as inferior:
But the LORD said to me, Do not say, I am only a child. . . . Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you, declares the LORD.
Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, Now, I have put my words in your mouth. . . .
Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them. Today I have made you a fortified city, an iron pillar and a bronze wall to stand against the whole land against the kings of Judah, its officials, its priests and the people of the land. They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you, declares the LORD.
Then Jesus said to Simon, Dont be afraid; from now on you will catch men.
Despite my relentless longing to share these truths, it hurts to let this book be published. The more I work on the book, the more immersed in its truths I become. Its continually washing away layer after grimy layer of negativity and buoying me ever higher. I hate the thought of this process ever ending, but dour experience affirms that it will soon after I put the book down. I have had to reread it scores of times to halt my slide back into the bog. And still I need it.
I admit it: repeating positive truths to ourselves seems like eating chalk much of the time, but it is not something we can afford to be lazy about. Like clawing our way out of a deep hole, causing our self-image the way we habitually think of ourselves to align with spiritual reality is hard work, but very much needed.
If you are serious about seeing yourself as God does, bookmark this webpage, or record the web address, so that you can read each of the links below and keep returning here for more links.Links Given Above that You Might have Missed
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Christian Help
Why Change Your Self-Image?