Most of us spend a lifetime finding ourselves. The world is filled with all kinds of self-help books, tapes, podcasts, sermons, therapies, etc.… that make an attempt to introduce us…to us! Our little ones watch us with discerning eyes, wondering when we will ever grow up!
Years are spent coming to understand “self-acceptance” and “self-pity” before we realize it is God’s design for us to find a total dependence on Him, accepting our flaws as marks of ownership! The imperfections allow us to understand His holy presence and purpose in our lives. This awareness keeps us at peace with Him and initiates contentment in everything. It produces a gratefulness for our inabilities, limitations and failures and affects rejoicing in our weaknesses.
“Milton was blind, who looked on Paradise!
Beethoven, deaf, who heard vast harmonies!
Byron, the lame, who climbed toward Alpine skies!
Who pleads a handicap, remembering these?
Violet A. Storey
“Self-esteem” and a need for worth apart from God is an empty exercise that will leave us stranded in life. “The higher a man is in grace, the lower he will be in his own esteem.” Charles Spurgeon Our “self-rejection” is expressed through conforming to current trends...daily self-criticism; self-evaluation; insistence on a particular peer look; over attention to diet; over-done hair and make-up are just a few of the multitude of other expressions.
These self- life pursuits originate in our “pride or self-righteousness” which is spending our time trying to be someone or something…that we are not! Our “inferiority” is nothing more than a lack of understanding in how we are meant to fit into the scheme of life with purpose. “Those that know God will be humble, and those that know themselves cannot be proud.” John Flavel
“A proud man is always looking down on things and people;
and, of course, as long as you are looking down,
you can’t see something that’s above you”
C. S. Lewis
We spend way too much time in self-consumption (our thoughts), self-consideration (our wants) and comparing those things which are “unchangeables”. Our parents, time in history, our race, our heritage, our gender, our birth order, our brothers and sisters, our physical features, our mental capacity and limitations, aging and death are all God-ordained and are unchangeable.
It is time to accept what is God’s choice for us,
to refocus on those in need, not ourselves, and move on…
Most of us are more than ready!
~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America. Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California. My passion is mentoring and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights.
