"Soon you will have to choose between doing what is right and what is easy..."
Came to this fork in the road recently, a place I had been many times before, yet the stakes seemed higher this time, where I had to fight once again, with all that is within me this trap of believing what Robert S. McGee in his best-selling Search for Significance calls, a “satanic” formula, that
Our worth = our performance + the approval of others
Ouch. We don't really believe this. We know our worth is not based on that. We know our security isn't in that. We know... Yet, sadly, as I make this confession, I know I am not alone. I suffer from a chronic disease that I know plagues far too many of us...
Hi, I'm Mazvita, and I'm an approval addict.
It's something I struggle with far too often than I'd like. A battle I'm faced with not always, not every day, sometimes weeks, months can go by without it's rearing it's ugly head, yet it is still there and it is still real and requires immediate attention. For it only serves to steal, kill, and destroy.
Even when we have fought the fight and realize we made a choice to NOT let this enemy win, it is still difficult. Having peace about something doesn't mean the ugliness of the tension goes away automatically, it haunts us. I fought this fight and chose to not give in out of fear of what others would think or say.
After working through the myriad of emotions, I had peace about a situation we've wrestled with and could go on with the confidence in knowing the choice made was difficult but was one that the lord was calling me too... that the greater sacrifice was choosing to die to the positive opinions or approval of others and choose to follow and obey Him, who alone is the one who determines my worth and value.
“In the Scriptures, God supplies the essentials for discovering our true significance and worth. The first two chapters of Genesis recount man's creation, revealing man's intended purpose (to honor God) and man's value (that he is a special creation of God). John 10:10 also reminds us how much God treasures His creation, in that Christ came so that man might experience abundant life.
(And here's where the obsessive underlining began the first time I read this book years ago)
However, as Christians, we need to realize that this abundant life is lived in a real world filled with pain, rejection, and failure. Therefore, experiencing the abundant life God intends for us does not meant that our lives will be problem-free.
On the contrary, life itself is a series of problems that often act as obstacles to our search for significance, and the abundant life is the experience of God's love, forgiveness, and power in the midst of these problems. The Scriptures warn us that we live within a warfare that can destroy our faith, lower our self-esteem, and lead us into depression...
As Christians, our fulfillment in this life depends not on our skills to avoid life's problems but on our ability to apply God's specific solutions to those problems. An accurate understanding of God's truth is the first step to discovering our significance and worth...
Some secular psychologists focus on self-worth with a goal of simply feeling good about ourselves. A biblical self-concept, however, goes far beyond that limited perspective. It is an accurate perception of ourselves, God, and others based on the truths of God's Word. An accurate, biblical self-concept contains both strength and humility, both sorrow over sin and joy about forgiveness, a deep sense of our need for God's grace and a deep sense of the reality of God's grace....
(Amen!)
Whether labeled self-esteem of self-worth, the feeling of significance is crucial to man's emotional, spiritual, and social stability and is the driving element within the human spirit. Understanding this single need opens to door to understanding our actions and attitudes...
We must understand that this hunger for self-worth is God-given and can only be satisfied by Him. Our value is NOT dependent on our ability to earn the fickle acceptance of people, but rather its true source is the love and acceptance of God. He created us. He alone knows how to fulfill all our needs.”
- Robert S. McGee, The Search for Significance
::
You know, working through some of how this issue, this chronic condition that surfaces and resurfaces from time to time, I was reminded, however painfully, yet lovingly, that God was in His grace, stripping me away from yet another idol.
Those bonds are hard to break. It is painful. Heart-wrenching. Agonizing. Cold and Lonely.
You feel naked, vulnerable. Exposed. Alone. Afraid. Rejected. Uncared for. Forgotten. Hurt. Betrayed. Worthless.
Pretty intense emotions, yet in acknowledging and working through these feelings and the situations and thoughts that triggered them, as I cried out to God last night and today, slowly His truth began to shine a light in my soul.
I asked Him to rescue me. Save me from myself. Lift my heart as it was failing. Speak the words I so desperately needed in my soul. He answered me, He responded and heard my cries out to Him. He used Ben to communicate compassion and truths I knew I needed to hear, and God Himself met me, in those moments when I was sinking.
So many incredible things happened.
I was able to see what the battle raging was really all about. Able to see the situation differently. The people involved differently. Myself differently.
This is only by His grace.
One of several things that happened was remembering how “Satanic” this trap is, as McGee describes it in this book, how crippling and soul crushing is the formula, that can so easily believe:
That our worth = our performance + the opinions of others
“Being deceived, Eve traded God's truth for the serpent's lie. She ate the forbidden fruit. Then Adam followed her in sinful rebellion against God, and he, too, ate the forbidden fruit.
One of the tragic implications of this event is that man lost his secure status with God and began to struggle with feelings of arrogance, inadequacy, and despair, valuing the opinions of others more than the truth of God. This robbed man of his true self-worth and put him on a continual, but fruitless, search for significance through his success and the approval of others....
In the beginning, God declared that man was created to reign with Him; however, man rejected God's truth and chose instead to believe Satan's lie.
Today, man continues to reject God's truth and offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. He chooses instead to trust in his success and the opinions of others to give him a sense of self-worth, though the Scriptures clearing teach that apart from Christ, man is enslaved to since and condemned to eternity in hell.
Since the fall, man has often failed to turn to God for the truth about himself. Instead, he has looked to others to meet his inescapable need for self-worth. I am what others say I am, he has reasoned. I will find my value in their opinions of me.
Isn't it amazing that we turn to others who have a perspective as limited and darkened as our own to discover our worth! Rather than relying on God's steady, uplifting reassurance of who we are, we DEPEND ON OTHERS who base our worth on our ability to meet their standards. Because our performance and ability to please others so dominate our search for significance, we have difficulty recognizing the distinction between our real identity and the way we behave, a realization crucial to understanding our true worth.
Our true value is based not on our behavior or the approval of others but on what God's Word says is true of us.”
- The Search for Significance
::
Wow. And another, Amen.
But, of course, we don't want to admit this is our struggle. If you asked me, I would have never said, I struggle with knowing my worth or significance. But, to see how deeply entangled and deeply rooted my desire for the approval and positive opinion of others is, we must call it for what it is, an issue and an idol.
I was faced again today, in the beauty and the pain of another idol being ripped from my flesh, smashed and broken into pieces before me, that His grace with me in that is, He longs to see me free.
As my counselor says, the need for acceptance is a very real emotional, God-given need we all have. Yet, we can all admit we struggle when other people fall short of meeting that need we have. We know only God can fully meet that need, but we often hope, believe, that others can tool. He will allow others to help meet that need, but He is the Source.
In working through this battle the last few days, even making decisions that I knew would cost me the very approval and good standing I would like to preserve with others, I also knew it was about far more than that. It was about me choosing to to do what I knew in my heart of hearts, the Lord was asking me to do, even though it would require a death, a dying to myself, of so much I was holding dear.
But with every death there is a resurrection.
Every death brings new life.
I was reminded of one of my favorite passages today, found in the seventeenth chapter of Jeremiah, this beautiful depiction of what it means to be deeply rooted in God, that in any season, if you are like that tree planted by the water, that sends out its roots by the stream, regardless of the season, your leaves are always green...
It says,
“But blessed are those, who trust in the Lord, whose CONFIDENCE, is in HIM...
They will be like a tree planted by the water, that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear WHEN (not if, but WHEN) heat comes; its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought, and never fails to bear fruit.”
:: Jeremiah 17:7-8
I was in a women's ministry when I was support raising that used this passage as the theme for their semester and the pastor that was speaking that first morning shared it this way more or less,
So we get this picture here, of the man or woman, who trusts in the LORD, that their confidence is in Him, He is all they need. As long as they are planted to their source, regardless of their season, they will flourish. For He is the one sustaining them. In any season, there is life. Regardless of whether it is a season of rain or of drought.Those last few verses are PROMISES, things that are sure to happen to the man or woman who stays connected, like that tree planted by the water, to its Source.
But just a few verses before that, we see an entirely different picture. This is a picture of the man or woman, the ones that Search for Significance is discussing, who is blindly adhering to the Satanic and deceptive formula, that their worth = the approval and opinion's of others.
In this picture, there is no sign of life. This man lives in desert wastelands, feeding an idol that will never be able to satisfy and one that continually runs dry.
For this man or woman, it reads:
This is what the LORD says:
"Cursed are those who trust in mortals, who DEPEND ON FLESH for their strength and whose hearts turn away from the Lord.
They will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.”
:: Jeremiah 17:5-6
::
So, all I have to say Father, is thank you.
For your love, for your grace, for the lengths you will go to save me.
For reminding me, and flooding my soul with the truth and light and hope of the gospel.
That my worth is in You, simply because You chose me and You love me;
That my security is in You;
That this is a gift I could not have earned, but that You have paid the cost for my ransom, that I would never go looking for love, for hope, for who I am, for worth, anywhere but here in Your arms.
::
My strength, my solace from this spring;
That He who lives to be my King
Once died to be my Savior
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