YOUR SELF-WORTH
Psalm
71:1-4 In you, O LORD, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame.
Rescue me and deliver me in your righteousness; turn your ear to me and save
me. Be my rock of refuge, to which I can always go; give the command to save
me, for you are my rock and my fortress. Deliver me, O my God, from the hand of
the wicked, from the grasp of evil and cruel men.
Working
with three other men in a close and cramped room, we toiled unrelentlessly on
the company budget. Getting up for a drink, I walked around the cluttered table
and tripped over an unseen cord. Black, went the computer monitors. Everyone in
the room froze. I looked down in disbelief to see the power cord for the
computers unplugged. I had zapped all the work we had completed that day. No
one had backed up the system.
Thoughts
and feelings flooded over me. I felt as if I had let everyone down. I thought I
had wasted the time we all had put in that day. I felt so imcompetent and
helpless. What an idiot I was to have not seen the cord. What a failure I am.
Then the others responded. I let their words of anger affirm my stinking
thinking at that moment. I believed their lies about me. I was falling head
first into the abyss of self defeat. In the end I had allowed by self worth and
acceptance be determined by an accident, by unfortunate circumstances. Their
failure to do a back-up to save the work became my failure. They had done
nothing to cause the situation. They did not see that their actions or lack of
action as a contributing factor to this situation. I would be the scapegoat. I
let myself become the scapegoat.
The causes
of a low self-worth are many. Neglect teaches the person being neglected that
what others are doing is more important. Children, for example, who are left
unattended by parents are left to believe that they are less valuable and
important than the careers of their parents. Failure compounds our low
self-worth when it is viewed as the only course of action or activity to choose
from. Failure, seen in this way, denies the variety and opportunities that the
life God has given us truly affords in every circumstance we encounter. Think
of Moses. He failed in many ways and saw himself through the lens of low
self-worth, yet God insisted that he would be the leader of the people, Israel.
Failure is something we do but it is not something we are. Unforgiven sin,
like termites, will eat away the foundation of our self-worth. Satan wants us
to measure our value by what we do, what we have and how we look. Satan
encourages us to think that our actions can never be forgiven and new choices
with new results be made.
Josh 1:5;
Phil. 4:13; 1 John 1:9; Charles Stanley “Our Unmet Needs” p.225
