Disclaimer: this isn’t a post about Raisin Bran (though it would taste wonderful this morning!), but about self-worth. It’s a subject that’s been bouncing around in the back of my mind for awhile, particularly recently. And honestly, the more I consider it, the more I realize that my own sense of self-worth has often been misplaced, probably for most of my life.
Where do we typically get our sense of self-worth from? As a generalization, men tend to get their self-worth from their accomplishments, trophies (house, car, money, etc.), and career; women tend to get their self-worth from relationships/family, home/living-space, and appearance. While none of those things are poor sources in and of themselves, the problem is that there will always be someone more intelligent, more attractive, more creative, wealthier, have a “better” family, be more accomplished, and more <fill in the blank> than you. If our self-worth is based up that (ie, ourselves), then sooner or later, it’ll likely be damaged (and sometimes dramatically).
A couple weeks ago, I had to purchase a different vehicle, which was a rather unexpected surprise. Thankfully, I had a basic idea of what I was looking for and how much I was willing to pay, and the rest was matter of searching online (thanks Google!) and calling around. Needless to say, after buying the new car I’ve noticed that some people look at me a bit differently. All of a sudden, I seem to have more “worth” in their eyes, even though nothing other than my form of transportation has changed (ie, a trophy). True, I went from driving a badly hail-damaged older car held together with duct-tape (and bubble-gum!) to one that’s new and shiny and flawless. But behind that wheel, I’m still the same person I’ve always been, except how I’m perceived by others. My true worth has very little to do with what I drive, where I live, what clothes I wear, or how wealthy I am — but to this world it does. The phrase “Perception is everything” usually rules the day.
Now that my life is finally settling down post-divorce, I’ve been reprocessing things a lot — maybe too much at times! It was about ten years ago that I began tinkering around with writing, and soon after I began producing books, being a writer became a big part of my identity, from which I drew my self-worth — trophies and accomplishments. That voice in my head would go something like, “I may not be all that smart, talented, wealthy, or tall/athletic, but I’m very disciplined, motivated, and I can crank out books like nobody’s business!” And I suppose I did, averaging 2-3 a year from 2008 to 2014. I could consistently sit down before and/or after work and plop down 1,200 words in an hour or two. Back then, my biggest fear was that my writing career was just a flash-in-the-pan — and if I stopped writing, who would I be then?
A close cousin to self-worth is love, and the two often go hand-in-hand. If you regularly feel loved, your sense of self-worth will be greater than when you don’t. As I look back, I’ve come to realize that perhaps much of my motivation to pump out books was because deep down, that sense of feeling loved was missing or incomplete, so I subconsciously wrote to gain the respect of others. Men generally feel love through admiration and respect over something they’ve accomplished, while women feel love by — well, LOVE (and we think women are the complicated ones!). When making small-talk in the past, writing used to be one of the first things that would come up, but now I rarely mention it (if at all!). However, when many of those relationships evaporated in the divorce, I was broken and whatever sense of self-worth I had practically vanished; my accomplishments didn’t amount to a hill of beans.
So from where should we draw our sense of self-worth that can’t evaporate, be repossessed, rust, or fade away?
Scoop #1: From God, Not Others
If there’s one lesson I’m learning over the last several years it’s that God is the ONLY solid, unchanging Person in this ever-changing universe. Now, it’s one thing to know this in your head but something much, much greater to know it in your heart. Perhaps that’s by His Divine Design, that everything around us is temporary, unsatisfying, and rather fleeting most times — utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Solomon, the second-most wisest man to ever live, had much to say about this subject in Ecclesiastes. When self-worth evaporates, who else but God can meet those needs that are no longer available from our typical (and temporary) sources?
The answers to all our deepest questions about self-worth can only be found in who we are in relation to God, the One who doesn’t change like the fallible and fickle people we all are and certainly not our stuff and accomplishments. It’s our identity before our Creator that really defines us and assures us that we are lovable and that we have intrinsic, eternal worth. It’s knowing and relying on the fact that God loves us more than we can ever know, and He loves us for who we are in Him, not for what we’ve done or what we have. Over and over in the Bible, He proclaims and proves His unfathomable love for us by going to utterly ridiculous lengths to have a deep, meaningful, and eternal relationship with us.
Scoop #2: From Us Deeply Accepting Scoop #1
The biggest hindrance to us drawing self-worth from God is our own doubts, unbelief, and lack of faith. Particularly if we’ve never been really, really loved by others, it’s very difficult to accept that even God can love us the way He designed us to be, that we truly have eternal, incredible self-worth in His eyes. When I was broken and my self-worth evaporated, I had to learn to rely on God to meet most of those needs that were no longer able to be met from my spouse and family — and it took a long time for me to learn to accept that I actually had worth after that huge relationship failure. It was only through soaking in the Psalms, His Word, books, and music that I finally began to accept who I was to Him and in Him. Again, heart-knowledge takes much longer and much more effort to learn and digest than head-knowledge.
Perhaps instead of placing Him in the middle of the pack of our daily rat-race, He needs to be kept far, far ahead of everything else if we are to regularly draw true contentment and our sense of self-worth from Him — and be able to accept it. Maybe that’s why the Bible says that in whatever we do, do as to the Lord (Col 3:23). He needs to always be kept firmly in First Place in our hearts, lives, and thoughts if we are to feel fulfilled in the midst of life’s vanity and futility. Perhaps it’s when He’s pushed aside or to the back of the crowd that we start looking to others to fill those places in our lives that we turn inward — and then downward. Maybe it’s when we take our eyes off Him that we start to deeply question our true worth and quickly sink (remember Peter and his two-step walk on the water?).
In going through this process of being remade, my motivation and drive to crank out books has diminished because maybe deep-down, I no longer need those things from which to draw self-worth from. Perhaps that’s why I no longer feel this burning drive to pour out countless words onto paper everyday or push myself to go on and on without sleep until a chapter or piece of code is done. Perhaps that’s why I no longer beat myself up if I haven’t made much headway on my latest work-in-progress, which has been dragging on for well-over a year now. Of course, I still love writing and coding, but I no longer need to do it in order to feel respected or “worthy”. When I write now, I write for the simple delight of expressing myself and my thoughts in the written word that may (or may not!) touch untold people years after I’m gone. When I write now, I write for the sheer joy it brings me, particularly when I’m writing about Him.
We have Worth Because He Loves Us
We have worth because He made us, pure and simple. It’s not about us, what we’ve done, or what we have, but because of HIM. We are loved because He loved us from eternity past, within every moment of our lives today, and He will love us for all eternity future. He loves us through the good times, the bad times, the dull times, the lonely times, and even the evil/dark times. We are loved and lovable because He made us that way: to love and be loved, to know and be known. We are loved not because we are all that lovable in and of ourselves, but because He is love — it’s His very essence — and we are made in His image, flawed and broken as we may be. The very letters that comprise the root word for “love” in ancient Hebrew mean “the spirit/breath of the father (ahb)”, and much more.
We are loved because He loves us with this furious, raging, unfathomable, almost-insane love — and He has proven it over and over throughout history, but most of all by sending His Son to take our punishment for our sins upon Himself. He loves us so much that He joyfully humbled Himself and took on human flesh, walked among us, and then suffered a horrible sacrificial death for us. We are loved fully, deeply, and completely because of Who HE is, not who we are or what we’ve done… The entire Story of Creation and Redemption is about Him, NOT us. We are loved because He is love and aside from His Son, we are the ultimate objects and reflections of that love. Our self-worth is completely wrapped up in and derived from His accomplishments, not ours.
We are assured of His love and our inherent self-worth because not only He took our place on the cross, but He’s given us everlasting life and has made us joint heirs with Him (Romans 8). We are loved because He is the very essence of sacrificial, agape love (1 John 4:8). Love is His very nature (along with holiness and righteousness) and He is committed to remaking us in His image.
“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” — 1 John 4:16
The highlight was getting into an accident on an icy hill that put my car into the shop, and then learning the damage would be far too costly to fix. At home this week, we’re dealing with friend issues, piles of homework, sleepless nights, a house that’s still being put back together after a painting marathon, fighting colds, a long bout of anxiety, a big software release at work, and two broken hearts (and a partridge in a pair-tree). I don’t often feel overwhelmed, but I certainly have this week.
Something else I’m finding is that in helping another with their broken heart, you can help your own. As I’m comforting and counseling my youngest daughter in her broken relationship, I’m hearing many of the same words being spoken to me in the night that I have spoken to her. Words like, “Time and God will heal this”, “I’m here for you and am right by your side”, “I’m not going anywhere”, “I am for you and we’ll get through this together”, and this week, “Do the next thing.”
It’s not in normalcy that we are usually tested and the true nature of our hearts are really exposed (both good and bad), but in the crises. How does our actual response to a crisis match up with how we want to respond or how we should respond? God can certainly handle our embittered and accusatory questions (thanks for taking those arrows, Job!) but in the end it’s we and our attitudes and perspectives that need to change, not Him and His. He’s working on US in this life, not vice-versa.
With such a question in mind, the Bible quickly comes to the rescue. In fact, the very first question asked just happens to be the most important one that we can ask: “Did God really say?” All other questions we might come up with in this world are secondary to that primary question.
Sometimes it’s almost a 50-50 toss-up when everything is considered, yet even if ALL evidence would point to evolution, the same question would still remain: “Did God really say?” And that question must be answered by each one of us someday. Did God really say that we are a fallen race in need of a Savior? (Ephesians 2) Did God really say that Jesus is the (only) Way, the (only) Truth, and the (only) Life, and that no one can come to the Father except through Him? (John 14:6) Did God really say there’s a literal hell for all who do not accept His provision for them? (Matt 25:46) Did God really say that He will literally come to earth some day and rule the nations with a rod of iron? (Psalm 2)
As Christmas rapidly approaches and we jump into the New Year, let us seek to keep those two questions at the forefront as we live and respond accordingly: “Did God really say?” and “Where are you?” When we’re tempted to compromise or surrender or hang it up, let us remember that His is for us and helps us in our struggles (Romans 8:31-39).
A couple months ago, I read an interesting article about how recent discoveries of dinosaurs bones (not merely dinosaur fossils, but bones) have been confirming the literal Biblical account in Genesis. No, not the old Day-Age model that theologians, pastors, and believers try to twist and contort to make Genesis fit with evolution and archaeology, but the literal, ~6000 year-old, Six-Day Creation model. According to the 
This passage predicts two of the pillars of evolution: uniformitarianism (“all things continue as they were”) and the blatant denial of the Flood and a literal Creation (being “willfully ignorant”). The debate between creationists and evolutionists isn’t a matter of science or the evidence but the interpretation of both as based upon their personal biases and worldviews. Though the evidence is the same, one looks at the majesty of the Grand Canyon and sees billions of years while the other sees the sudden, pervasive destruction of the Flood. There are over 200 cultural accounts of a massive Flood, yet evolutionists continually deny that any such event ever occurred. They postulate that the dinosaurs gassed themselves to death (dino-farts) or were struck by a huge meteor (which should’ve destroyed ALL life on earth), but never, ever by water (much less a global Flood), which is the only reasonable explanation for creating so many fossils in the first place (rapid burial by mud/sediments). As with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the formation of the Dead Sea in Genesis 19, it doesn’t matter if there were eye-witnesses who described the events as they occurred — according to modern archaeology, it all happened millions of years ago instead of under 6,000.
When I consider the word “epiphany”, I tend to imagine a bright light-bulb lighting up right over my head and suddenly, everything becomes clear. However, there’s another kind of epiphany that isn’t nearly as comforting, the kind in which you suddenly see things for the way they actually are, not how you believe or imagine or even wish them to be. It almost feels like that light-bulb overhead is actually turning off, leaving you in darkness. I think I had one of those last weekend, and I didn’t like it very much!
To add to the mix, the holidays are coming soon, which are much different for me now after the divorce too. Holidays are tough enough for singles, but especially divorcees and widows/widowers because they remember all the times-past, what was and can no longer be. Christmas Eve used to always be spent with my in-laws and the grandparents, but last year I ended up in an expensive restaurant downtown. This year? Who knows — I might just have a tall glass of egg-nog and go to bed early! I used to look forward to the holiday season every year, but now it’s mixed with all these other negative emotions, and I find myself almost looking forward to them being over with so I don’t have to deal with those negative feelings. I didn’t just lose a spouse in the divorce, I lost nearly everyone I had built relationships with over the last twenty years, an entire family of parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. Especially after divorce, people lose many of their social connections because so many are made with other married couples. Though I’m still living in the same home and have the same routines, I may as well have moved to the other side of the world.
In some ways — perhaps many, MANY ways — being a single-parent with no immediate family around after divorce feels like being a lone-soldier, especially when the kids are at their other parent’s place for the weekends or the holidays. I find life going from being very hectic when they’re around to very quiet (or even very boring) when they’re not. When an emergency occurs (which can be frequently with kids!), what’s a single parent with no real family available or support system supposed to do? Who can you trust to pick them up from school if you have to work late if there’s no one around? And what about birthdays and holidays, especially if their friends aren’t available?
Imagine having to write a term-paper about a subject you’re not completely familiar with. As if that isn’t enough of a challenge, throw in the fact that this paper needs to be written in a different language, must be peer-reviewed, and written as a team effort with several different people who are just as bewildered and bumbling as you are! Not only that, but imagine that your grade (if not your entire academic future) hinges on getting an “A” on that paper!
In the grand scheme of things, one’s stance on Bible prophecy is of some importance, but is not critical to one’s theology as it is with repentance and salvation, the essential doctrines. John Piper and 
Being Refactored 