Inside Out (The Fingerprint Of Our True Identity): 6 Distorted Self-Image Windsor Park Baptist Church 26 th June 2016

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Ashlee Cole
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1 Inside Out (The Fingerprint Of Our True Identity): 6 Distorted Self-Image Windsor Park Baptist Church 26 th June 2016 I love this topic. This is my life. I have struggled with this all my life. My view of myself has always tended to be harsh. So this is something I know about. I have lived it. When my Dad was in his 60s he got an awful shock. He received a letter in the post from a woman called Vi. He had been adopted when he was very young and had grown up as an only child and he had no idea that he had a full sister. I wasn t living at home at the time but Mum told me Dad collapsed into the chair in shock when he read Vi s letter. When we subsequently met Vi, her and Dad were like two peas out of a pod. Their mother and Grandmother had died in the influenza outbreak in 1918 and their father, a farmer, could not cope and took them to the orphanage instructing they were to be adopted out together. They weren t. My father was too young to remember his older sister Vi but she always remembered him. She had followed his progress as he grew up but felt that he would not remember her and she did not want to intrude in his life. It was only after much urging from her own grown up children that she made contact. I found out I had cousins I did not know about one being Byron Kelleher and over the years my Dad a rugby referee had presided over games he had played in having no idea he was Byron s Great-Uncle. We got to know and love Vi and my Dad has passed now but I think it did bring him a lot of pleasure and comfort to finally find he was not an only child and in his later years he enjoyed getting to know his sister. Dad discovered late in life that there was more to him than he thought Who do you think you are? I ve been loving the new programme on TV ONE on Tuesday night Why AM I that follows The Dunedin Study of over 1000 babies born in Dunedin in 1972 through their entire life. Scientists are learning a whole lot about nature verses nurture. You probably already know you are a mixture of your genes and your early influences. That s WHY you are who you are but WHO are you? You mainly got your idea of who you are from other people. Especially your parents: Children want to use our eyes. They want to know how we see them. We have a huge responsibility to children to give them encouraging reflections. Throw away comments like You re thick. You re a nuisance ; You could never do that can leave negative impressions last a life time.. You can also get your idea of who you are from friends, especially when we are young. Children treat their friends like mirrors.

2 They are watching their friends to see who they think they are am I funny, am I cool? The trouble is they are distorted mirrors. Distortions from their immaturity and own ego. Sometimes the mirror is fogged: Children and adults misinterpret what people think of them. For example when parents are going through a break-up, children can misread the signs of stress and emotion and think that they are the problem. If you already have low self- esteem and you hear people talking as you walk past and you are sure they are talking about you and that it isn t nice what they are saying. As parents we should always be a gentle mirror reflecting back the good we see and the good lovely heart we don t yet see but know is developing there. Some people stay locked in that trap of simply believing that reflection in the eyes of other people. If they do that can lead to beliefs and thoughts about themselves that are unhelpful and negative. It gives other people in your world far too much power over you and leads to making you quite miserable. For example you may share an idea with someone and their expression is not as enthusiastic as you hoped it would be. You may think to yourself I am dumb. Whereas they may be thinking that oyster I had last night is affecting me. It is easy to tell yourself things like They think I m fat, or not cool which can lead to a very distorted view of yourself often people are not thinking that of you at all., or Some people aren t just locked into what others think about them. They try to discover who they are. They explore their own tastes. They develop their own values and interests. They think, this is who I am. They are also the ones who are the most likely to make the wonderful discovery that you can change and develop and grow. They search themselves, test themselves, explore their ability. I know what I am like now. But I can develop and grow. For the Christian there is the wonderful discovery that their true identity is not what the world tells them; it isn t what they see in the bathroom mirror, their true identity isn t even what they discover when they look into themselves. Their true identity is in Christ. God is truth, according to scripture. Some of us have not yet come to terms with the untruths we are daily communicating to ourselves. In Galatians 4 we read Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage. You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives The trust is we are God s own children. With God s help we can change the attitude we have about ourselves. It may take some effort and practice, but we can change the impression we have or ourselves. We can get a new CV, a new report card. As a little girl I was quite gregarious and a little bit of a show off. Then I fell into what Dr Dobson calls the chasm of inferiority of adolescence and became an acute blusher and got quite shy and not exactly engaged at school. Over time I became intensely sensitive to what I imagined others were

3 feeding back to me about myself. Or what I thought they were feedback back to me. I was telling myself was a plain jane and a bit thick. Later on, after encouragement by John my husband to go to University, I found I enjoyed studying and got good grades when I put the work in. Over time I realized I did not have to stay shy. I had to revisit my view of myself. My identity, the way I saw myself, changed as my relationship with God grew. And from time to time, as I said at the start, I need to keep reviewing this. And more importantly, you don t have to write this new identity yourself, God writes the new description for you. If you wrote it yourself you might not write the truth. But God, who knows the absolute truth about you, wants you to share the attitude that HE has about you. How sad would it be to never reach all that you could become? We can easily put limits on our identity and often God has a far bigger picture. Over the years, too many times I have put limits on my identity and my value to God. Matt 10:29-31 What is the price of a pet canary? Some loose change, right? And God cares what happens to it even more than you do. He pays even greater attention to you, down to the last detail even numbering the hairs on your head! So don t be intimidated by all this bully talk. You re worth more than a million canaries. This scripture is telling us that God cares about us. We matter to him. Right down to the minute details of our lives, God is vitally interested and involved. This strongly hints at your value to him. You are never lost in his inventory. Because God places such value on us, we need never fear personal threats or difficult trials. They will come. However these can t dislodge God s love and Spirit from within us. That s the level of intimacy God s involved in with us. And if he has done that, then he knows about that situation at work. He knows and cares about that pain that you worry about. He knows about your finances and he takes them seriously. He knows about that raw patch in your relationship with your spouse that doesn t seem to be getting better. He knows the heaviness in your heart about your children. You are known, and loved intimately by the greatest heart in the universe. So how are you doing plugging into that? Do you, make time for loving connection with him? Just stopping regularly and being in his presence. Even though God obviously enjoys occasionally putting together beautiful people, it does not affect his evaluation of their worth. When God was choosing a new King or Israel. King Saul had been big and powerful, and the prophet Samuel expected God to pick someone similar to replace him. But God instead rejected several tall

4 powerful men in favor of young David. Our true worth has got nothing to do with our status, our brains, or our achievements. God certainly doesn t rate us by our achievements and we are urged not to judge each other by their wealth or social status, and so we shouldn t judge ourselves that way either. Our true value is that we are considered valuable by God. And the reason he considers us valuable, is that he made us, he chose us, and love us simply because he wants to love us. The next time you question your worth as a person or feel down about yourself, remember that God considers you to be highly valuable. Of course, this is the truth, but how do you dislodge those old feelings about yourself? Your value comes from being loved by God, so allow God to love you. Connect with him regularly. Get to really know him. If you really want to explore how to do this more I have just finished a book called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero which I highly recommend. You can get the book from Book Depository or just by the audio version like I have and listen to it in your car. He unpacks well the concept of making time for loving union with God. It won t happen by accident just like any relationship we have we need to invest time and energy into it. We make a deliberate decision to make the time. Believe you can be liberated from this distorted way of thinking. In Luke 7:36-50 Jesus is anointed by a sinful woman. When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee s house and reclined at the table. 37 A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. 38 As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. 39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is that she is a sinner. Jesus forgave her and told her to go in peace. God accepts us where we are and he invites us to have a new relationship with him. Others may put you in a box. Sometimes the box is a correct one as it probably was with this woman. However she chose to change and grow. She reached out to Jesus and received forgiveness. Imagine what that must have taken the courage that it must have taken to do what she did amidst a hostile group judging her, labelling her rejecting her. But she was brave or desperate enough to want to change and she found her true identity in Christ. Troubles bring gratefulness when you are released from them. And she found freedom and moved on forgiven and able to live a different life. And with forgiveness tell her self another story about herself I suspect.. Accept our

5 true value is that we are considered valuable by God. And the reason he considers us valuable, is that he made us, he chose us, and loves simply because he wants to love us. Really understanding and accepting our true identity in Christ is very liberating. God is obviously FOR us if God is for us who can oppose us? Not even our own negative beliefs or lies about ourselves. God always listens but I reckon he doesn t like listening to the negative talk we use about ourselves. I reckon when he hears us say things like I m useless or I m rubbish he goes Hmmm? Sorry I m not hearing you. This is true for EQUIP. People used to say we were too small, too religious, and too big for our boots etc. If we believed what others said about us, we would still just be five people. But today we have 70 staff and revenue of $4 million and it is pretty good for something that grew out of a suburban church. Why? Because over the years we have believed what we think God said about us which we could put our faith into action and serve people with mental health issues in His name. And on that subject, what you tell yourself (self-talk) is such an important thing in mental health. Regular messages we give ourselves regarding low self-worth can tip you off into depression or anxiety. We need to Change our mirrors. Listen to what loving people say about you. Listen to feedback, even listen to criticism but before you believe it, run it up against what God says about you. Check out for yourself what God says about you. Listen to him. If you can t hear him, tell yourself what you are pretty sure God would say about you because it lines up with the Bible. Matthew 9:29 Become what you believe Don t let anyone tell you that what you think or tell yourself is not important. Change a man s beliefs and you will change his feelings and behavior. You can change your life by what you tell yourself. You don t have to tell yourself lies like I m a movie star you just have to tell yourself the truth from the undistorted clear mirror of God.. If we do not find worth in what we are and what we have now, we will tell ourselves we are less important than others or we have less than others. What we tell ourselves about people, ourselves, experiences and life in general, God, the future all impact us those words we tell ourselves are powerful. I read recently that when you have a big challenge rather than tell yourself this is scary, say instead this is exciting. So this week I had to lead a high level Board meeting and I was finding it daunting. So I tried it this little exercise and it actually worked I still had some adrenaline and nerves pumping through but my mood went from fear to excitement it wasn t as scary. When you catch yourself using wonky thinking, challenge it. Ask God for his view. If you could like to pursue this idea of challenging the self-talk which forms your distorted identity I

6 would suggest you get yourself a copy of the book Telling Yourself the Truth by William Backus and Marie Chapian. Getting back to Dad he had a long life never knowing his real father but he did develop a strong identity in his love with God he didn t know who his earthly father was but he perfectly content knowing who he really was the son of the living God. How brave are you feeling? I want to issue a challenge. Shortly we are going to have AJ come and sing for us. And in that song are the words you surround me with a song, of deliverance from my enemies, till all my fears are gone. Sometimes our enemies are our own distorted beliefs about our distorted identity. It goes on to say im no longer a salve to fear I am a child of God. Are you brave enough to really lean into God and ask him Lord who am I really? Lord show me where I may have got a distorted self-image and not embraced who you have designed me to be. Choosing to change, choosing to replace well entrenched beliefs about yourself is scary but as you list to the song be encouraged that our Loving God can drown you fears in perfect love. How neat is that? We do not have to live in fear or ourselves or our situations. The reality for my Dad was that he was adopted into God s family. You are chosen to be in that family too. Listen, chose to grow, and chose to become all that God has made you to be. Look I am still trying to get the hang of who I really am if you see me slipping from my true identity in God let me know and encourage me back to a good place why don t we do that for each other?

FAITH; Hebrews 10-11

FAITH FAITH; Hebrews 10-11 It s supernatural Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Heb 11:1 Faith and Forgiveness or Guess Who s Coming to Dinner Luke 7 Jesus