Through the Eyes of God

Listen to Sunday's sermon. Here are the notes:

As people, here are some of the ways we arrive at our self-worth…

• How we perceive others see us
• On things other people may have said about us in the past
• On our accomplishments
• On feelings of guilt and shame from our past
• On our physical attractiveness or perceived unattractiveness
• On setting unrealistic standards for ourselves and then considering ourselves failures when we can’t reach those standards

As we begin to write the next chapter in our lives—it is absolutely essential to see ourselves not as

• Worthless
• Broken
• Average
• Unhealthy

Instead…as we begin to write the next chapter in our lives—we have an opportunity to see ourselves as God see us…

• Loved
• Chosen
• Recovering
• Full of potential
• Unique

Before we look at how God sees us—we are going to look at how the world may see us and how we may see ourselves

How Others See Us

Many of us believe the following is true:

I must be loved or approved by virtually every significant other person in my life

If we are living to make sure that others love us, we give them permission to evaluate us based what we do, and we give others the power to determine our self-worth.

2 Samuel 6:16-22

But as the Ark of the Lord entered the City of David, Michal, the daughter of Saul, looked down from her window. When she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she was filled with contempt for him.

They brought the Ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the special tent David had prepared for it. And David sacrificed burnt offerings and peace offerings to the Lord. When he had finished his sacrifices, David blessed the people in the name of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. Then he gave to every Israelite man and woman in the crowd a loaf of bread, a cake of dates, and a cake of raisins. Then all the people returned to their homes.

When David returned home to bless his own family, Michal, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet him. She said in disgust, “How distinguished the king of Israel looked today, shamelessly exposing himself to the servant girls like any vulgar person might do!”

Have you ever been there before?

• Great idea and your parents or your boss or your spouse laughs
• You have something big to celebrate and nobody besides you really seems to care.
• Somebody ignores or says bad things about you because you were being you?

David was there.

David retorted to Michal, “I was dancing before the Lord, who chose me above your father and all his family! He appointed me as the leader of Israel, the people of the Lord, so I celebrate before the Lord. Yes, and I am willing to look even more foolish than this, even to be humiliated in my own eyes! But those servant girls you mentioned will indeed think I am distinguished!”

David meant: I’m going to be me and if my me isn’t good enough for you then that is your problem and not mine.

He meant: I am not going to let your opinion of me effect my opinion of me.

The moment we begin to live to be loved and approved by virtually every person in our life is the same moment we give others permission to evaluate us based what we do, and we give others the power to determine our self-worth.

In the next chapter of our life, in addition to seeing how others see us for what it is and what it is not, we also have to look at how we see ourselves.

How We See Ourselves

I think some of us believe this:

My past history is an all-important determiner of my present behavior and because something once strongly affected my life, it should definitely continue to do so

Lamentations 5:1-8

Lord, remember what has happened to us.
See how we have been disgraced!
Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
our homes to foreigners.
We are orphaned and fatherless.
Our mothers are widowed.
We have to pay for water to drink,
and even firewood is expensive.
Those who pursue us are at our heels;
we are exhausted but are given no rest.
We submitted to Egypt and Assyria
to get enough food to survive.
Our ancestors sinned, but they have died—
and we are suffering the punishment they deserved!
Slaves have now become our masters;
there is no one left to rescue us.

The writer is having a tough day. He is actually having a pretty tough life.

Anybody ever been there before?

• Your past is broken enough that he sees no hope.
• You have witnessed that you are part of a broken world.
• You compare yourselves to others and generally end up on the short end of the stick.
• You have never fully become the person you have dreamed of becoming.

So we look in the mirror and maybe see somebody who is

• Conflicted
• Unhappy
• A failure
• Self-Conscious

God didn’t leave the people of Israel as exiles and God isn’t going to leave us where we are either.

• Conflicted becomes Comforted
• Unhappy becomes Unshaken
• Failure becomes Future
• Self-Conscious becomes Self-Loving

Think about these things…

• I CAN is 100 times more important than IQ
• To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are.
• Why compare yourself with others? No one in the entire world can do a better job of being you than you.
• You must love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and fully being what you are, your simple presence can make others happy.
• Whether or not you believe in God, God believes in you.

For better or worse—just as we see ourselves as somebody, God sees us as somebody as well.

How God Sees Us

1 Peter 2:9

But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.

• Loved
• Accepted
• Forgiven
• Chosen
• Claimed

In the next chapter, we must not base who we are and who we are not based on what others think and say or even on what we believe about ourselves. In the next chapter we are going to believe about us what God believes about us.