The Healing Power of Love
12/12/2010 - The Dangers of a Low Self-Esteem
When I was a long distance swimmer in college at Drexel University I had a very successful freshman year. In fact, I didn't lose a race during the entire dual meet season, set all kinds of records, and ended up winning the conference championship in the 1,650 yard freestyle event. That year I exceeded everybody's expectations, even my own. Nobody thought I would do as well as I did. In fact, I swam faster than all the goals I had set for myself. I had a great season.
My sophomore year started out the same way. I picked up right where I left off and continued to improve and win in dual meet competition and was really looking forward to our conference championships in February. But this time I was the guy everybody wanted to beat. I had the bull's eye on my back.
And during the week of the championship meet I came down with the flu and lost most of my strength and all of my races. I swam in the meet, but I didn't win any gold medals. I didn't set any records. In fact, I got beat in the 1,650, the event I had won the year before, by a kid from La Salle that I had beaten earlier in the season and that just ticked me off. In fact, in the paper the next day there was a big picture of him in the sports section standing in the water after the race with his arms held high!
And after that season was over I went through a period of self-doubt and started to lose my confidence. I went from a guy who was driven to win to a guy who was driven not to lose. And that's a lousy way to compete. And I struggled with that feeling through most of my junior year.
And then someone recommended that I read a book called Psycho-Cybernetics written by a man named Dr. Maxwell Maltz. I thought the title was a little weird and it didn't excite me at all. But I soon discovered that it was a best-selling self-help book at the time and Dr. Maltz was a well-known motivational speaker who did a lot of work with professional athletes.
And looking back on it now, reading his book was probably my first exposure to the concept of self-image and the importance of seeing ourselves in a positive way. At that time the part that helped me most was his technique called visualization, that's where you mentally envision yourself being successful at whatever you're attempting to do.
And for me, as a swimmer at the time, it meant mentally swimming the entire race in my head before I even stepped up on the starting block, visualizing the perfect start and entry into the water, the perfect stroke, the perfect turns, the right pace, the strong finish and final touch, even visualizing the feeling of winning and looking up at the clock and seeing that I had done my best time.
Today successful athletes do that routinely in all sports because we tend to perform according the vision that we have of ourselves. If we don't think we're going to win or perform well we probably won't. But, on the other hand, if we see ourselves winning or doing well, often we will.
Dr. Maxwell Maltz was not always a motivational speaker. In fact, he was not even a psychologist. He was a famous plastic surgeon who first wrote a best-selling book called New Faces—New Futures. It was a collection of case histories of people for whom facial plastic surgery had opened the door to a whole new way of life. Because they looked better on the outside they started to feel better about themselves on the inside.
But over the years, Maltz noticed that that didn't happen to everybody. In fact, he says that he learned more from his failures than from his successes. He began to see patient after patient, who even after facial plastic surgery, didn't change. Even with beautiful faces they still felt ugly.
Some would look in the mirror after getting their new face and get angry with Dr. Maltz. "I look the same as I did before," they'd say, "You didn't change a thing," even though their friends and family members could hardly recognize them. Dr. Maltz would even show them before and after pictures and they'd still say, "My nose is still too big. Or my ears still stick out. You didn't help me at all!"
And it was those cases that drove him to shift his focus from helping people change on the outside to helping people change on the inside. He concluded that every person has a face on the inside as well as on the outside. And if the face on the inside is scarred and disfigured, damaged and distorted, it doesn't matter how beautiful the face is on the outside. We're not going to see ourselves accurately and that can keep us from fulfilling the greatest commandment.
This morning we continue our series called The Healing Power of Love and I want to shift our focus from our relationships with others to our relationship with ourselves. Remember this whole series is about how we can become better lovers of God and lovers of one another.
Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourself. That's the bottom line. That's what we were all created for, to reflect the love that God has for us back to him and to share it with one another. But if we're not happy with ourselves or at peace with ourselves or if we hate ourselves we're going to have a very difficult time loving God and others. We need to have an accurate picture of who we are in God's eyes.
The night before Jesus died he did an amazing thing for his disciples. It's described in John 13. If you have a Bible turn with me to John 13:1-5 ,It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus.3Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
And you could have heard a pin drop! What Jesus was doing that night was assuming the role of common house slave who would typically wash the feet of guests when they entered the home. But there was no house servant in the upper room that night where Jesus and his friends were celebrating the Passover. And none of the twelve disciples volunteered for foot washing duty and so they were all reclining at the table with dirty, smelly feet arguing about which one was the greatest.
So Jesus gets up. Takes off his outer robe. Strips down like a common house slave. Wraps a towel around his waist. Pours water in a basin. Get's down on his hands and knees. And begins to wash twelve sets of dirty, smelly feet. He's loving his friends to the end, even when they're most unlovable.
And Jesus can do that because he has an accurate picture of himself. He knows who he is. He knows where he came from and he knows where he's going. He's secure in himself. I think that's the point of verse 3,Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God.
It is so much easier to love and serve others when we have an accurate picture of ourselves, when we know who we are, where we came from, and where we're headed because then we're not driven by the need for constant affirmation and appreciation and accolades. But if we don't know who we are in God's eyes or where we came from or where we're headed, it's going to be difficult to put water in the basin and get down on our hands and knees and wash other people's dirty feet.
In his bookHealing for Damaged Emotions, David Seamands writes, "Satan's greatest psychological weapon is a gut-level feeling of inferiority, inadequacy, and low self-worth. This feeling shackles many Christians, in spite of wonderful spiritual experiences, in spite of their faith and knowledge of God's Word. Instead of viewing themselves as beloved sons and daughters of God, they're tied up in knots, bound by a terrible feeling of inferiority, and chained to a deep sense of worthlessness."
I think he's absolutely right. If we don't see ourselves as God sees us, created in his image, beloved sons and daughters for whom Jesus died, children of the King, empowered by the Holy Spirit, we're going to struggle our whole life with a warped view of self that will cause a nagging sense of failure in our lives.
And let's be honest, we all struggle with self-esteem issues to one degree or another. I know I do. And I believe there's not a one of us who is perfectly secure. That's part of the sin disease. That's the crack in the mirror. I think that's why God loves to describe us as sheep because we're all so skittish and afraid. We all feel a sense of insecurity to some extent which just fuels our need to be in control.
Seamands goes on to give four dangers of a low self-esteem and why it can be so damaging to our lives. And I want to share them with you today.
First, low self-esteem can paralyze our potential. Jesus told a story about a man who was immobilized by fear and feelings of inadequacy. It's called the Parable of the Talents or the Parable of the Bags of Gold because a talent was a standard of measurement for gold in Jesus' day. It was equal to 20 years of wages for an average worker. It was a lot of money.
The story is found in Matthew 25 and the man who was given one talent of gold by his master was so afraid of failure that he didn't invest it at all. Instead, he buried his bag of gold in the ground and tried to play it safe.
In the story, the talent of gold can be viewed as a metaphor for life, something very precious and valuable that we all have. But because the man was so frozen by fear -- fear of his master, fear of failure, fear of comparison to the other servants in the story, fear of taking a risk, his life became a frozen asset. He did what a lot of people do who don't have an accurate view of themselves. He did nothing.
And Jesus has some pretty harsh words for this servant in Matthew 25:26-30 , His master replied, "You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. 28Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. 29For those who have will be given more, and they will have an abundance. As for those who do not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 30And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Ouch! Strong words from Jesus. And I believe that we'll all be held accountable for how we invest our lives for the master and a low view of self can paralyze our potential to maximize the talents that God has given each one of us. And the evil one loves it!
Second, low self-esteem can destroy our dreams. We can't live in our dreams, we can't live on our dreams, but we do live by our dreams and by the hopes that we have. In fact, once we stop hoping and dreaming for ourselves or for our children or grandchildren we start to die inside. And a low view of self can rob us of those hopes and dreams.
There's a classic story in the Old Testament that illustrates this one. It's found in Numbers 13 & 14. God had a dream for his people. His dream was to bring them out of bondage in Egypt and into the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land that they would possess and call their own. It was a bold, beautiful dream.
And so when God brought his people to the edge of the Promised Land he commanded Moses to send in a team of spies, the Canaan Information Agency, the original CIA! Moses sent in twelve men, the cream of the crop, the best and the brightest of each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
And after 40 days they returned to Moses with a sampling of grapes and pomegranates and figs, bigger and sweeter and juicier than they had ever tasted in their lives. And they all agreed that it was an awesome land, but only two of the twelve believed they could take it. They were Joshua and Caleb. The other ten didn't believe they could do it. They were afraid.
Why? Because instead of looking to God and his power they looked at themselves and said in Numbers 13:28, 33,The people who live there are powerful and the cities are fortified and very large .... And we seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.
They had a grasshopper mentality. That's how they saw themselves. And because of that God's dream was derailed for the next 40 years as the nation wandered in the wilderness until that whole generation died off except Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who had faith. They eventually entered and received their inheritance.
And I think there's a lesson here for us. How we view ourselves can keep us from fulfilling the dreams that God has for our lives. If we view ourselves as grasshoppers and not as beloved children of God we may never reach our full potential as Christ followers.
William Carey, the first great missionary to India once said, "Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God." But that's hard to do if we don't think much of ourselves. And our lack of faith is often fed by a grasshopper complex.
Low self-esteem can paralyze our potential. Low self-esteem can destroy our dreams. Third, low self-esteem can ruin our relationships.
First and foremost it can ruin our relationship with God. If we feel worthless it's easy to think that God must feel the same way about us. Why wouldn't he, right? He could have made me different. He could have made me better. But he didn't. And once we become critical of the design, it's not long before we become critical of the Designer. And that attitude will make it very difficult for us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. A low view of self can ruin our relationship with God.
A low of view of self can ruin our relationships with other people. It can cause us to retreat from people and wall up inside ourselves. It can prompt us to be overly self-absorbed and self-aware so we have a difficult time loving and serving others.
The most difficult people to get along with are often those who don't like themselves, who aren't comfortable in their own skin. And let's face it that can be all us from time to time. But if we're that way all the time, we're going to struggle in our relational world. Because when we don't like ourselves it's very hard to like others.
Remember Jesus said," Love your neighbor as yourself."
If we're not content with ourselves and who we are, relationships will be tough because we'll put way too much pressure on other people to make us feel adequate and secure. We'll put pressure on our spouses, on our kids, on our friends. And that's not fair. Sooner or later we'll be disappointed because everyone will fail us if we're looking to them to make us feel better about ourselves.
Low self-esteem can paralyze our potential. Low self-esteem can destroy our dreams. Low self-esteem can ruin our relationships. Finally, low self-esteem can sabotage our service for Christ.
In his book Seamands believes that a low of view self is the number one reason why many believers refuse to serve in the body of Christ. They're afraid to fail and so they sit on the sidelines and stay out of the game. They watch others do all the work because they think they're not good enough. Yet the Scriptures are filled with people that God used in incredible ways who didn't think they were good enough, but they served him anyway.
Maxwell Maltz once said, "Living with a low view of self is like driving through life with the emergency brake on." It just drags us down and paralyzes our potential and destroys our dreams. It ruins our relationships and sabotages our service for Christ. And after the holidays when we resume this series we're going to talk about how God wants to heal our damaged view of self and help us live life knowing the truth about who we are and where we came from and where we're going like Jesus did in John 13.
Awhile back I read a piece called "Can God Use Me?" It goes like this .... "Can God use me? You might think there are a lot of reasons why God wouldn't want to. But don't worry ... Moses stuttered. David's armor didn't fit. John Mark was rejected by Paul. Hosea's wife was a prostitute. Amos' only training was pruning fig-trees. Solomon was too rich. Abraham was too old. David was too young. Timothy had ulcers. Peter was afraid of death. Lazarus was dead. John was self-righteous. Naomi was a widow. Paul was a murderer. So was Moses. Jonah ran from God. Miriam was a gossip. Gideon and Thomas both doubted. Jeremiah was depressed and suicidal. Elijah was burned out. John the Baptist was a loudmouth. Martha was a worry-wart. Mary was lazy. Samson had long hair. Noah got drunk. Did I mention that Moses had a temper? So did Peter and Paul and lots of others.
"God doesn't require a job interview. He doesn't hire and fire like most bosses do, because he's more like our Dad than our boss. He doesn't look at financial gain or loss. He's not prejudiced or partial, not judging, grudging, sassy or brassy, not deaf to our cry, not blind to our need.
"Satan says, 'You're not worthy.' Jesus says, 'So what! I am.' Satan looks back and sees our mistakes. God looks back and sees a cross. He doesn't calculate what we did way back when. It's not even on the record. Sure, there are lots of reasons why God shouldn't want us. But he does in spite of all our imperfections. He'll use us in spite of who we are, where we've been, or what we look like. Can God use me? Absolutely!"