Participants:
Series Code: RQRA
Program Code: RQRA000014A
|
00:01 I don't understand.
00:04 Why did this have to happen to me? 00:08 I feel like I just can't make sense of things. 00:12 I need answers. 00:15 Where is God? 00:23 Hello and welcome to Raw Questions 00:25 Relevant Answers, 00:26 an opportunity for us to just have an open discourse 00:28 about real issues 00:30 that we wrestle with, that young people wrestle with. 00:32 And the today's topic 00:34 is actually the topic of identity, 00:36 how to understand our true identity 00:39 and issues of identity. 00:41 I have two awesome co-hosts with me today, 00:43 Michelle Doucoumes and Mark Paden. 00:45 And I'm just going to go ahead 00:46 and dive right into our questions here. 00:48 Our first question 00:49 is from a 21-year-old female 00:51 from Tennessee who asked this. 00:53 She says, "How do I stop absolutely hating myself?" 00:57 Heavy. 00:59 "How do I stop hating myself?" 01:01 What do you think? 01:03 I think the first thing is to recognize 01:05 that God doesn't hate us. 01:07 You know, how can we really 01:10 hate something that God loves? 01:11 If God is perfect, and His love is perfect, 01:16 and He loves us, then wouldn't that... 01:18 Somehow we messed up to hate ourselves. 01:21 I think that's the first thing that I could say to that. 01:24 Scripture has some beautiful portrayals 01:26 of God and us. 01:28 Zephaniah 3:17, it says 01:30 that He rejoices over us with singing. 01:34 Psalms 139 talks about 01:37 how He formed art in most parts, our beings, 01:40 in our mothers' womb are fearfully 01:42 and wonderfully made. 01:44 And that's easy to forget. 01:46 I know it was for me. 01:47 I may not have been quite saying, "I hate myself," 01:51 but there was a time in my life 01:53 where I really did believe that, 01:55 you know, God loved me, I thought, because God has to. 02:00 Like, you kind of maybe have to love 02:02 that crazy uncle or those family members, 02:04 you're supposed to. 02:06 But I didn't really believe that God liked me, 02:10 and that was actually a journey to go on 02:13 is to look at Scripture 02:16 and see that in Scripture, 02:17 the view of God is a God 02:19 who not only likes us out of obligation 02:22 but truly chooses me 02:25 and values me just the way He made me. 02:28 You know, sometimes the reason why we hate ourselves 02:31 is because we're not doing the things 02:32 we ought to do or wish that we would do. 02:34 True. 02:35 And so our hatred towards ourselves 02:37 is sometimes something that we believe 02:38 that God Himself must have 02:39 because we don't perform well enough. 02:42 And I think of Romans 5:8 where it says that, 02:44 "God demonstrates His own love toward us." 02:46 And I love this because many of us, 02:49 sometimes we would never say it this way, 02:51 but we kind of envision 02:52 that Jesus had to come to convince 02:54 the Father to love us, 02:55 so we can kind of roll with Jesus, 02:57 but the Father, we're just not sure about. 02:58 And a lot of times, 03:00 we project our unbelief in ourselves upon God, 03:03 that He looks at me in the way that I look at me, 03:05 that I'm a mess, I can't get anything right. 03:08 But in this situation, it literally says that, 03:09 "God demonstrates His own love towards us, 03:11 in that while we were still sinners, 03:14 Christ died for us." 03:16 Even when we were failing, 03:17 even when we weren't getting things right, 03:19 God showed His own love for us by sending Jesus. 03:23 So I think that's helpful, 03:25 that God's love for us is not dependent 03:26 upon our performance. 03:28 Another statement, a singer-songwriter, 03:29 I remember he was telling 03:31 some friends of his about a battle he has, 03:33 where he just hears voices at times that, 03:34 "You're a loser, no one likes you," 03:36 Right before he'll go out for a concert, 03:38 that, you know, "You're wasting your time, 03:40 you did that thing 20 years ago, 03:41 you shouldn't be up here." 03:43 And one of his friends said, "Andrew, 03:46 self-hatred is just another form of self-worship." 03:49 Whoa. 03:50 And his response was, "We're not friends anymore." 03:54 And then everyone laughed. He said he was just kidding. 03:55 But it is one of those things that there's a sense of truth 03:58 to this that we would rather cherish 04:00 our own view of our self over what God's view of us is. 04:03 And we need to be careful with that 04:05 because when I say that I hate me, 04:07 what I'm really saying is, "I hate the one that God loves. 04:11 I hate the one that Jesus died for." 04:13 And if they don't hate you, 04:15 then we are cherishing a lie 04:17 as opposed to what God believes about us. 04:19 What I love is that the actions of Jesus 04:22 speak louder than the lies of the devil. 04:24 Revelation 12 says, 04:25 "There's an accuser of the brethren." 04:27 Those thoughts come from Satan, not from God, 04:29 and God wanted to change our mind 04:31 on that thing. 04:32 We've got three more questions. 04:33 You want to make that out real quickly? 04:35 You know, another big thing too 04:36 is to realize why sometimes we have these thoughts. 04:38 And a lot of it is is we don't measure up 04:40 to what society says that we should be. 04:43 We don't think that we're beautiful enough, 04:44 we don't think that we're smart enough, 04:46 we don't think that we're this enough, 04:48 fill in the blank. 04:50 The big thing... 04:51 The big beautiful truth about the gospel 04:53 is that we don't have value because of our appearance, 04:56 because of our brains, because of anything like that, 04:59 but we are 05:00 intrinsically valuable to Christ. 05:02 And there's this beautiful verse in Isaiah 62 05:05 that He says that, 05:06 "We are a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord 05:08 and a royal diadem in the hand of our God." 05:11 We're so valuable to God, 05:13 and we don't have to base our value 05:14 on those things. 05:15 One more thought, I'm cutting off myself. 05:18 In Isaiah 53, it says that, 05:19 "He shall see the travail of His soul, 05:21 the labor of His soul, and be satisfied." 05:23 And I love this 05:25 because what Jesus went through is horrible. 05:27 Just read Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 05:30 and Matthew 26 and 27. 05:31 Just read those four chapters in the Bible, 05:34 and you'll get a glimpse of how horribly 05:37 Jesus had to suffer emotionally, psychologically, 05:41 spiritually, and physically. 05:43 And the amazing thing about this verse 05:44 is that knowing what He would have to go through, 05:46 Jesus was satisfied. 05:47 While He's going through it, 05:49 suffering for you to place a value on you, 05:52 He's satisfied. 05:53 Looking back on what He suffered, 05:55 He's satisfied. 05:56 Why? 05:57 Because, "By His knowledge, 05:59 My righteous Servant shall justify 06:00 many, and He shall bear their iniquities." 06:01 He knew this is the only way you could be saved, 06:03 and he's okay with paying that price 06:05 because He thinks you're worth it. 06:06 Second question, from a male in Illinois. 06:10 "What is the best way to understand how God sees me 06:13 compared to how I or others do?" 06:15 We've actually kind of addressed 06:16 this to some degree, 06:17 but do you want to add any more thoughts to that? 06:19 I mean, we talked about Scripture, 06:22 that's the big thing. 06:24 What God thinks of us is so alive in His Word, 06:29 and a lot of it happens to be what we focus on I found. 06:32 Yeah. 06:33 If I'm focusing a lot 06:35 on what other people are saying and doing, 06:37 that's where my worse going to come from, 06:39 and what other people are saying 06:41 is so much louder in our world 06:43 than what God's Word is saying. 06:45 What the media portrays as beautiful or not, 06:48 whether I feel successful or not in other people's eyes. 06:51 That's what's all around me. 06:53 And the hard thing is to spend more time in God's Word 06:58 so that those become the realities 07:00 that are even truer and are even more in my mind 07:03 than what I see around me. 07:05 You know, a big principle that you're bringing out there 07:07 is this idea that by beholding, we become changed. 07:09 Whatever we consistently look at, 07:11 that is what we become. 07:13 You know, another really practical tip on this 07:16 is that when we have those thoughts that are, 07:19 you know, bugging us, those things 07:21 that are getting to us, 07:23 we need to label those as misbelieves, 07:25 we need to label those as wrong and change those thoughts 07:30 into what the Bible has to say about us, 07:32 change those thoughts into how God views us. 07:35 So you're saying basically like for each of those lies 07:39 find the scriptures that can back that. 07:41 Yeah. Yeah. 07:42 They're going to put flesh on bones to that. 07:43 Write down the things 07:45 that you're believing about yourself right now, 07:46 and then search to see 07:48 what the Word of God says about you right now 07:49 and plaster that thing on your wall, 07:51 put it on your dashboard, 07:53 put it in your locker at school, 07:54 put it as the screensaver on your phone, 07:57 on the wallpaper of your desktop, 07:58 like find ways to keep reminding yourself 08:00 of what God believes about you. 08:03 Third question here. 08:04 This is from a 22-year-old male in Malaysia. 08:07 "What's the difference between 08:08 self-worth and pride/self-worship?" 08:12 It kind of addresses a little bit with the idea 08:13 of self-hatred as a form of self worship, 08:16 but what's the difference between 08:17 having a healthy view of yourself 08:19 and an unhealthy positive view of yourself 08:21 that you're just awesome, right? 08:23 Like I'm the coolest thing since sliced bread 08:25 as opposed to I'm not a mess in the eyes of God. 08:28 How do we draw that line of distinction? 08:29 You know I think one big thing 08:31 is recognizing where each one comes from. 08:34 Pride and self-worship 08:36 comes from all the things that we can do, 08:39 and we just think that we're great and all that stuff, 08:42 but self-worth comes from a conscious 08:44 knowing that we are doing right. 08:47 You know, that's how Christ found his self-worth. 08:50 I mean, He was the King of the universe, 08:52 yet He grew up in a very low position in society. 08:55 And yet, He was perfectly happy and perfectly comfortable 08:58 with who He was 09:00 because He knew that He was doing the will of God. 09:01 And I think a lot of times, our lack of self-worth 09:05 becomes either from the fact 09:07 that we know we aren't doing God's will 09:09 or we're trying too hard to live up to standards 09:11 that are unreasonable. 09:12 So if we get rid of those things, 09:15 do the will of God and not try to live up 09:18 to societal standard of what we should be, 09:21 then we can get rid of a lot 09:23 of that pride and self-worship that is fostered 09:25 when we finally feel beautiful enough 09:27 or finally feel smart enough 09:29 or finally feel this or that enough. 09:30 And I think we have a misconception 09:32 about being confident. 09:35 And sometimes we think, "Well, if I'm confident in who I am, 09:38 I must be proud." 09:40 But it's interesting, 09:41 there are people in Scripture like Moses 09:43 that Scripture describes as the meekest 09:45 or the humblest of men, 09:47 yet you see him leading God's people 09:50 and going forward in faith, and why is that? 09:53 Well, Moses knew that the strength was not in him, 09:57 it was in God. 09:58 He learned that early on. 09:59 First, when he wanted to deliver God's people, 10:01 he slew the Egyptian, made a mess, 10:03 had to go to the wilderness for 40 years, 10:05 and when he came out, 10:06 he didn't trust himself, he trusted God. 10:09 But that trust gave him a confidence 10:11 to go forward boldly. 10:13 And that's the beauty that I see 10:15 in Biblical self-worth. 10:16 It gives us a grounding 10:18 in who we are in God that's not shaken 10:19 because it's not dependent on our own capabilities 10:24 and our own attributes. 10:26 Those things are always going to be coming and going. 10:30 They're never stable. 10:32 In fact, that is the pride that leads to insecurity. 10:35 It's weird how they link because it's changeable. 10:40 But what Moses experienced, 10:41 what others in Scripture experienced 10:43 is a deeper sense of self-worth 10:45 that can lead to a godly confidence. 10:48 It's beautiful. 10:49 You know, I think Satan is the chiefest 10:51 in the area of identity theft. 10:53 We talk about the day when someone steals 10:55 your credit card information 10:56 or someone steals your social security number, 10:58 but what he's really seeking to steal, 11:00 to kill, and to destroy is your understanding 11:02 of who you truly are in Christ, right? 11:04 John 10:10, 11:05 "The enemy comes to steal, to kill, to destroy. 11:07 But I've come that you may have life 11:09 and have it more abundantly." 11:10 I think the amazing thing is a lot of this anxiety 11:13 and uneasiness in our experience, 11:14 in our sense of our own worth is based largely 11:17 because we're working so hard to prove 11:19 that we're worth something, 11:21 that we deserve to receive some sense of affirmation. 11:24 But what God is calling is to is rest. 11:27 He says, "Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden, 11:30 and I will give you rest." 11:32 "I'll give you rest in a true and secure identity 11:35 that you don't have to work for, it's just yours." 11:37 And so if you find yourself just kind of running through 11:39 the hustle and bustle, "I got to look this way, 11:41 I got to eat this way, 11:42 I got to present myself this way. 11:44 I can't look weak in the work setting." 11:46 You can rest at the feet of Jesus today 11:49 and understand your true worth in Him. 11:52 One more, is it... 11:54 Let's see here, last question from a 29-year-old male 11:58 in Pennsylvania. 12:00 "How do I get over worrying about what others think of me?" 12:03 I think we've already kind of addressed 12:04 this to some degree, 12:05 but how do I come to a point where it's not so important 12:08 what others think, 12:10 and I can just rest of what God thinks of me? 12:12 You know, there is a difference 12:14 between caring what people think 12:15 because we care about them, 12:17 and we want to treat them the right way 12:20 versus caring what people think 12:22 because that's going to dictate my own self-worth and value. 12:26 And that's been hard for me to separate 12:27 because sometimes I have felt like, 12:29 "Well, I care about what they think 12:31 because I want to be a good person. 12:32 I want to do the right thing." 12:33 But really, underneath it, 12:35 I care because I want them to like me 12:38 because that's what makes me feel good. 12:41 And that's been something 12:42 that I bring to the Lord and say, 12:44 "Lord, help me to care 12:46 not because I need that for my self-worth, 12:48 You give me self-worth. 12:50 Help me to care most 12:51 that I'm just treating this person 12:53 as You would have me treat them." 12:54 You know, one other practical thing 12:56 is living the narrative of the scriptures. 13:00 If we are standing for the truth, 13:04 that is often times puts us 13:07 in the not so favorable light with people. 13:08 True. 13:10 And the more we have that experience, 13:11 as counterproductive as it may seem, 13:13 it's actually some of the best thing 13:14 because then it takes us through this experience 13:17 where we cease to care about what people think 13:21 and we care more about what God thinks. 13:23 And the more we invest in doing God's will, 13:26 I think the more that'll happen. 13:29 You know, it reminds me the stories of like Joseph 13:31 or Daniel or other... 13:33 These, you know, crazy awesome people 13:35 in Scripture who chose to stand for the right 13:37 because it was right come what may. 13:39 There's that famous line in Daniel 3 when Shadrach, 13:41 Meshach, and Abednego say, 13:43 "Look, our God is totally capable of delivering us, 13:46 but even if He doesn't, 13:47 I'm not going to bow down 13:49 because I know my identity in Christ well enough to know 13:52 that He's not going to leave me. 13:53 He's not going to forsake me. 13:54 And even if I have to suffer here and now, 13:56 I know what awaits me on the other end." 13:58 And I think that's very helpful for us to realize 14:00 that boldness can be ours. 14:02 So again, thank you for joining us 14:04 on Raw Questions Relevant Answers, 14:06 a program dealing with real hard issues. 14:08 You can submit your questions to RQRA3ABN on Facebook, 14:12 and we'll see you next time. |
Revised 2018-08-29