A Realistic Self-Image

Thank you, Anthony, for the children's lesson. That's very, very pertinent. All right.

Have you ever heard someone say, "I can't do anything right"? Have you ever heard anyone say that? Most of you have, right? Have you ever felt that way yourself? "I can't do anything right." I've felt that way.

Or maybe you feel like one of my former employers said, "Maybe you feel like you have the world by the tail." Anyone want to admit to feeling that way?

We're too, too polite to say that, even if we do feel that way. You know, both of those feelings are falsehoods, aren't they?

There's nobody that can't do anything right, and there's also nobody that really has the world by the tail.

Recently, I've realized that these feelings start when you're pretty young. Younger than I thought it was really possible for that to happen, and they persist throughout our whole lives.

And so in this message, I want to explore the positive results of having a realistic self-image, and that's going to be the title: A Realistic Self-Image. Well, what is self-image? The only thing I don't like about this message is I'm going to use too many self-words.

Self-image is the mental picture, generally of a kind that is quite resistant to change, that depicts not only details that are potentially available to an objective investigation by others, such as height, weight, hair color, etc., but also items that have been learned by persons about themselves, either from personal experiences or by internalizing the judgments of others.

I just want you to keep that in mind, especially the phrase "quite resistant to change." I know that was very interesting.

Now, I did a little bit of looking around on some psychology websites, and they have made it very complicated. So you have self-image, and then you have something else that's what I've said, and then you have another part that's called self-concept, and self-image is part of that, but yet this describes the way you think and your beliefs.

And then on top of all of that, you have your identity, which is, I guess, everything about you. So we're not going to talk about all of those things so much, but we may cross over into it. But I'm going to talk I'm going to consider everything that I'm talking about self-image, even if it isn't 100% how they would define it.

Susan Altman says that there's three elements of self-image, and they are the way a person perceives or thinks of himself, what a person thinks others think about them, and the way the person would like to be or their ideal self.

And I think I can say that I've experienced these three components: the way I think and the way that I think that you think about me, and then there's the way that I would really like it to be, the way that I would really like it to be. And those things are all different because the way that I think I am and the way that I think that you think I am are not what I would really like for either me to think about, me to be, or for you to think about me.

And then there's two areas of ourselves.

There's things that I can't change about myself, and there's things that maybe I can, maybe I can change. And so some of these things are, "I can't change my gender." People are trying pretty hard today, but I'm just going to say something.

Every cell in your body is un- how do you say it? It's undeletable. You can't delete that part that says, "I'm a male or a female." It doesn't matter what else you do. If you examine your genes, every one of them says what you are. So it's unchangeable. You can't change it.

Your hair color? Well, nowadays maybe you can, but you can't change it. That's what it is. You can put the eye on, cover it up. How about your eye color? You change your eye color? You can get contacts to change your eye color.

When I was in helping with children's ministry, I remember being shocked one evening when this nice Hispanic girl showed up with blue eyes.

How's that possible? You didn't have blue eyes last week.

Contacts.

And your skin color? Well, that's harder to change. Some people work at it. Michael Jackson, I think, wore makeup to make himself look white. Can you change the place that you were born?

I was born I think my birth certificate says Hyattsville, Maryland.

Nothing I can do about that. That's where it is.

And my children's birth certificates, I think they all say Sheppensburg, and there's nothing they can do about that either. That's where they were born. I was born in 1979. Can I change that about myself? Can't do it. And I can't change the place that I was born in history. That's where I am.

And I can't change who my parents are. Not really. Even if you don't have parents, living parents or parents that are with you, you can't change who they are. It's just something that's unchangeable. And I think there's a whole list more, just some things to think about, maybe some things that you can change.

You can change your weight. Takes work on the one end, and maybe it doesn't take much work to get heavier. Some people can't, I guess, but you can do it. It's a changeable part of who you are. Now, you can't change your metabolism necessarily, how likely you are to put on weight or not. Can't change that about yourself.

What about your vocal aptitude, the way your voice sounds? Can you change that? Maybe you can if your voice isn't real good, you might be able to do something to change it. You might be able to take vocal lessons and be able to learn to sing better.

Your athletic ability, some people, or just generally your strength. Can you change that? Maybe. You can influence it at least.

And I guess the thing is you can change you can't change your natural abilities, the things that just are easy for you. You can't really change them. But you can compensate for areas that you're not as good at with hard work. You can do that. So those are things that you can change.

Some of it's a lot more difficult than others, though, isn't it?

So if that's who you are, we carry this with us 24/7. We can't leave it behind, can we? We can't leave our perception and what we think your perception is of me. You can't leave it behind. It comes with you everywhere you go.

And so it affects your life. It affects the way that you view the world, and it affects the way that you think the world views you.

And I guess I'll just give you some examples of things that I've had to work through. Some of them are harder to work through than others. I've got red hair. And if you're a redhead, and there's several of you here, you're the butt of all kinds of jokes about your temper. And they joke around at the shop, "They're waiting for me to ginger snap."

Well, that doesn't seem very complimentary, even if it's partially true.

But as you get older, you face other issues of accepting who you are. Now my hair's turning something gray, white. I don't know.

And it's falling out on top of my head, and it's growing other places that I'd rather it not. But that's been hard for me to accept, honestly. I really don't look forward to being bald. But by all appearances, the day's coming, sooner, that that's going to be the way it is.

And you're going to see all the lumps on top of my head. And I'm going to have to be okay with that. I guess something else, something that's been a fairly big struggle for me is in my work. I just feel like I'm always behind. The job's supposed to take an hour. It takes an hour and 10 minutes.

And that's been something very difficult for me. You want to beat the clock, not be behind. I mean, what's wrong with you?

And I went around and around, and we'll talk about the cycle that happens to us. So that's something I've had to work with. When I was a boy, I was diagnosed with hyperactivity. Nowadays, we call it ADHD.

And it was difficult to do school. And I probably feel the effects of that probably will haunt my whole life. But why? Why do I have to be this way? Why do I have to have this problem and stuff?

So what does that do? What do you do with that? You have two choices, or maybe there's more than two, but there's really two choices. You can reject it. And so I just think about this cycle, this cycle that we go through. So it goes like this. Somebody makes a comment about you, or you make a mistake or something.

And so then you feel worthless, and that's discouraging because nobody wants to feel worthless. And then you sort of deal with that. And then the next time, it happens again. Maybe it's about the same part of you, and you're more discouraged about it.

And after a few rounds of this, you're locked into this destructive thought pattern. I can't do this right here, or whatever it is. And so then we try to compensate for that with behavior to distract from that area.

And that's why some people that are pretty insecure are the loudest people in the room because they don't want people to know that they feel insecure about whatever it is.

So that's the problem, especially with the negative self-image. Now, you can think that you're pretty good, and that also has destructive tendencies. I'm not going to talk about them as much because maybe that's because that's not my problem. I don't know. But like Anthony said, I always like to think that I can do something better than everybody else.

So you have that side too.

So what do you do with that?

And I think that so I went and looked. Well, what do psychologists recommend to deal with a self-image problem? So they have ideas that can help. Do things for other people. Focus on your strengths. Be kind to yourself.

That's good. Those are good things. But I think as Christians, we have better tools that we can use to deal with this issue. And I think that the biggest tool is that we need to learn to see ourselves the way that God sees us, not the way that other people see us, not even the way that I think I am. What does God say about me?

And in Psalm 139, verse 13, it's a very familiar chapter, he says, "For you've formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed, and in your book, they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand.

When I awake, I am still with you." And so the first thing that I think we need to realize is that God actually formed us. We're not an accident of biology. God made us individually, and he gave attention to our physical features. I have red hair because that's how God wanted me to be.

I have the other things because that was how God made me. We have flaws because we're born into a broken world. Sin broke what was perfect. That's not God's fault. And we could preach a whole nother message about that. But God hasn't made any mistakes when he designed me, when he decided that 1979 was the time that I should be born, and so forth. He didn't make any mistakes. I like many of you have probably heard Max Lucado's book, You Are Special. I really like that. But I really Pancinello went and saw the carver that made him and had a conversation with him. And when he left, I like what the carver said. Remember, Eli said, as the womack walked out the door, "You are special because I made you, and I don't make mistakes."

Do we believe that about God? He didn't make any mistakes when he made us. In God's eyes, we all have equal worth. I'm not better. You're not worse. I'm not worse, and you're not better. We all have equal worth. And it doesn't matter what our physical appearance is or what our talents are. We have worth because God made us, and God then he put a price tag on just how much we're worth. Did you know that?

He put a price tag on us. He sent his son to die for us, for me. That's the kind of worth that God puts on each person. And we need to really wrap ourselves around that. That's the true measure of our worth.

And it says in Peter that the blood of Christ is priceless. It's more precious than gold.

Well, the next thing about learning to see myself the way God sees me, in Isaiah 45, verse 9, it says, "Woe to him who strives with his maker. Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him who forms it, 'What are you making?' Or shall your handiwork say, 'He has no hands?' Woe to him who says to his father, 'What are you begetting?' Or to the woman, 'What have you brought forth?'" And you know I think about that passage, and you know if you build something, and after you've finished it, all of a sudden it would say, the wood would say, I was thinking about carvens making cabinets, "What if they got done making a nice cabinet and the wood said, 'Well, why didn't you make me a dresser?'" You'd look at it pretty strange, wouldn't you?

Who's the boss here anyhow? The piece that was formed or the craftsman that made it? And if you ladies sewed a dress and the material said, "What did you do that for? I wanted to be a pair of curtains."

And so when we throw that back at God and say, "God, why did you make me this height or this height? Why? It's so unhandy to be six and a half feet tall because I can't find any clothes, and I bang my head on every doorway."

Whatever it is, you feel however you feel about yourself. When you refuse to accept the unchangeable things, when you say, "God, no, why did you make me a man? I wanted to be a woman." We run into that a lot today out there. And I hope that we can get this into our minds, that God made us the gender that he wants us to be. And when we say that, we're saying, "God, you had no clue, no clue what you were doing."

The global cosmetic surgery and procedure market size was valued at 63.4 billion US dollars in 2000 or in 2021. And now I realize that not every cosmetic surgery is because somebody doesn't like something about themselves. They do cosmetic surgery for people that are in accidents and so forth. But that's a lot of money spent because people didn't like something about themselves.

And they decided to throw money at the problem to see if they could gain better acceptance, whatever it is. And it's expected to reach 145.7 billion by 2030. So that's another eight years, and it's going to more than double if the projections hold.

Is this a problem?

Well, that's the craftsmanship of God. Now let's see a little bit how God looks at us. In 1 Samuel 16, verse 7, when Samuel went down to anoint a new king, and he was getting Jesse's boys to come in front of him, and he thought the first one looked pretty good.

The Lord said to Samuel, "Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."

So if you've got a struggle with how you appear physically, it doesn't matter so much to God. It doesn't matter to God.

The Lord looks at the heart. We're so quick to look at what's on the outside. You've heard the phrase, "Don't judge a book by its cover." And that's what God's not doing it that way. And Jesus told the Pharisees in Luke 16:15, "And he said to them, 'You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.'" And we have that word again, abomination. I always think about a dead animal when I think about an abomination.

But God's saying, Jesus is saying, "What's highly esteemed, what men think is valuable, is like a dead carcass to God when we're talking about the way you look on the outside." And I don't know if I'm going to read this whole passage, but Paul was trying to assert his authority to the Corinthians.

In 2 Corinthians 10:7, he said, "Do you look at things according to the outward appearance?" And then he makes a claim about his authority.

And they said, "Well, your letters are powerful and terrible, but when you show up, you're a wimp." And that's basically what he says that they said. Now, is that really what they said, or is that what he thought? But the verse I want to think about is in verse 12, "For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who come in themselves. But they measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves among themselves are not wise." And that's really where we hit the problem.

When I compare myself with you, we've got a faulty standard. And that standard is all over the place. It really is.

And Paul says it's not wise. That's where we get into trouble with this whole thing.

And I really want to encourage us to let's break the habit of measuring ourselves by each other. Let's look at God's standard and measure ourself there. So, well, how could you change your self-image? Or how do you change your perception of yourself? Remember, the definition said, "Quite resistant to change." And I don't know if you've tried to change the way you think about yourself before. It can be hard to do because maybe you've heard something.

Maybe you overheard your parents discussing you when you were a child, and they were talking about a flaw that you had or whatever.

And ever after that, you've thought that way about yourself.

It's difficult to change some of those feelings. Some of them go way back. So how do you change your view of yourself? You've got to start aligning your view with God's view. Like we were talking, God doesn't look at it the way we do. Matthew 5:3, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." And I've always thought that poor in spirit means that we can understand our place in the world.

It's not at the top, certainly. We understand what we're made of, and it's an attitude of humility that's not focused on ourselves.

And humility doesn't mean thinking less of yourself than other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself at all.

And that's very difficult to do, but that's the goal. We're not going to think so much about me. We're going to be thinking about other people. And then in Romans 12, verse 3 says, "For I say through the grace given to me to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith."

And the CSB says, "Think sensibly." And I really like that.

And I guess that's sort of where I got the title, a realistic view of ourselves. We're not going to think that we're worth more or that we're better than we actually are, but God doesn't want us ground into the dirt either. And so we have to think sensibly about who we are. That's how God views us. Think sensibly.

And Philippians 2, verse 3 says, "Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you not only look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interest of others."

And so I think that if we really want to get a realistic image of ourselves, we need to

think sensibly, like I was saying. And I don't think I don't want to make when I talk about accepting, we have to accept who we are. And that doesn't mean that we don't try to change for the better.

But

when I was struggling about my work problem, I finally had to come to grips with the fact that naturally, I don't work as fast as some people do. Does that mean I should kick back and say, "Well, this is who I am," and la di da di da? No.

But it does mean that I'm not going to beat myself up every day because it didn't quite go the way that I wanted it to go. And so I don't think that there's any room for laziness in this thing. God says, "Whatever you do, do it wholeheartedly." And so I need to think about how I work. There's probably ways to become more efficient.

But I have to accept who I actually am. And I think I sort of came to grips with that a few months ago. And you know what? I think I'm getting more done, actually, than I did when I was mad at myself every day. And I think that's the way that you're going to find many of these things. When you can view yourself sensibly and come to a place of peace with who you are, that's what God wants. He wants us to come to a place of peace with who we are.

And then, as we work to become better, God can give us grace and strength. And when we quit comparing ourselves, measuring myself by who I think you are, that's probably not even who you really are. That's the thing that really catches us up in this whole thing.

Who I think you are and who you really are, who God says that you are, are probably two different measures, but I can't see that.

And so when we quit comparing ourselves with other people and use God's standard of work, that worth, that really helps us to think sensibly about who we are. And I think that when we do this, we'll really begin to realize the blessing of a realistic view of ourselves. And as I was thinking about this topic, I kept thinking about the serenity prayer, and that's really famous. You probably were thinking about it too. And I'm just going to read that in closing. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

Does anyone have anything they would like to say?

I'm hearing your message, and as.