May 2, 2004

Service Theme – "Our God Accepts Us"

Psalm 139:1-18, 23-24

The Floor: A Healthy Relationship with Yourself

  1. Introduction
    1. Illustration – D. Greg Ebie wrote, One man’s trash is another man’s treasure! All too often stuff that is in the yard sale today is in the dumpster tomorrow. Sometimes we feel like the leftovers from a yard sale; our self-esteem is in the dumpster. We’re useless; we’re no good for anyone or anything. God doesn’t see us as worthless. God was not searching for bargains at a yard sale, but He willingly paid the highest price (as cited on SermonCentral.com).
    2. Context – We have major struggles with our self-esteem. We either think too highly of ourselves or we feel lower than a pregnant ant! We’ve got to figure out and listen to what God says about who we are if we’re going to finally know who we are and what we are in Christ. So let’s read Psalm 139:1-18 and 23-24 together, and I’m reading from The New Living.
  1. Scripture Passage
    1. Psalm 139:1-18, 23-24 (from the New Living) – (NEW SLIDE) Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. 2 You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my every thought when far away. 3 You chart the path ahead of me and tell me where to stop and rest. Every moment you know where I am. (NEW SLIDE) 4 You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord. 5 You both precede and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to know! 7 I can never escape from your spirit! I can never get away from your presence! (NEW SLIDE) 8 If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the place of the dead, you are there. 9 If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, 10 even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me. (NEW SLIDE) 11 I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night— 12 but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are both alike to you. 13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. (NEW SLIDE) 14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—and how well I know it. 15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. (NEW SLIDE) 17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God! They are innumerable! 18 I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up in the morning, you are still with me! …(NEW SLIDE) 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. 24 Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.
  1. Loving Yourself Is not Egotism
    1. What does this Psalm tell us? That God knows everything about us, including what we think and how we feel. That God is always with us – we can’t go anywhere to get away from Him. That He thinks wonderful things about us. That He created us exactly the way He wanted us to be, and this is precisely where we have the biggest problem!
    2. Why would God have ever created us exactly the way He did for a reason? Think for a minute about everything about yourself you don’t like, especially your body, personality, and temperament. Why in the world would He ever make you that way and think that it was good? We see mostly the bad stuff about ourselves – the stuff we don’t like. And why would God ever allow the things to take place in our lives that have shaped and formed our bodies, personalities, feelings, and thoughts? When I look at me, I tend to not like myself. What’s so great about having birth defects that lead to arthritis and a number of other problems? What’s so great about being so fastidious about planning, strategizing and organizing? What’s so great about the experiences that I’ve had that have made me question my purpose, my worth, even my life? What’s so great about the things about me that drive me crazy?
    3. And yet contrasted with those issues are verses 13-16: You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—and how well I know it. 15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. God knew me even before the moment of my conception. God knew who I would be, what my personality and temperament would be, He knew about my birth defects, He knew about the experiences that have made me who I am – even the harshest ones, He knew how long I would live – all these things, even before I was conceived! Why? Why would He make me the way He did? Why would I have to deal with so many weaknesses and so many things I don’t like?
    4. I know that God knows me intimately. He knows me better than I know myself, and better than I’d really like Him to. He searches my every thought, feeling, fear, hope and dream. And yet look at verses 17-18: How precious are your thoughts about me, O God! They are innumerable! 18 I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up in the morning, you are still with me! God knows all this junk and He still thinks precious thoughts about me. That’s nuts! But that’s God! But the questions still remains: why? Why all this junk? Why didn’t the God of the universe choose to not allow those birth defects or those devastating experiences to happen? Why didn’t God make me different?!
    5. David answers this question for himself and for us in verses 23-24: Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. 24 Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life. (NEW SLIDE) God made you and me the way He made us so that we would come to know and depend on Him. It takes an awful lot of humility to ask for searching criticism of who we are and what we think, and yet that’s exactly what David does here. He shows a humble dependence on God and invites God to lead him on God’s righteous and eternal paths. That’s what God is telling us in this Psalm, that we need to be humbly dependent on Him and invite Him to lead us on His righteous and eternal paths. And that’s exactly where a healthy relationship with ourselves starts. (NEW SLIDE) How can we even begin to feel good about who we are if we won’t understand that God allowed our weaknesses so that we would turn to Him?
    6. I know some of the things I’m capable of without God because I’ve done them, and they scare me. So I want to know God so that I won’t do those things. But I also struggle at times with feeling like I’m worthless, like I can do no good or can be of no purpose in life. We all struggle with those feelings. (NEW SLIDE) But sooner or later we’ve got to come to the realization that facts are truth and not feelings, and that God’s truth is true even when we don’t feel like it. So if we’re going to have a healthy relationship with ourself we’ve got to humbly admit our dependence on God and how much we need Him to guide us on His paths. Then we’ve got to begin to realize what the truth of God’s word says about who we are in Him. So let’s look at a few passages of Scripture that will help us understand who we are in Christ:
    7. John 1:12-13 - But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn! This is not a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan—this rebirth comes from God. (NEW SLIDE) We are children of God by His choice when we receive His gift of salvation.
    8. Romans 8:16-17 - For his Holy Spirit speaks to us deep in our hearts and tells us that we are God’s children. 17 And since we are his children, we will share his treasures—for everything God gives to his Son, Christ, is ours, too. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. (NEW SLIDE) Two great things from these verses: we have to Holy Spirit to confirm to us that we are God’s children, and that we get to share in everything Jesus has!
    9. Ephesians 1:4-5 - Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure. (NEW SLIDE) We weren’t last minute substitutions – God has loved and chosen every person from the beginning of time to belong to Him, and to be like Him in His holiness and righteousness. It’s up to us to receive this gift!
    10. Romans 5:5 - For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. (NEW SLIDE) Not only are we dearly beloved by God, but His Holy Spirit wants to fill our hearts with His love!
    11. Ephesians 2:10 - For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (NEW SLIDE) We are the masterpiece God created so that we can do His will.
    12. Colossians 1:13-14 - For he has rescued us from the one who rules in the kingdom of darkness, and he has brought us into the Kingdom of his dear Son. 14 God has purchased our freedom with his blood and has forgiven all our sins. (NEW SLIDE) God rescued us from Satan’s kingdom and brought us into His Kingdom, buying our freedom and forgiveness with the blood of His Son!
    13. 1 Peter 4:10 - God has given gifts to each of you from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Manage them well so that God’s generosity can flow through you. (NEW SLIDE) If we were really as worthless as some of us think we are, would God give us spiritual gifts?
    14. If God loves us and thinks the best of us, even though He knows us better than we know ourselves, who are we to argue with Him? (NEW SLIDE) We waste a lot of time getting down on ourselves or feeling bad about ourselves when God has said we are His beloved children. Granted, God doesn’t want a bunch of selfish egomaniacs running around, but at the same time He doesn’t want a bunch of sober-faced, self-deprecating depressives who constantly run themselves down. When we look down on ourselves, we tell God He is a liar, because He says we are beautifully and wonderfully made and that we are worthy of His love. When we allow others to look down on us, we do the exact same thing. None of us is any better than any other of us, just as none of us is any worse than any other of us. God loves us and it’s about time we followed His example!
    15. But how do we fight this battle to love ourselves with the healthy kind of love that God loves us with? All of us have tapes that run through our heads – messages that play over and over again. Some of them are positive, but many of them tend to be very negative. Those negative messages tear us down and make us feel worthless. We hear in our minds messages like, "How could you have been so stupid?" "If you were any kind of a decent human being you wouldn’t have done that!" "What a piece of garbage you are!" "Don’t even try that because you’ll never ever be able to do it!" There are many other messages like that running through our heads, and they all come from one source: Satan. (NEW SLIDE) If we’re going to change those tapes so we can love ourselves with God’s love, we’ve got to start using those Scriptures I quoted a few minutes ago, as well as many others in the Bible, to combat those lies every single time they come up. We’ve got to be militant about it, every time responding with something like, "No, that’s a lie! God’s word says…" and then insert the Scripture passage. That’s what God wants us to do, ‘cause He don’t make no junk!
    16. Illustration - Jimmy Karuniadi, in Our Daily Bread (5-27-99), wrote, Have you ever noticed the pock-marks, or dimples, covering the surface of a golf ball? They make the ball look imperfect. So, what's their purpose? An aeronautical engineer who designs golf balls says that a perfectly smooth ball would travel only 130 yards off the tee. But the same ball with the right kind of dimples will fly twice that far. These apparent "flaws" minimize the ball's air resistance and allow it to travel much further. Most of us can quickly name the physical characteristics we wish we had been born without. It's difficult to imagine that these "imperfections" are there for a purpose and are part of God's master design. Yet, when the psalmist wrote of God's creative marvel in the womb, he said to the Lord, "You formed my inward parts (Psalm 139:13) and "Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed (vs. 14). Then he said, "I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (v. 14). If we could accept our bodily "imperfections" as part of God's master plan for us, what a difference it would make in our outlook on life. The "dimples" we dislike may enable us to bring the greatest glory to our wise and loving Creator, who knows how to get the best out of our lives (as cited on PreachingToday.com). God uses our imperfections for His glory. He loves us, and it’s about time we have a healthy self-esteem based on our relationship with Him! We are called to recognize who are in Him, that He created each one of us just the way He wanted, that He wants to make us the best us we can be – all because of our dependence on and love for Him. We truly are fearfully and wonderfully made!
  1. Conclusion
    1. How are you doing at loving yourself as God loves you? Do you have a healthy relationship with yourself? There is no shame if you don’t, because God never shames us. He only wants us to turn to Him and to receive His free gift of Himself and His truth. So if you’re struggling in this area, take a few moments to tell God about it and to ask for His help in learning to love yourself like God loves you.
    2. One more thing before we close – please tell at least five people right now, (NEW SLIDE) "You are beautifully and wonderfully made by God." I know this is uncomfortable for some of you, but we’ve all got to do this. We’ve all got to help each other overcome the devil’s lies. Tell at least five people right now, "You are beautifully and wonderfully made by God." Let’s pray together.
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