By Chris WittsFriday 23 Sep 2022Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
Transcript:
Yesterday morning I spoke about the business of inferiority. Do you feel inferior to other people? Why is that the case? And I said that the Bible actually explains sometimes that the people of Israel felt inferior as well. And I said that when the 12 spies came back from exploring the promised land, and they gave their report – they were fairly intimidated. They said “we seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes.”
So they had a really bad sense of who they were. I want to suggest this morning to try and bear in mind that every person in the world is different and that no face or body is the same and you might call it inferiority. But that may not be what other people say about you. They might admire the very thing that you feel down about. So what makes you feel the things that are inferior to everyone else? I think we need to think about the fact that 99% of people you walk past, don’t even notice you on the street. And you can possibly say the same about yourself.
So you don’t have to worry about what people say or you think are saying about you. It’s also helpful to confront the fears that we have. Do you think people are going to stare at you?
And if you find that your inferiority is difficult to deal with, two things that I think are very helpful – one is to talk to somebody. There’s a friend that you could have. And of course I can talk about this in a minute. God is the biggest friend you can have. But if you’ve got a good friend, a friend that will help you to achieve the goals. you need Whatever they might be. They’ll tell you the truth.
And sometimes we do need people to say it as it is, to tell the truth, even if it hurts. After all, your friend is there and through the good and bad times that person will be there to make you feel better about yourself. Now, you might say, “I find it difficult to talk with my friends.” I think the way around that is to say, do you ever feel inferior yourself? I think you might be surprised about how many people actually get worried about those feelings of inferiority.
I think it’s also good to go around and look at people not in the sense of staring at them, but to just observe people. No one is perfect. As I said yesterday, I think it’s also true that people struggle with this. I read a question that came through the Internet, and this person asked their minister. “I’ve struggled with an inferiority complex all my life. I’ve accepted the Lord into my life and it helped a bit, but I still struggle with a lot of insecurities. I’ve seen a psychologist about my problem, but he doesn’t seem to understand my faith in the Lord. I feel uncomfortable with my psychologist. Can you please help me?”
Well, as I said, the Bible talks about that, and we’re programmed, I think, to see ourselves in certain ways by the words that people speak. The words are a big thing, aren’t they? They really have a big impact. If the words we hear are positive, then we usually have a good self-image. But sometimes we don’t hear the positive things come back to us.
How then can we overcome this feeling of the negative words and the bad experiences? Well, I think really the answer is in the Bible. You must think about yourself the way God thinks about you. And there’s some tremendous statements, and in my Bible there are things that I think the Apostle Paul, who really had a tremendous experience of God. He understood himself, he said. I forget what’s behind. In other words, he forgot the bad things of the past. He struggled, he said. I said I struggle for what’s ahead.
And then he talked about himself. He said, I know what it’s like to be poor or to have a lot and I’ve lived under all kinds of conditions, he said. I know what it means to be full or to be hungry, but it’s Christ who gives me the strength to face anything.
I think we can aim, you know, to trust God for the future. Paul talked about the goal. He said, I run towards the goal so that I can win the prize of being called to heaven. What a tremendous goal he had.
Don’t worry about anything, he said, but pray about everything So do you believe in prayer?
Jesus intercedes for us. He understands our very weakness because he was tempted in the way that we are. So when you add all those things up, we can understand here that God understands who we are. So get the Bible. Have a look at these verses and pray.
Let’s Pray
Lord, thank you that we can find completeness in our own unique way in Jesus name, amen.