By Chris WittsThursday 23 Nov 2023Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
If you were with me yesterday morning, I opened up the topic of how to have self confidence – to feel that you’re someone significant, even though you might have had a very bad beginning.
Have Confidence In Yourself – Part 1 — Morning Devotions
And I mentioned about Ed talking about Edgar Rice Burroughs back in the 1800s. The man who wrote the story that I guess will live on, perhaps in the minds of hearts of Children for a long time. And I’m talking about Tarzan of the apes. He wrote Tarzan and he had a very bad beginning and went broke many times, had lots of failures and I went on to say yesterday that our lives can be significant even with a bad beginning.
I said that we need to have a sense of competence, a sense of confidence in yourself. Don’t let other people put you down or think that you’re no good – have a sense of significance and belonging in yourself. That’s a good thing. The other thing I want to mention today is a sense of worth in who we are.
A fundamental piece to finding meaning to life is to have this healthy sense of self-worth
That actually starts often in childhood. If, for example, you grew up with unconditional love and acceptance from your parents, and if you had uncles and aunties or grandparents around you who could perhaps give you that feeling of self-worth – you’re likely to have a healthy sense of self-worth. And that goes right back, I guess, to childhood. Not everyone, of course, experiences that – if you didn’t have that reinforcement, it might be that it’s going to take you a little longer for you to find it. But it can be achieved. You can feel that you are worthwhile through honest relationships with people, to be open and to be loving. So having a bad start doesn’t mean, as I said yesterday, a bad ending.
To achieve a sense of competence and confidence in yourself, you really have to feel you belong, and that is a need to be connected to people who are what we call safe people. They’re nonjudgmental. We need to be known, that we’re not perfect and we’re loved anyway. So we need to be accepted for who we are, not for what we’ve done or what we haven’t done. To live on an island, I guess, is to self-destruct. Someone called Doctor Barnard Steiner said the person who feels completely alone and who’s lost hope of a relationship will become a patient in the wards of a mental hospital or bring their life to an end through suicide. That’s what he said, and that’s fairly serious stuff.
We need to find at least one person in whom we can trust with our secrets, someone who will love and accept us. Even with the things we may have done or said, I think it’s also true to say that with God’s help, we can find people who will accept us.
We need people. And the problem, of course, is what the Bible says that we’ve been separated from God through sin, and God’s word calls this spiritual death. In fact, Romans 6:23 says, for the wages of sin is death, but God’s free gift is eternal life in union with Christ Jesus, our Lord. And this is the best news I could give you this morning because God loves us. He gave us His son Jesus Christ, to pay the ransom for our sins. He died on the cross.
And so we need to confess the sins in our life and to ask Jesus Christ to come in to clean up our lives, to give us that feeling of competence and self-worth. So God forgives us, and this is the greatest gift of all. In fact, the Bible says in John 3:16 that “God loved the world so much that he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.” It’s a wonderful verse, so accepting that, helps us to see that we are significant.
In other words, I am part of God’s plan. I am not an accident. I am not here by accident. I’m here because God loves me and that I can do something worthwhile in my life. And that’s a great thing to know.
Let’s Pray
Well, eternal God, we thank you this morning because we’re different, you deal with us as individuals, just as you created us differently. And we respond to you, Lord in different ways. And whatever our response to you, Lord, may it be sincere and genuine as we understand to live life to the full and we can do it in the name of Jesus. Amen.