Your self worth

In what or to what are you finding your self worth?

 

In our attempt to find our self worth - we many times look to other things (even good things) and make them the ultimate things in our lives.

 

As Tim Keller writes, "it is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than  your relationship with God."

 

He uses the illustration of the movie Rocky, where the title character's girlfriend asks him why it is so important for him to "go the distance" in the boxing match. 

 

He replies, "Than I'll know I am not a bum."

 

In the movie "Chariots of Fire," one of the main characters explains why he works so hard at running the hundred-yard dash for the Olympics.  He says that when each race begins, "I have ten lonely seconds to justify my existence."

 

Both of these men (as Tim Keller writes) looked to athletic achievement as the defining force that gave meaning to their lives.

 

Author Ernest Becker notes that a child's need for self-worth "is THE condition of his life," so much so that every person is desperately seeking what he calls "cosmic significance."

 

In other words your need for, my need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on we essentially "deify."

 

Keller writes, "We will look to it with all the passion and intensity of worship and devotion, even if we think of ourselves as highly irreligious."

 

What or in whom are you finding your "cosmic significance?" 

 

The approval of others?  Possessions?  Yourself?  Your appetites (pleasure seeking)?  Your family?  Your spouse?  Your children?  T.V.?  Money?

 

I would suggest that the only place to find true significance and self worth is in God. 

 

So...why not seek to deepen your relationship with God today.

 

Just a thought for a Thursday.