How to Handle Your Emotions (Counseling Through the Bible Series) (55 page)
Rejection—Answers in God’s Word
Question:
“What will God do when I have fear or become dismayed?”
Answer:
“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).
Question:
“How does the Lord respond to those who are brokenhearted and crushed in spirit?”
Answer:
“The L
ORD
is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18).
Question:
“How can I know that when others reject me, they are actually rejecting Christ?”
Answer:
“He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me; but he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16).
Question:
“I’ve been forsaken by my father and mother. Is there anyone who will never reject me?”
Answer:
“Though my father and mother forsake me, the L
ORD
will receive me” (Psalm 27:10).
Question:
“Is there anything that can separate us from the love of God?”
Answer:
“Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
Question:
“Why will the Lord not reject you?”
Answer:
“For the sake of his great name the L
ORD
will not reject his
people, because the L
ORD
was pleased to make you his own” (1 Samuel 12:22).
Question:
“What will never fail on account of the Lord’s great love for me?”
Answer:
“Because of the L
ORD
’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail” (Lamentations 3:22)
Question:
“Why am I called a child of God?”
Answer:
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him” (1 John 3:1).
Question:
“How should I respond to God, who has not rejected me or withheld His love from me?”
Answer:
“The L
ORD
himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged” (Deuteronomy 31:8).
Question:
“Is there an appropriate Scripture to read when I feel like my whole life was a mistake and I should never have been born?”
Answer:
“Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me!” (Psalm 66:20).
Discovering Your God-given Worth
C. What Is an Inferiority Complex?
D. What Is the Self-love Controversy?
II. Characteristics of Low Self-worth
A. What Does Low Self-worth Look Like?
B. What Are Substitutes for Healthy Self-worth?
C. What Sabotages True Spiritual Growth?
A. What Is the Impact of Rejecting Parents?
B. How Can Rejection from Others Rule You?
C. Why Is Comparing Yourself to Others Costly?
D. How Do We Compare Ourselves to Others?
E. Why Is Wrong Thinking So Wrong?
F. What Is the Root Cause of Low Self-worth?
B. Key Passage to Read and Reread
C. Seven Steps to Self-acceptance
D. How to Get Rid of Your Guilt
E. Do You Need a New Self-image?
F. Don’t Be a Prisoner of Poor Parenting
G. How to Have a Heart of Forgiveness
I. How to Answer Seven Self-defeating Statements
J. How to Improve Your “Sense of Self”
K. Line Up Your Self-image with God’s Image of You
L. How to Capture a Vision for Your Ministry
Discovering Your God-given Worth
W
hat happens when you long to receive a gift, but only your sister is given a gift? What happens when you long to be held on your mother’s lap, but only your sister is allowed on her lap? What happens when you long for your mother’s love, but your sister is the only one given her love?
Ask Dorie Van Stone.
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Dorie would tell you that repeated rejection is the breeding ground for low self-worth. Her own mother never even wanted her—her mother always called her ugly.
Dorie never received the love and affection her heart so deeply craved. However, what a comfort for Dorie (and for all the Dories in the world, both male and female) to come to know this truth from God’s Word:
“The L
ORD
does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the L
ORD
looks at the heart”
(1 S
AMUEL
16:7).
Why should Dorie feel any sense of worth? Even before she and her sister were discarded at an orphanage, life with their mother was filled with rejection. Her mother would leave Dorie in charge of her little sister Maria for hours—a six-year-old girl responsible for the total care of a five-year old!
Each time this happened, Dorie longed desperately for her mother to return, saying to herself,
I hope she’ll be glad to see me.
But each time her mother returned, she brushed right past Dorie to gather Marie in her arms, giving her great big hug and sometimes bringing a gift—always showering
attention on Marie and never on Dorie. No wonder Dorie was left reeling with low self-worth.
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As the psalmist said,
“Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless; I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none”
I. D(P
SALM
69:20).
EFINITIONS OF
S
ELF
-W
ORTH
A. What Is Self-worth?
As a child, Dorie didn’t have any concept of self-worth. How could she? As a continually rejected child, how could she feel any sense of significance, of value, of worth? Even more basic than that, how do you determine the worth of something or someone? How do you know your own worth?
Do you look to yourself or others in order to grasp your value? If you look anywhere other than to God—the God who created you with a purpose and a plan—your view of your value is in grave danger of being distorted. Before you were born, God established your true worth by creating you, by choosing you, and ultimately, by dying for you!
“He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight”
(E
PHESIANS
1:4).
•
Worth
signifies the value, merit, or significance of a person or thing.
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•
Self-worth
is the belief that your life has value and significance.
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•
Worth,
in the biblical Greek text, is
axios,
which means “of weight and worth.”
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In biblical times, gold and other precious metals were placed on a balancing scale upon which their worth was determined by their weight, leading to the expression, “worth their weight in gold” (Lamentations 4:2).
Question:
“How can anyone’s worth be determined?”
Answer:
At an auction, the worth of an item is determined clearly and simply by one thing—the highest price paid. Each item goes to the highest bidder. You were bought from the auction block of sin over 2,000 years ago when the
heavenly Father paid the highest price possible for you—the life of His Son, Jesus Christ. By that one act, your worth was forever established by God.
Jesus Christ paid the ultimate price for you, willingly dying on the cross to pay the penalty for your sins. He loves you that much!
Your true worth is based not on anything
you
have done or will do, but on what
Jesus
has
already done.
Without a doubt, He established your worth—you were worth His life, you were worth dying for.
“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”
B. What Is Self-esteem?(J
OHN
15:13).
In Dorie’s younger years, no one person valued her, no one found pleasure in her. And because no one esteemed her, she had no sense of self-esteem. She could easily see which of the other children around her were treated with value and, as a result, felt valuable. Her sister was one of those highly favored ones.
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What makes you feel good about yourself? Do you consider your opinions worthy of consideration by others? Do you expect others to respect your boundaries, or do you hold yourself in such low esteem that you do not establish and maintain healthy boundaries—boundaries that line up with God’s purpose for your life? The Bible says,
“By the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you”
(R
OMANS
12:3).
•
To esteem
means “to set a high value on.”
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•
To esteem,
in biblical Hebrew, is
nabat,
which means “to esteem, to look with favor or regard with pleasure.”
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•
To have self-esteem
is to respect or to have high regard for yourself.
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