Posted: 04/28/2008 at 04:09AM |
This blog is cross-posted at http://znichter.wordpress.com
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Bare with me today, this is definitely an unbound thought.
Recently I heard a program on the radio where there was a discussion about the recent discovery (past 40-50 years) of the term self-esteem. The individual talking about it was discussing how embracing the need for self-esteem is in part responsible for the condition of our youth in the world. The desire and the need to feed your Self-Esteem is masking itself with the need to been seen and heard.
According to a Wikipedia definition, in psychology, self-esteem or self-worth includes a person’s subjective appraisal of himself or herself as intrinsically positive or negative to some degree.
I agreed with a point she was making about our seemingly obsessive search for a positive self-esteem. If you listen to your heart, isn’t there something that strikes you about esteeming yourself that is just not quite right?
In a book I’m reading the author states that evil’s primary objective is to destroy the light (God’s influence in things). Evil’s secondary objective is to go unnoticed, so much so that you might not spot evil at work but once out of every 50 occurrences.
Just like most things Satan sets out to do he creates nothing but a cheap imitation of the original. Take for instance God’s love to Satan’s lust, God’s anger to Satan’s Rage or God’s patience to Satan’s complacency. Each of these are only slightly different than their counterparts, but in the end, one leads to glory and the other to death.
Self-esteem I think is one of those imitations of God’s creation. It’s a slightly different slant on self-respect I think. One leaves us feeling valuable and accepted when we look to God, while the other leads us to the complete opposite and ultimately needing to be heard and valued. I think we all seek to be valued and accepted at times. We are all human, we sin and fall short, essentially we are all “bad”, but in Christ we are forgiven and infinitely valuable.
Self-esteem I think is something the world tells us we need. I think God tells us that not only do we not need it but, that it is the opposite of what he wants to give us. We don’t really want to be seen, we really want to be cradled by our Savior.
It only takes a slight movement off course to take us in the end, hundreds of miles from our destination.
Posted: 04/18/2008 at 03:08AM |
This blog is cross-posted at http://znichter.wordpress.com
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My wife and I were talking last night about trying to fool God without knowing that we are doing it.
She is in a Bible study where a question prompted a response from her that went something like this “Sometimes I try to think of myself different than I am so that I can make God think I’m better than I am. I fool myself into feeling certain things so that I feel like a good person in God’s site.”
Isn’t interesting how typical this is? When we date our savior we don’t treat Him any different than those we dated when we were single. We get tied up trying to show him only the parts of us we want him to see.
God knows our hearts, he wants us to be real, not for His sake but for ours.
Psalms 32:5
Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, I will confess
my transgressions to the LORD.
And you forgave
the guilt of my sin.
The thing that strikes me here are the last two lines. “You forgave the guilt of my sin”. God wants to free us of the imprisonment of the things we try to hide from Him.
Amazing…
Posted: 04/18/2008 at 03:07AM |
This blog is cross-posted at http://znichter.wordpress.com
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Just a quick thought today…
I often wonder what drives my need to understand things. This point obviously highlights a potential struggle with blind faith. As I was in bed about to fall asleep the other night my mind started racing through this and other thoughts about a search for wisdom and knowledge and the story of Job and how this all relates to my desire for a more intimate relationship with God. So I started praying.
In a nutshell this is the abbreviated version what I came up.
Knowledge by itself is empty, emotionless, words on a page, words spoken, words received. Knowledge is a tool to accomplish a task, like a spade, a hammer or a screwdriver.
Rarely do I actually seek just the knowledge I gain from reading a book. I read so that I can understand things better, other times I read for entertainment, but I think school is the last time I read anything purely just for knowledge.
Understanding is the value of knowledge just as wisdom is the value of understanding. But there is a small twist, understanding does not complete wisdom. Meaning it isn’t understanding alone that brings wisdom.
Searching for God’s character is a search for understanding that brings us closer to Him. Understanding has the potential for a greater intimacy with Him. But that’s where the search for understanding has to be dropped and faith steps in. It is faith that truly builds intimacy with God.
The wisdom in faith is that there are times we know that we will never understand…
Posted: 03/26/2008 at 02:09AM |
This blog is cross-posted at http://znichter.wordpress.com
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I think most everyone I've met, and everyone that I have asked, feels the need to have purpose in this life. To feel that they are significant is some way, that they'll leave their mark on this world.
When I was young I had the desire is to fit in with my peers. As I grew older, I had a desire to find out who I am and what I believe. After that I slowly transitioned into finding what makes me unique, what sets me apart from everyone else. Now I'm kind of at this place where I don't want to fit in I want to be special and I don't want to be like everyone else, I want to be a better me.
I have always felt that I have a greater purpose in this life, that I was placed here to be a part of something bigger than myself. For the most part I think this came after I accepted Christ around the age of 8 maybe earlier. I felt like God called me to preach early in my life, soon after I accepted Christ as a matter of fact. I think I was around 8 or 9 when I felt that. It was a very real experience to me when I felt that call. It was maybe 15 years later that I felt that call again. And if you don't know me personally, no I am not a preacher. I don't think this means that God does or doesn't still have that plan for me.
I do feel that he has a purpose for me, and it always feels just beyond me as to what it is. I kind of liken it to when I'm talking with someone and I might be describing something, I know what word I want to use to describe a thought and it's right there on the tip of my tongue but I just cant get it out.
Purpose is a big 50 pound thought. Like many things with God though, it is as infinitely complex as it is simple. Purpose can be hard to get your head around when placed in the context of God's purpose for your life.
The simplicity of it, I think, is that If there were to be only one purpose in our lives God's purpose for us would be this, to love, to find intimacy with him. I think that love at the core of everything God wants for us in this life. It is in that one purpose that we find evidence of the power of God. The reasoning of this comes from 2 verses, Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:39-40. God said, "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength". Jesus states Duet 6:5 clearly as the most important commandment, then he adds the second most important commandment in Matt 22:39-40 "Love your neighbor as yourself.".
Webster's Dictionary defines purpose as "something set up as an object or end to be attained". This would mean that our purpose is to attain a state of intimacy or love with God with our entire being and loving those around us. Obviously, the intimacy here is not the kind that is synonymous with sex or a lustful, envious or jealous kind of infatuation, it's an overwhelming honest, pure, giving, receiving, serving, humble kind of love in a pure and holy since.
I imagine that when we find intimacy, true, honorable intimacy in our relationship with God and those around us and we will find God in all facets of your life with a since of a purpose that is greater than ourselves.
Posted: 03/26/2008 at 02:09AM |
This blog is cross-posted at http://znichter.wordpress.com
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Many things have been on my mind lately. I have been reading a lot, which I love. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of books by Ted Dekker. Ted Dekker is a fantastic author who has very refreshing views of our relationship with God.
One of the things that I find myself constantly checking is whether a belief or understanding of a topic in my relationship with God is because of experience or because of denominational or a “religious” teaching that I accepted as truth at some earlier point in my life.
Even now, as I talk to friends, as I work through thoughts and ideas, I find that at times I can hit a “wall” with them. At times, I find that I am debating against their upbringing, acceptance of religious ideas or denominational teachings in some way. I have had others encourage me to not try to figure things out but to just accept that God is bigger than me. While there is no doubt the later is true, I find that the wall they are throwing up is one of a couple of things. One, it could be because they would rather not be talking about whatever the topic is (highly possible, I can get pretty boring). Two, because they have been taught not to question and to just accept. I think this obviously has it’s place when we hit the limit of our understanding. Three, some people aren’t wired so that they have a drive to understand things. Four, I’ve found that some things that I challenge can leave my relationship with God feeling naked. I think for the most part questions of this nature leave people feeling scared and would often rather stay away because they have no certainty about where they will end up. It can be like getting ready to go to the mall, striping off my dirty clothes, putting nothing else on and walking into the crowded place with nothing covering my insecurities about what I believe, leaving me feeling incredibly vulnerable.
I think the fourth idea about uncertainty and vulnerability is as common as any other. I’ve been down this road a number of times only to discover that it has left me with a shaky relationship with God at best. Each of the times I choose to take that road it is always very painful spiritually and emotionally. There was a period during one of these times that I found myself doubting God seriously because of information that someone had given me. I questioned and researched this information for about 2 years (maybe a little less). By the time I exhausted my time, energy and my relationship with my wife to all of my questioning I had digested thousands of pages of information. I found myself questioning of some previous beliefs. In the end I found the journey to be an exhausted path with nothing but endless what ifs to this information that a friend had passed on to me. But that was all there was, no facts, just endless assumption. There was only God to turn to and saw me through it and brought me back around to a point of faith and eventially my faith stronger than when I started.
It seems to me that God stripped me of the structure of my faith down to the foundation so that He could rebuild it. In some ways I still feel like I’m recovering from that one, still reforming ideas and different understandings in many of the areas of my relationship with God. Like I said it can be a very painful path, but so far, God has helped me find my way through. I’m not sure that it is good, for some it even seems wrong, to me it just seems to be a bit different, but this process is probably very common in concept to what most Christians go through I think.
I can’t help but to feel like anything that I have gone through has done anything but strengthen my relationship with God. That statement may sound like an empty sentiment in an effort to justify, but I have been fortunate enough to be able to see and find understanding in almost everything that God has put me through to this point. I am not naive enough to think that he wont put me through more things that I am not able to see reasoning for though.
In the coming weeks I’ll be blogging about some of the things I am still processing or feel that I have come to conclusion on.