WATCH THIS FIRST ↑
Everyone loves the last second basketball buzzer beater or the touchdown catch as the clock expires…except for the losers. I learned all about that last week.
My team lost our football game in the last second on a Hail Mary play. I was so mad!!!! It was to the point where it ended up ruining the next couple of hours of my day. I was driving home feeling like such a failure. I was totally weighed down with disappointment and disgust at myself. I have a tendency to compare myself to my past accomplishments. Waking up to reality that I am not as good as I used to be is hard and I have a tendency to grasp for the days when I was a winner.
I know it wasn’t the super bowl and I know I shouldn’t let something this unimportant get to me, but it did. And God, being so resourceful used it to speak to me. I remember hearing this inward question, “why are you still upset?” and I remember thinking “because I want to win, I want to be the best.”
Then I heard “why?”
I paused and listened. I knew God wasn’t trying to figure out the answer to that question, He was trying to teach me something. All of sudden I saw my need to win, my need to be “the best” not as a healthy drive, but a source of self-significance. I realized that I needed to win to feel valuable. I used victory as a measuring stick for how much I mattered. My worth was tied up in my performance. We use victory as a judge because accomplishment and achievement are measurable and when we beat everyone else we are taking worth from them and giving it to ourselves.
Don’t you see how jaded that is? We can never be “the best”, and even if you can; even if you are, that time will pass. Someone will eventually dethrone you. My point is this, No achievement, award, conquest or victory is indefinitely sustained. We all eventually lose; get old, fat and ugly. Whatever we hold so tightly, that thing that defines us will fail. We are fallible people, born into failure and all those trophies we find pride in are quickly deteriorating.
It is not meant to last. We were created perfectly but are born into failure. We all fall short of perfection. The bar is just too high.
The book of Romans says, “God showed His love towards us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”. The good news of the gospel is not only “your sins are forgiven”, but you can’t earn my love, and you don’t need to. Jesus defined our worth when He was crucified not for His sins, but ours. He sees us all messed up and broken, and yet He still loves us.
We cannot achieve enough, win enough, be “the best” enough to earn our worth. We must stop running ourselves into the ground, beating ourselves up when we fail because that doesn’t define us.
Some of you may feel worthless because you are not the best, or the prettiest or the smartest. Maybe you don’t have any measurable qualities that you can feel proud of. It doesn’t matter. God has defined your worth as immeasurable. You are not limited or devalued because you haven’t achieved as much as the next person. And to those of you who might have some tangible quality that defines you, it will fail you. You cannot sustain perfection.
We all want to feel valued, respected and most importantly accepted.
Let me ask you this though, who said you weren’t?
We are valuable beyond our understanding. Rest in the finished work of Jesus.
6 Responses to “Good enough?”
Nathan, I agree with you that we want to be the best, or at least “our best”. We by nature want acceptance because of the fall of man. We want to be in fellowship and relationship with our Heavenly Father. We know Jesus paid the complete price for us to know the Father and before anyone living today was born, we had that access as soon as we took our first breath. Jesus died, rose and was seated in Heaven before we were born. The new covenant was instituted before our understanding of God began. What an opportunity for each of us to enter into.
The New Testament is filled with promises from God to us that we are accepted in the beloved, we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works and He gives us the grace to walk in them. I am excited that a specific course or race has been created for each of us that is one we can win. We cannot run anyone else’s race because that course is created for them. We are rewarded here and there as to how we run and finish our race. We are not competing against others but with them! God calls us winners, conquerors and more than conquerors. We have the victory, we have His victory. He created us to be conformed into the image of His Son and that we will be. For you Nathan and those reading this post, see 1 Cor12 and read the chapter. You will see yourself in those words as someone who is vital ! Vital to God and vital to others. And if you feel insignificant, He will give you greater honor so there is equality in the members of His body. You may not have won that day on the scoreboard, but you won that day and every day because you have chosen the greatest life there is, to follow Jesus !
I wish I had enough sense like you do to notice when God is speaking in my head. I’m trying to hard to become worthy, that I never even stopped to think I already might be. But certainly we want to better ourselves, I guess the reason is what matters. I don’t need to be the best, but I do need to try my best, and I do need to understand that I’m already worthy. I think knowing that gives me a better sense of motivation.
Thanks!
It’s difficult to decipher God’s voice from the thousands of others in our heads. I’ve learned that when God speaks, it is always to point my eyes higher and my heart closer to His. I’m glad this helped. Thanks for commenting on the page : )
“We eventually all lose, get old, fat and ugly.” I like that.
haha…is that what you got out of it?
Awesome insight! Thanks for sharing!