Beloved, can we stop aligning ourselves with something just because it sounds good? Because when we post these self-empowering statements for all the world to read, here is what we are really saying…

People are the basis of my worth, my peace, my joy, my self-respect. People will determine how I see myself and how I feel about myself, and people have the power to determine my inner-world.

Their brokenness threatens my wholeness.

What tickles the ears of the world should sound so foreign to ours. People using people for their own self-worth should not be a concept that resonates with us.

We are the sons and daughters of God. Not one ounce of our worth depends on the thoughts or opinions of fallen human beings. Jesus, not mortals, is our peace, our joy, our reason for living, and there should be nothing so strong as to move us from that position.

We are ambassadors of Christ, His representatives on the earth. We are the people commissioned to love others with the love of Christ. His is not a love that is dependent on reciprocation. It does not demand to be noticed, to be treated fairly, to be respected or to be made to feel valuable. Just as Jesus was complete in His Father and needed no man to confirm His identity, so it is with us.

We are complete in Jesus, and we need no earthly form of confirmation of our value.

So when we begin to question our worth, think less of ourselves, lose our peace, lose our joy and resort to self-empowerment clichés to pump our self-esteem back up, the issue is not the people who surround us.

It’s the unbelief within us.

There is great need out there. People all around us need to feel valued, to believe they have worth. People need peace, and Lord knows real joy is in short supply.

But we are not the answer to their need, we are the ones who know the answer. Jesus. Always, Jesus.

But if we don’t know, believe, live like He is our answer, they aren’t going to buy it when we tell them He is their answer.

So I’m begging us to stop posting platitude memes that have no biblical foundation of truth in them. Stop blaming people for our self-esteem issues. Stop demanding people make us feel what God has already told us we are. Let’s stop loving God but believing people. Let’s love God and believe God so that we can truly love people in a way that leads them to God, not to us.

Say it with me now…

I am a child of God. Completely known and completely loved. I am of great worth to my Father, and could do nothing to cause Him to love me less, or to love me more. I am a foreigner on this earth, a citizen of heaven on a pilgrimage home. I am not a victim, I am more than a conqueror through Jesus. I have overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of my testimony. My destiny has been established by God. The peace of Christ is mine, the joy of the Lord is mine, and my feet are planted on a rock, not shifting sand. I am the Beloved of God, His church, His Bride, the one He died to save.

I do not, nor will I ever, need fallen human beings to prop up my self-esteem.

Jesus is enough for me.

#bedifferent  #betheChurch