Good Monday Morning, Dear Friends,
One of the things I’ve learned across the years I have counseled with individuals is that everyone of us is looking for someone to tell us we’re okay. It is in you to want to be okay. It is in you to want to feel competent. It is in you to want to be desirable. It is in you to want to be accepted. It is in you to want people to look at you and say, “You’re great! You’re worth looking up to!” All of us want to know that we’re doing okay.
However, the important question is what, or who, do you look to, in order to determine whether you’re doing all right? In other words, what is your mirror? We are all looking into some sort of mirror to tell us, “I’m doing okay.” What is it for you?
During all of our lives, as we try to figure out, “Who am I going to look to, where do I measure myself, what’s the mirror I’m going to look into,” it’s as if there is a whisper. It’s not audible, and it’s not the devil. It may not even be a voice. But constantly there is a whisper in the back of our minds saying, “I wonder if I’m okay? I wonder if I measure up? I wonder if I’m going to make the grade? I wonder if I’ll always be accepted?”
Christianity offers an explanation, not only of where the whisper comes from, but why that’s always rolling around in the back of our minds. In writing to the early Christians in Galatia, the apostle Paul said, “But when the set time had fully come (that means when God was ready), God sent his Son, Jesus, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law” (Galatians 4:4-5). That means that you were born accountable to the law of God — the law of God that’s written on your heart. There is a universal sense of “ought” that manifests itself in you. Where did that come from? That is the law of God, written on your heart!
What do we do about it? We look to the left, we look to the right, and we try to fix ourselves by looking at ourselves versus other people. That’s why every single person wonders, “Am I okay?” There is a break between Creator and creation, and because of that break, there is an insecurity in all of humanity that goes to the core of our soul, and that’s why you always wonder.
When God sent his Son into the world, God made it possible for you to be adopted into his family. You have become a child of your Creator. To whom does your heavenly Father compare you to? Nobody. So, whose estimation of you should you use when it comes to evaluating you? The people around you? The people on television that you don’t even know? Whose estimation of you should you embrace? The only one that really matters is that of your heavenly Father.
I believe God would say this about you. God would say, “I want you to know that you are fine, because you’re mine. I want you to look at me for your approval. You’re fine, because you’re mine.”
Pastor Bruce M. Jones
Imagine Church
5501 Highway 55 East
Clover, South Carolina 29710
