Moving to Wholeness (Christ Esteem)
Wholeness (Christ Esteem) • Sermon • Submitted
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What do I want them to know? God has given us Christ esteem
Why? It gives us WHOLENESS
What do I want them to do? Let only God be their judge
Why? it brings wholeness
We are started a new series called “Moving to Wholeness” We are doing a series to help people from God’s Word and testimony of how we can move to “wholeness” or another Word you can use is PEACE/SHALOM because the meaning of the Word SHALOM which is the HEBREW word for peace means at it’s root “to make whole”
That when you are WHOLE you have SHALOM
This is the opposite of what the word anxiety means, which means to be torn apart, and that is great word description of what it means to have anxiety....is that not how we have felt when we have felt?? TORN APART
yeah
This series is also address the pandemic that existed before the Covid pandemic
What is the pandemic that existed before the pandemic?
We are in a pandemic of anxiety and depression.
In 2019 how many people do you think percentage wise say they struggle with anxiety? 36% of Americans said they struggle with anxiety on some level…that’s high! and now in 2021 where do you think the number is at of Americans struggling with anxiety? 42% we jumped 6% during Covid.
the biggest jump was amongst teenagers it doubled
1/10 people were unhappy in 2020, 1/4 happy in 2021
Let’s pray
ME/WE
What you will here today is I know how to handle, deal with this modern pandemic is, we need more self esteem, that’s will solve it.
How do we get self esteem?
We get self-esteem from SELF TALK
We need to tell ourselves who awesome you are, how great you are, how smart you, how beautiful you are.
Don’t listen to what others say about you! You are the only judge of you! you the est, best, fastest, smartest, wisest, strongest
We see this in our culture with form pastors, many of the ones on TV will say, tell yourself how awesome you are.
I can conquer this, I got this, I am wise, and notice who’s missing from these statements from pastors? God
two books that have been in the top 5 selfhelp books for almost 5 years
Are all about this and WORSE
You are a badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
IS THIS WHAT WE SHOULD DO?
IS THIS HOW IT IS SOLVED?
It’s living lie, not everything we say is true (I can say I am the fastest, strongest, smartest, but life shows me it’s not true) and you can only keep the lie for so long, eventually you come realize they are not as the est as others think they are, nor as good as they think they are. All of a sudden they have a major fall....Depression settles in....I am not the est
Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
And also those who seek the EST becoming a BA, because it turns out those who act like a BA, become an A$$ to everyone else…(breaking the second commandment) so no one wants to really be there friends, it is a lonely place to be.
Ok that doesn’t work the world says try this other approach.
2. Some of us say I am not going to be prideful, I am going to people please.
I am going to find out what other people like (this is often the Christian response) and do those things.
I am going to please there wishes and desires, I am going to be their slaves
Why do we do this?
For an esteem reward....Bonnie you are so great, Sorin you are so wonderful
Anybody been here?
Me
It is good to know what people like and what that want and we should meet those and try to meet those at times. that’s loving others.
Gal 1 We are to love others, but we to be God pleasures not people pleasers......people pleasing takes love and distorts us and says to love is to people please
On top of this you cannot please everyone all the time
I do this thing for Tom and Tom is happy but now Julie is mad because I didn’t do that thing for them and now I do something for Julie and Bob, Tom, Amanda, Sarah are upset with me
It’s a rat race, where I am getting praise and criticism.
And sometimes what God wants us to do is not what people want us to do.
People say we need to build our self-esteem.
Being prideful
Being people pleasures
3. I’ll tell you how to build yourself esteem.
By being better, faster, smarter, stronger, wiser....achieve more than other and others can say WOW!
Guess what will happen one day? one day someone else will be more ER than you BETTER, FASTER, STRONGER
Yes we should to be better but not for self esteem
Also, he problem with pursuing the ER for our esteem is when does ER end? Never, it is relentless. To be better you always have to pursue the ER and if you don’t the ER is gone.
Vogue magazine interview with Madonna, in which she was talking about her career. Here’s what she says.
She says, “My drive in life comes from the fear of being mediocre. That’s always pushing me. I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being, but then I feel I’m still mediocre and uninteresting unless I do something else, because even though I’ve become somebody, I still have to prove I’m somebody. My struggle has never ended, and I guess it never will.”
Wow
TENSION
What are we to do?
If self talk, telling yourself your the EST, puffing yourself up doesn’t work, filling yourself with pride doesn’t work
If people pleasing doesn’t work
If going after the ER, achieving doesn’t work
What are we do? How are we to become whole, how are to we live into wholeness, peace
IS THERE ANOTHER WAY? YES
TT
How do we become whole this side of heaven?
by living from our Christ-esteem and not for self-esteem.
For those who are in Christ Jesus it is living in our Christ-esteem not for pursuing self-esteem
This is what Paul does and says in 1 Cor 4. I am not playing the self esteem game. I am not in that race.
CORINTHIAN was a place all about SELF ESTEEM and PROVE, it was were innovation, ideas, happened, and people competed with one another who was better and
-Who’s better?
this group of who many would say HAVE HEARTS THAT ARE TOO HARD TO COME TO JESUS, come to the LORD, but they still have fleshly things to deal with, with one of them being PRIDE and ESTEEM issues.
Paul I am not living for SELF-ESTEEM, that’s a roller coaster of a race full of ups and downs....I am not doing and I don’t need to do it.
But people were pressuring Paul to do it.
What does Paul do when this happens?
Let’s read what Paul does when people pressure him to live into SELF-ESTEEM
For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.
For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
(anytime you compare you will DISPARE or PUFF UP)
(Paul is not better, Apollos is not better, we are on the same team)
(haven’t we done this in the church? Oh I go to First Faith Church with Pastor Brian Smith, you know the mega church, oh mega churches are old I go to Heavenly Baptist with Tom Sheers we are better)
(haven’t we done or do the same thing at work.....oh I am the better worker in a prideful way or I am more beautiful (social media) or I am more popular because I have more likes and followers…(I know Christian people who are crushed by it or it makes them a narrastics, one prominent pastor says I do not post on social media because it fills my EGO and PRIDE too much because people like him.
God says this is not good
This is not what we should do
This is not good for you or them or use
One of the reasons why is because when we live in the who’s better game some ALWAYS wins and someone ALWAYS loses
and it can flip on a dime or the next day.
If I prove I am better from a worldly perspective I make you lesser
Is this what God wants? NO
Look what Paul says latter
So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours,
whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours,
and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
Let’s not boast or seek to have self esteem.
The only thing we are to boast in is? THE LORD
but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”
so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
So what are we to do? If we are only to boast in the Lord? Not live for self-esteem?
Live in our God given Christ esteem
This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.
Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.
But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself.
For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.
Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.
I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.
For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?
Do you see what Paul says here
I don’t care what you think of me
I don’t care what I think of me
It only matters what God says about me, He’s my judge
Paul says I don’t care what you think about me
Some people really loved Paul, we love Paul, He’s the greatest, biggest fans!
Other people were like, Paul?!?, he’s nothing, he is a lower class Christian, he’s not a super Christian, he’s pathetic
Paul could back and forth, one group love another dislikes or hates
Is this not the same for us
If we live for the applause of man and not God....We will not have FANS and HATERS
This makes our self-esteem rise and fall
And some people you will never people please
Paul doesn’t let himself be the judge
Paul had a lot he could boast in.
though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more:
circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee;
as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day.
PAUL COULD GO TOE TO TOE AND WIN, LOOK at ME
Paul also says on the other end
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.
Many of us have been here? Right God loves me and people love me because I am walking with God....then we feel horrible when we sin, I can’t believe I did that again.
Anybody been here?
The swinging back and forth is living for SELF-ESTEEM, not Christ-esteem.
PAUL SAYS I AM NOT LIVING FOR SELF-ESTEEM BUT IN MY GOD GIVEN CHRIST ESTEEM
BUT PAUL SAYS, NO I DON’T do that, I have only one JUDGE and who’s that? God
It is the Lord who JUDGES me
And do you know what that JUDGE SAYS TO PAUL, thee great JUDGE SAYS OVER PAUL and US who are in CHRIST?
Before he was in Christ Paul was condemned
But now that Paul is in Christ, a new creation the old is gone and the new has come
What does Paul say? What does Paul say to us?
Accepted, ADOPTED LOVED, FORGIVEN…those are just some of the things
Do you know how much your God loves you?
What does the most famous verse say?
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Not only does he save us
God loves us so much that He adopts us
Adoptive Son of God
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
Not only SAVES, ADOPTS US, FORGIVES US,
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
NOTHING CAN SEPERATE US FROM HIS LOVE
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.
Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul is saying God the creator of the universe loves me and cares for me, and accepts me, the ultimate judge.
World your not my judge
Flesh your not my judge
Enemy your not my judge
God’s my judge and He accepts me
This doesn’t mean we are perfect, and that he doesn’t lead us to
Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
US
What God is saying to us in Christ, you are loved, accepted, forgiven, adopted...
Stop running for self-esteem, by what others say, but live in Christ esteem of what He says about you.
Live from that and when you do you will find wholeness this side of heaven.