“It’s far too easy to give up on yourself.”

A thought by Steven Furtick, (2016-03-01) from his book, (UN)Qualified: How God Uses Broken People to Do Big Things (p. 78). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

Do you find that true?  It really is easy to give up on ourselves.

Steven’s whole thought is, “When you come face to face with your failure, it’s far too easy to give up on yourself. To accept the labels and limits and lids that your past might seem to require. I am sinful. I am unfaithful. I am addicted. I am disgraceful. I am unworthy.”  And those third words after the I am can control us. 

Steven earlier says, “Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying mistakes don’t matter. Sin is terrible. Loss and failure and tragedy hurt like crazy. So I’m not glossing over pain or excusing sin. But look at how Jesus loved people, and apply that to your circumstances and your reality. Let God’s love, which is personified in Jesus, fill in your third words. Learn to look at yourself through his eyes. Filter your self-definitions and self-evaluations through the lenses of God’s mercy, goodness, and power. Let him decide what qualifies you. John summed up Jesus’s mission like this: ‘God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him’ (John 3: 17). That is still his mission. Two thousand years later he is still wholeheartedly committed to saving the world, not condemning the world, through Jesus.”

Jesus asked Peter one time who Peter thought he was and Peter said, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Steven says, “What we think about Jesus is foundational to what we think about ourselves. When Simon correctly identified who Jesus was, Jesus identified who Simon was. ‘I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church’ (John 8: 18). Until that point the fisherman from the village of Bethsaida had always gone by Simon. From then on, though, he was known as Rock. That’s what petros, or Peter, means in Greek. Not a bad nickname. It suggested that Peter, even with his all-too-obvious imperfections, would be foundational to the movement Jesus was establishing. Upon Simon’s confession of Jesus’s identity, Jesus gave him a new confession to make about his own identity. Before…I was Simon. Now…I am Rock. What changed in that moment wasn’t who Peter was but rather his view of who he was. Jesus said he was a rock. This meant he was qualified. Suddenly Peter had hope. He had a future. He could see the man he really was and the man he was becoming because Jesus changed his third word. ‘You are Peter.’ God wants to give us a revelation of who we are. He wants to show us our value now, and he wants to open our eyes to who we can become in him.”

Would you like him to do that in your life?