I have the opportunity to work with people that are struggling with some issue in their life. I try to bring the Truth of the word to them, but I think that many people get so caught up in their own personal reality that it clouds their judgement. One of the reasons I am so against the morally relative culture that we live in is that it propagates distortion from reality and Truth. I use a capital “T” because I think there is relative truth and I think that there are things that are transcendentally true and then there is capital “T” Truth that is absolutely true all the time and for all time

God presents many of these truths to us in His word and I try to focus on them even when it is sometimes hard to discern the proper application of that Truth. I don’t think that the struggle to discern application alleviates the responsibility for all of us to keep trying to get the application as correct as possible or alter or alleviate the fact that Truths exists. There are several truths that I commonly use in dealing with solving issues. God is sovereign, God loves us, all of us, Jesus died for us, all of us, and gave us grace just to name a few. It’s that last one that has my attention lately and a specific part of it.

Grace, what is it and what does it mean? I can give all the pat answers and we all know them, but the word says to work out our grace daily. What does that mean? Well the angle that has intrigued me lately is that I meet so many people that are saved, and I truly believe that they are saved, but they truly don’t understand God’s grace and what it means as it pertains to one particular issue. There is much depth to grace and different aspects to it, but the one that intrigues me is as it pertains to self esteem. Self esteem is the value that we place on ourselves.

I am finding that the core issue with many disorders and issues in life directly come from a lack of personal self esteem. There are presenting issues and presenting manifestations of those issues, but what I see more and more is an underlying lack of worthiness as the driving force at the most primal level. I am not going to tell you that I have done extensive research, but I am tracing anxiety, depression, substance abuse and especially eating disorders all back to lack of worthiness and lack of self esteem. The most interesting part is that I can share the Truth of God’s love and His declaration of worthiness through the shed blood of the cross and philosophically it can be understood and yet never be incorporated into a person’s life. It’s not for a lack of desire to want to embrace the Truth, but a deep inability to believe it is true.

I know much of pathology is deep seated, but I am finding that this is one of the foundational Truths that is lacking in many people, Christian and non-Christian alike. It is hard to convince many people that they have innate value as a human being just because they exist. I think that the culture has inserted many wedges to keep people from this foundational Truth by creating so many standards by which value and worthiness are earned instead of received. I have so much more to say about this issue that I think we are going to have to explore it depth with at least one more post.