How to Succeed at Being Yourself Part Three

Jesus understands us when nobody else does. He even understands us when we don't understand ourselves.

People only see what we do, and they want to know why we are not doing it better, or why we are doing it at all. Jesus knows why we behave the way we do. He sees and remembers all the emotional wounds and bruises in our past. He knows what we were created for. He knows and understands our weaknesses. He knows about every fear, every insecurity, every doubt, all our wrong thinking about ourselves.

Once we enter into personal relationship with Him by being born again, He begins a process of restoration in our lives that will not be entirely finished until we leave the earth. One by one He restores to us everything Satan has stolen from us.

Jesus understands us, He loves us unconditionally and He is committed to working with us through the Holy Spirit - and He does not condemn us while He is at it.

The world demands that we change. It persistently gives us the message that something is wrong with us if we cannot do what is expected of us. On our own, we will never be able to do all that is expected of us. Our only hope is in who we are in Christ.

When we receive Jesus Christ as Savior, we are considered to be "in Him". What He earned and deserves we get by inheritance. We must know who we are in Christ. It is our beginning, the place from which we begin the new life. Without the deep understanding of this truth, we will ramble around in life and even in Christianity believing the lie that our acceptance by God is based on our performance.

The truth is, our acceptance by God is based on Jesus' performance, not ours. When He died on the cross, we died with Him. When He was buried, we were buried with Him. When He was resurrected, we were resurrected with Him. That is the way God chooses to see all of us who sincerely believe in Jesus as our substitutional sacrifice and the payment for all our sins.

...We enter into a loving relationship with God wherein He accepts us because of His own goodness and not ours.

It is impossible to "earn favor"; otherwise, it would not be favor. A favor is something someone does for us out of kindness, not because we deserve it.

It is freeing to finally see that our worth and value are not based on what we do, but on who we are in Christ. God has assigned value to us by allowing Jesus to die for us. By the very act of Christ's death on the cross, and the suffering He endured, God the Father is saying to each one of us, "You are very valuable to Me, and I will pay any price to redeem you and see that you have the good life I originally intended for you."

God does care about our actions. He wants them to be correct. He actually wants us to grow up and become mature Christians who act like Jesus did when He walked the earth. God wants us to do good works - but He does not want us to depend on them to gain us anything. He wants us to do good works because we love Him. He wants our good works to be a response to what He has done to, for and in us.

Many people do good works for wrong reasons, and get no reward for them.

Our motives are of utmost importance to God.

I want to know the right way to approach God, and as far as I can see in His Word, it is through faith in what Jesus has done, not faith in what I can do.

We cannot succeed at being ourselves without knowing these things. We cannot succeed without stepping out in faith, not works. If we believe our acceptance is based on our doing, we will always feel rejected when we fail to do the right thing. But if we put our dependence on who we are in Christ, rather than on what we do for Him, our "who" will fix our "do".

How do you see yourself?

Are you able to honestly evaluate yourself and your behavior and not come under condemnation? Are you able to look at how far you still have to go, but also look at how far you have come? Where you are now is not where you will end up. Have a vision for the finish line or you will never get out of the starting block.

The changes in us personally, as well as those in our circumstances, take place in degrees.

If you are born again, then you are somewhere on the path of the righteous. You may not be as far along as you would like to be, but thank God you are on the path. There was a time when you were totally outside of covenant relationship with God through unbelief. But now you belong to the household of God and are being transformed by Him day by day. Enjoy the glory you are in right now and don't get jealous of where others may be. They had to pass through where you are at some time themselves.

We have a strong (fleshly) tendency to compare our glory with everybody else's. The devil arranges for us to think that way, but it is not God's way. God wants us to realize that each of us is a unique individual and that He has a unique plan for every one of us. Satan wants to make sure that we never enjoy where we are at the moment. He wants us in competition with one another, always wanting what someone else has. When we don't know how to enjoy the glory we are in right now, all we do is slow down the maturing process.

We are usually too hard on ourselves. We would grow faster if we relaxed more. We cannot live by our feelings in these matters. Satan makes sure we frequently "feel" that we are an unredeemable mess or that God is not working in our lives. We must learn to live by God's Word and not by how we feel. His Word states that as long as we believe, He is working in us!

Often we "feel" rejected, so we believe people are rejecting us. Perhaps the truth is they do not even see us; therefore, they are not accepting or rejecting us. If we believe that people are rejecting us, it is likely that they will reject us. Our "poor me, nobody loves me, I'm always rejected" attitude is what makes people want to stay away from us.

We must not develop the attitude that if we don't perform perfectly, we will be rejected. I will admit that the world often operates on that principle, but God doesn't, and neither should we. None of us who has taken an honest look at ourselves would dare refuse to accept others unless they are perfect. Jesus taught that we can demand perfection in others as a prerequisite to relationship with us only when our own perfection is complete.

We become so accustomed to people in the world being overly concerned about our performance and what we are doing, that we bring wrong thinking into our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We think God is the way the world is, and He is not. The fear of being rejected (or not being accepted) is one of the major hindrances to our succeeding at being ourselves.

As we step out to be all we can be in Christ, we will make some mistakes - everyone does. But it takes the pressure off of us when we realize that God is expecting us to do the best we can. He is not expecting us to be perfect (totally without flaw). If we were as perfect as we try to be, we would not need a Savior. I believe God will always leave a certain number of defects in us, just so we will know how much we need Jesus every single day.

A gap is a space between two things. There is a gap, a space between us and God put there by our imperfections and sins. God is perfect and completely holy. He can only fellowship with those who are like Him. That is why we come to Him through Christ. Jesus is just like His Father.

Jesus stands in the gap between God's perfection and our imperfection. He continually intercedes for us because we continually need it. Jesus came to us as both the Son of God and the Son of Man. He is the mediator between the two parties - us and God. Through Him, we come into agreement and fellowship with the Father. In Him we are acceptable to God.

God accepts us because we are believers in His Son Jesus Christ. If we believe the lies of Satan, we spend our lives struggling and in frustration. Our abilities are crippled, and we never succeed at being ourselves.

If we spend years on the performance/acceptance treadmill, it is hard to get off of it. It becomes a way of living. It affects our thoughts, perceptions and decisions.

Many people would rather stay on the performance/acceptance treadmill than step off it and have to face the possibility of failure. Others feel so bad about themselves due to their past failures that they won't even try to start a new way of life.

When people are addicted to feeling good about themselves only when the perform well, they are in for a life of misery. It is a cycle of trying and failing, trying harder and failing again, feeling guilty and rejected, trying again and failing again, and on and on.

God does not want us on the performance/acceptance treadmill. He wants us to feel good about ourselves whether we perform perfectly or not. He doesn't want us to be filled with pride, but He certainly did not create us to reject ourselves...If we perform poorly, we can be sorry and hope to do better the next time. We can try to improve our performance (our "do"), but our worth and value (our "who") cannot be determined by our performance.

People who have problems in this are perceive things wrongly. If they are expecting to be rejected when their performance is not good, they react as though they were already rejected - which confuses those in relationship with them.

We receive through the act of believing; what we believe is what we receive, and nothing else. If we don't believe in the grace, mercy and favor of God, then we cannot receive it. If we believe we must do everything perfectly right to be accepted by God, then we will reject His love even though He is not rejecting us. This wrong thinking and believing keeps us trapped. It is like a treadmill that is going so fast we cannot seem to find a place to get off.

You and I pressure ourselves when we have unrealistic expectations, when we expect ourselves to be perfect. God does not want us to live under this kind of pressure.