Self Esteem

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Self-Esteem

Read for This Week's Study: Ps. 100:3, Acts 17:24 - 28, Rom. 12:3, Matt. 22:39, 2 Samuel 9, Luke 15, and Eph. 4:23 - 32.

1 Peter 2:9 "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light"

Diminished self-esteem is a modern plague. It often is brought to the counseling or pastoral offices either by itself or in association with such full-blown problems as substance-related abuse, depression, or eating disorders. In everyday existence, low self-esteem may never reach clinical proportions, but it almost invariably hurts relationships and impairs performance in most areas of life.

Perhaps the main reason people suffer more than ever from this problem is the media, which often portrays its celebrities as larger than life, leaving others to feel their own inadequacy in contrast to the icons paraded before them.

The idea of self-esteem as presented in the Bible has a different perspective. Conventional psychology sees self-esteem as the evaluation someone makes of their own attributes and characteristics based on their observation of themselves and on others' input. The Bible offers at least two additional components: What humans are by origin, in Gen. 1:26, 27, and what God thinks of and grants to each person, in John 3:16. When we add these components, so much regarding self-esteem can change.

Genesis 1:26-27 "Then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

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