I’ve never really been all that great at anything, ever. I was an average high school basketball player, a below-average football player, and just better enough than most of my peers at several other things to maintain a sense of pride and self-worth, one which gave me a deceptive sense of significance and value at the time but has also been a driving, destructive force in my life, now that I’ve recognized it. I never really thought there were significant things from my childhood that have deeply impacted me today, but as I look back, there are fingerprints from my past all over my insecurities and weaknesses.
The same stupid reasons I played football in high school – to gain status, to feel like I was part of something bigger, to please people and feel like a more significant person – are the same reasons I still do a lot of things. I was never particularly good at basketball either, but I needed it in my life to feel like I wasn’t just taking up space in this world and so people would value me.
We all have similar stories from our childhoods I’m sure, and continue to do the same thing to this day, whether we recognize it or not. Whether it’s our skill at something, our charismatic personality, or otherwise, we all have something we use to build ourselves up, something we use to validate ourselves.
Probably once a week and in some environments more than others, I leave a social interaction or a performance or work situation feeling “off” or even depressed because I didn’t feel like I’d left the impression that I’d wanted. I can almost still hear the middle school kids laughing at me in the corner and talking over all the things that aren’t quite right about me as I leave those interactions. My value doesn’t even come from what THEY think about me but what I think they think about me.
Despite many different seasons of brokenness in my short time as a Christian, I have never been more aware of my need for Jesus than I am right now. Not just because of the sin in my life, or my need for the Spirit’s power in my life and ministry, or even because of my growing awareness of the imperfection of even my closest relationships, though all of those are incredibly true.
But because I am a woefully incomplete person with a complete lack of identity and worth without Jesus Christ.
This makes the Gospel incredibly beautiful but incredibly messy at the same time. Because the longer I’m alive, the more I realize my need for my identity to be completely wrapped up in Jesus and it takes a large amount of pain and many humbling experiences to enter into those areas of my life.
But every once in awhile I also get to experience the life, joy and freedom that comes from being hidden with Christ - the value of who I am not being dependent on my job, my relationships, or anything else, but by putting my faith in Jesus and in the power of His death and resurrection to forgive my sins and give me value as a person, simply because I am a chosen son of my Creator God. And though the way of the Cross is difficult, what a wonderful alternative this is to trying to make my own way and clumsily attempting to validate myself.
“For He chose us in Him to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ – to the praise of his glorious grace.” Ephesians 1:3-4
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