True Spirituality by Chip Ingram

Author:Chip Ingram
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Books

Seeing Yourself as God Sees You

The first ten years I was a Christian, I received great training in the “how-tos” of the Christian life. I learned to pray, get into God’s Word, share my testimony, share the Gospel, and serve others by leading Bible studies and doing discipleship. But the thing that was missing in my life was an accurate view of myself—from God’s perspective. I caught it in bits and pieces as I read the Bible and studied, but I had no clear understanding of how God viewed me or how to live out that truth. As a result, I spent the first decade of my Christian life trying to please God through my performance. I read, studied, served, and never felt like I measured up to God’s standard. I would swing from feelings of condemnation and discouragement to ones of pride and self-righteousness depending on my performance. It wasn’t until I discovered that I was already pleasing to God and didn’t need to perform for God that I began to develop a sober self-assessment.

In my case, my insecurities led me to project and think too highly of myself, while the woman I married erred on the opposite side of the equation. In our marriage, Theresa and I found ourselves on a journey to learn how God actually sees us so that we could learn to communicate and actually make our marriage work. My inflated view of myself produced dysfunctions in our relationship just as her lack of self-worth and self-esteem did.

Early in our marriage, Theresa and I received some excellent marital counseling by a wise and godly pastor, who also worked part-time as a counselor. He gave us the tools and the understanding we needed to solve the day-to-day problems in our communication and relationship. But his real gift to us was helping us move beneath the surface and dig into the core issues of our identity in Christ. Dr. Richard Meyer helped Theresa and me learn “who we really were” in the eyes of God. He taught us how to have a sober self-assessment—not only of ourselves but of each other. As we learned together, our relationship began to blossom in ways that we never imagined.

Dr. Meyer created 3x5 cards for Theresa and me to review to help us see ourselves as God sees us in five critical areas of our life. I remember sitting on the couch early in the morning and reviewing these cards out loud with Theresa. We would review the cards daily, and little by little, our thinking began to change. Following are the five cards we reviewed for years, passed on to our children and countless others to help see themselves “according to the measure of faith given them by God.”

Let me encourage you to read over the cards out loud, slowly and thoughtfully, every day for six weeks. Don’t even try to memorize the cards or the verses; just slowly and audibly speak the words and ask God to help you

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