Foolproof Self-Worth [Part 3]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Neither rebellion nor religion will ever lead you into self-love.

Both will lead you to hate yourself more and more. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, Foolproof, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

So as you listen to today's message, go deeper if we're happy to send you today's special offer. Just contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. We'll have more on this special offer later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. My favorite scripture, the story that we call the story of the prodigal son. The story really of two sons and a lavish prodigal father. And this younger son who, in Luke 15, we won't turn there, but this younger son who squanders his inheritance. He asks his father for the inheritance early, shames his family, goes to a faraway land and just rebels and lives in fleshly riotous living. And squanders his money amongst the prostitutes and his friends take advantage of them.

They're not even friends at all. And he's left all alone and hungry and destitute. And for a Jewish boy, the unthinkable started associating with a pig farmer.

The pigs were unclean animals to him and he was so hungry he wanted to eat the pig slop. And in the midst of all of this, as Jesus tells the story, this boy came to himself. He suddenly just came to himself. It's a picture of the moment of the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

It's a picture of the moment of the way in which God reaches us. It says that he came to himself. What he meant by that is that all of a sudden he said to himself, he said, what am I doing here amongst the pigs? He said, my father is wealthy and he has servants in his house that are living far better than this.

What am I doing here? In other words, there was just a little piece of him that began to go, you know, why am I here because this is not who I really am. See, repentance in our life doesn't come because somebody condemns you. Repentant comes when somebody blesses you. Repentance comes by the kindness of God, the Scripture says.

It comes when you begin to see that your life is destined for something more than it is right now. In fact of the matter, if you want somebody in your life or in your own life to really be able to repent, the greatest thing that could ever happen would be they love their own soul. See, the seeker of wisdom, the one who loves instruction, the one who loves to grow emotionally and psychologically and intellectually and spiritually, the one who wants that is someone who in great measure loves his or her own life. And that prodigal son, I remember studying that story and just thinking, you know, the problem with this boy is that he didn't care about anybody but himself. And I probably preached it like that for years, but I remember one day just meditating on that story years ago. And as I was just thinking on about it and literally saying to myself, well he didn't care about anybody but himself, I heard a voice. And I've come to recognize the promptings of the Spirit within me in these revelatory moments, you know, everybody gets them differently, but God speaks to you from His Word and He'll just speak to you about it in a moment. You ever have that happen? You're just studying the Scripture and all of a sudden it's like a light just turns on.

You just see something like you've never seen it before. And I heard a voice. It was the prompting of the Spirit within me as I was saying, that boy didn't care about anybody but himself.

And I just heard a voice say, he didn't care about himself. Now you think about this for a moment. Would you just think of somebody that you love, maybe it's a grandchild or maybe it's a parent or your own sibling or friend or child or spouse.

Somebody that you just love with all your heart. Would you just get them in your mind for just a moment? Think of one person. Now, would you ever in a million years encourage that person to shame their family, rebel against their father, go into riotous living in a faraway land and waste all that they have on prostitutes and sin and the flesh. Would you ever want them to wind up in that place? Would you ever encourage somebody you love to do that?

Of course not. Who would you do that to? You'd have to hate somebody to do that to them. Because those whom you love, you protect. We protect the things that we love. We cherish what we love.

We treasure what we love. If you see someone that is in self-destructive behavior, or you wonder about some of the issues in your own life, you ask yourself, is this the kind of thing that anyone would do to someone that they love? And you're left with the answer, no, this would be what you do to someone that you despise. If somebody is already full of self-hatred, beloved, heed this well. You will never draw them into repentance by adding condemnation to those who already loathe their own lives. This is why the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

It is hope for a whole new way of seeing life. Folly is a symptom of hatred of self. Self-love, on the other hand, produces obedience and diligence and self-control.

Self-absorption, which in its strongest form is a disorder called narcissism, produces fleshly living and self-centered living, because the wounded soul, the ego that is empty or hurt, is always requiring attention. But when you love your own soul, you don't have to think about yourself and you don't have to center your life around yourself. To love yourself doesn't mean to center everything around yourself.

It means to be free enough that you can give and love and serve and care about others as you care about your own life. The problem with our culture and the problem with that prodigal son was not that he loved himself too much, but he was too absorbed with himself because he didn't actually love himself. You can't help anybody else, really, until you love and accept your own life. Leanne Payne, author and counselor, has put it well, if we are busy hating the soul that God loves and is in the process of straightening out, we cannot help others. Our minds will be riveted on ourselves, not on Christ who has our wholeness.

When we hate the self, we are self-conscious rather than God-conscious. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Seeing as Jesus Sees, Pastor Alan Wright's newest book just released. When you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's new beautiful hardcover book. And as an additional thank you for your support, you'll also receive a free six-week companion video series from Pastor Alan along with a study guide and a daily reading plan.

You'll start Seeing as Jesus Sees, and you're going to love the view. We're happy to share it with you at our cost of only $15. Visit PastorAlan.org to get your Seeing as Jesus Sees product bundle.

When you're there, you'll notice that you can opt to make a donation above the cost of the bundle, and we would sure appreciate your support. This broadcast that shares the power of the good news of Jesus Christ nationwide every day is only possible through the generosity of listeners like you. Visit PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. If you want to know how it is you feel toward yourself, maybe just start with one of the greatest descriptions of love, of course, ever penned. 1 Corinthians 13, Paul said, Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast, is not arrogant or rude. It does not sit on its own way. It's not irritable or resentful.

It does not rejoice at wrongdoing. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Love is patient. So, are you patient with yourself? Or are you quick to condemn yourself? Love is kind. Are you kind to yourself?

Are you merciful? Or do you brood over your own flaws? I like the way the New International Version puts it, Love keeps no record of wrongs. Well, this is one of the real marks of love. Love doesn't have an interest in keeping and rehearsing everything that's been done wrong.

You can know you really love somebody when you just find yourself forgetting all the wrongs because you're so focused on how much you do love the person. How do you treat yourself? Do you keep a record of your wrongs? Do you brood over your regrets? Do you find yourself being shaped so much by your own failures?

Or do you know that you're a new creature in Christ? There's a cycle I think to this process in which we hate ourselves and the world sets it up. It's not a world that's set up to have you have authentic love of yourself. The world is set up for either a superficial, artificial move towards self-absorption and merely satisfying appetites of the flesh, which I'm saying is not self-love at all.

Or it is set up to constantly inform you of why you should not like yourself at all. The problem begins with this for all of us, the world is founded by God on justice. God is just. I don't care what anybody says, everybody believes that there's a right and a wrong. Just break in line in front of somebody, you'll find out.

Just get in front of somebody in traffic, you'll find out. And everybody believes in right and wrong. And if you believe in any measure of justice, it means very simply that what is good should be rewarded and what is bad should be punished. And if you don't have that, you don't have justice.

And this is just the world we live in. And I would make an appeal to believer or non-believer or seeker or whoever you might be, whatever religion, that you do have somewhere a notion of justice. And knowing that there is an underlying design of justice that good should be rewarded and bad should be punished, we are aware, either consciously or unconsciously, of what is bad about our lives.

And when we see something that is wrong, we know that it should be better. And when we have no success in correcting it, that is living by the law, then we condemn ourselves. And this really is the issue biblically. Because God came in the person of Jesus Christ to save you, not condemn you. So when you're in Christ, if there be any condemnation, it is your own sin nature talking to you, or it is the very voice of hell.

And it's a problem that John articulated in 1 John 3, 19. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our hearts before Him. For whenever our heart condemns us. So what is it that condemns us? Not God. Our own hearts. But whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart.

And He knows everything. Beloved, John says, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God. And whatever we ask we receive from Him because we keep His commandments and do what pleases Him. What he's saying is that the whole genesis of a beautiful, powerful, prayerful, obedient life with God, is that your own heart doesn't condemn you. What I'm saying is that God, who paid an infinite price to save you, is broken hearted to see you condemn yourself. And so much of the battle, therefore, is not letting our own hearts condemn us. But when there is self-condemnation, it is often followed by self-curse. I would say in our family, this would be the number one thing when our kids were little you were likely to get disciplined for, and that is cursing yourself.

We had no room for that whatsoever. I have zero tolerance for self-curse because it is an expression that follows out of a form of self-condemnation. And I'm talking about when we're so quick to say, I stink at this. Oh, I can't do that. Oh, I probably won't be able to succeed at this. And even when something's going well, we say, well, yeah, it's going well now, knock on wood.

Well, yeah, I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And all these things that we say are just expressions, you see, of something that began with the seeds of self-condemnation. And that self-curse is often followed by some kind of self-sabotage, and this is unseen most of the time.

You feel like you're coming up against some invisible ceiling. You rise up to a certain place, and you just can't seem to go any further than that. And usually it's because there's something within us that thinks that we're just not the person that would be able to do that. And so we limit ourselves, and we sometimes just sabotage ourselves.

And sometimes in our relationships, even when things are going well, and we just find a way to sabotage things, you ever wonder why that's going on? And when it plays itself out to its fullness, self-hatred shows up as self-punishment. Withholding blessings from yourself or outright hurting yourself. Listen, precious ones.

The studies now show that one out of five girls is either actively or experimenting with cutting herself. The answer is to have a heart that does not condemn yourself, but radically accepts yourself and loves your life. There is so much at stake. Self-acceptance is born, and only born, from the acceptance of Christ. Because none of us have a parent or an authority in our life that loves us perfectly. There would be some doubt, some place to that, wondering, am I really loved? But in Christ, when you find the grace of God, you discover not an inward righteousness, but the righteousness of Jesus. And find a forgiveness that is not rooted in your merits, but rooted in the merits of Jesus. And when you see the gospel, and you see what God has done for you in Jesus, then it changes everything about who you really see yourself as being in this world. Let me put it plainly like this, without Christ, without some way of knowing yourself radically loved and radically accepted, you're left with one of two choices.

Either to try to call the sin in your life something other than sin, and pretend it's not there, push it under the surface, mask it with an addiction, call it morally relative, whatever you might want to do with it, so that you don't have to face it, think about it, or even acknowledge how wrong it is. And that's one pathway, it's called rebellion. But there's another pathway, and it's called religion. And it is where you decide that in order to be accepted and loved, you need to do everything right, you need to please people, you need to do the right things in order to make God love you, you need to make other people love you so that you'll finally get that approval.

But what I'm saying to you today is that neither rebellion nor religion will ever lead you into self-love, both will lead you to hate yourself more and more. And the person who comes finally to the place of saying, I can't help myself, and I need to trust in what God's done for me, you come to the Gospel. And the Gospel announces something so beautiful, it's mind-bending in its ramifications. It is God saying to you that He loves you so much that He wanted to remain just while exercising His mercy. That God refused to say, I'm not going to become an unjust God and let sin go unpunished, but I'm not going to become a God who's not merciful because I am the God who is full of love and mercy.

My steadfast love endures from generation to generation and I can do no other. So how could it be that God would be both just and loving? God came in the person of Jesus Christ who lived a sinless life and died the death that we should have died so that in the cross of Jesus Christ all of your sin was punished. So God executed justice through the cross and Jesus bore your sin. And when you accept Christ, what happens is that God does a miracle.

He makes you into a son or a daughter. You are born again. You're a new creature in Christ. You are a new entity. You are your same person physically, but you are spiritually brand new. You are an heir and a co-heir with Christ. And God is just in blessing your life because He has already put the punishment on Jesus and He has credited Jesus' righteousness to you so God is just in showing you love.

He is both just and He's merciful and what this means for your life is that you, instead of despising the life that God has bought with the Son's price of the cross, instead of disdaining the life that He's created and made and put a glorious destiny into, you can, without boasting, say thank you God for this life. Thank you for this mind. Thank you for this body. Thank you for this destiny. You can laugh about your failures. You can look to your future with hope. You can fill your days with confidence and you can wind up saying in the very best sense of the word, I love myself. And when you do, it changes every single thing about your life. God does not want you living your life motivated by fear but by faith. And if you loathe your own life and are constantly trying to fix it to make yourself acceptable, it's a life of fear. And God wants you to know that you've been found accepted in the beloved and therefore you can accept yourself in Christ and pursue with all your heart and mind the wisdom of God.

You can want to prosper in the best sense of that word, to thrive and flourish, not because you need to prove something, but because you're so loved you want to make a difference in somebody's life. Whoever is pursuing wisdom loves his own soul. And that's the gospel. Alan Wright. In a wonderful way to conclude this series on foolproof and today's teaching, foolproof self-worth.

Please stay with us. Alan is back in the studio sharing a part in Good News Thought for the day in just a moment. Seeing as Jesus Sees, Pastor Alan Wright's newest book just released. When you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's new beautiful hardcover book. And as an additional thank you for your support, you'll also receive a free six-week companion video series from Pastor Alan along with a study guide and a daily reading plan.

You'll start Seeing as Jesus Sees and you're going to love the view. We're happy to share it with you at our cost of only $15. Visit PastorAlan.org to get your Seeing as Jesus Sees product bundle.

When you're there, you'll notice that you can opt to make a donation above the cost of the bundle and we would sure appreciate your support. This broadcast that shares the power of the good news of Jesus Christ nationwide every day is only possible through the generosity of listeners like you. Visit PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Back here in the studio with Alan Wright sharing our parting good news thought for the day. And Alan, I can't think of a better way to end than that because, you know, if you've been listening to the whole series about wisdom, one might think, well, I got to get all that wisdom before I can have self-worth. But really, it's just the process of seeking the wisdom that really proves that you do love yourself.

Exactly. It draws you unto Christ. And people want to know, well, how do I accept myself?

Here's how. Accept Christ. Because the more that you accept Christ, the more that you really believe that Jesus took the punishment for your sin, the more you know that, then and only then will you be able to accept yourself by saying, though I'm not deserving, I am forgiven. Though I didn't earn it, I have been given the righteousness of Jesus. And therefore, I can look upon my life not only as meaningful, but as holy and clean and purposeful. In other words, the more you accept Christ, the more you can accept yourself. And the more you accept yourself, the more you honor and glorify your Creator. Today's Good News message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.