Unstuck - Overcoming a Warped Self-Image, Part 1

Do you ever wake up and realize you just don't like you? You don't like how you look. You don't like how you feel. You don't like how you work. You feel like you don't measure up. All of us go through times like that.

It's called a warped self-image. Today we're going to learn how to overcome a warped self-image. Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram. And today we're kicking off his helpful series, Unstuck, based in the book of Ephesians. For the next handful of messages, Chip will help us get a biblical perspective toward our most painful circumstances and explain how to overcome whatever life throws our way. But before we get going, to help you get the most out of this series, let me encourage you to download Chip's message notes. They contain his outline, scripture references, and much more. You can get them under the broadcast tab at livingontheedge.org.

App listeners tap fill in notes. Okay, here's Chip to begin this series with his message, overcoming a warped self-image. If you have a Bible, go to Ephesians chapter one. Mirrors are very powerful things. You can kind of think something about yourself and walk into the bathroom and go, oh my, it's not exactly what I thought. Or the lighting I've learned, I have to travel a lot, and the lighting in the bathrooms in airplanes is extraordinarily revealing.

It is not soft light. You can go in there to brush your teeth and age 10 years or just see what you've never seen before. But there's not just physical mirrors that are powerful. There's mirrors that we all have. It's the mirrors of a little boy looking up when he does something, and it's a mom's disapproval.

She didn't even say anything. It's the mirror of going to school early on and thinking, wow, don't you really look cool? And you realize about three minutes later, you don't not only look cool, but people are laughing at you. It's the mirrors of disapproval from your spouse. It's the mirror of a boss who says, you don't measure up. It's the mirror of someone who says, you're cool.

You're lazy. You'll never amount to anything. It's the mirrors of the media that say that if you don't have this perfect body in this perfect way, that you really aren't acceptable. And there's all kind of mirrors that over time have told you this is who you are. Now what I want to tell you is how you think about yourself and who you really are can be drastically different. I had an experience early on. It must have been my last year in college. By this time, I finally was a growing Christian. It really took me a while to get going, but I was spending time in God's Word. I was in a Bible study.

I was teaching a little bit with some other college kids, and I played basketball in college, and we had a year-end tournament, and we had lost the game in the tournament, so the last game in the tournament, and it was in another city, and so most all of the team members, after you lose a game in the last season, all the rules go out, and everyone was going to go party and do some wild and crazy things to drown their sorrows. And as a believer in the Lord Jesus, that wasn't my agenda, and there was a cheerleader, not a girlfriend, no relationship of any kind, but she did not want to do that scene either, and I found myself in a little coffee shop talking to Marilyn for one of those, like, three-hour conversations. It was after the game, and, you know, it was just a quiet little coffee shop, and I actually, you know, never talked to her because she was very intimidating externally. She was a cheerleader.

She had long blonde hair, straight white teeth, beautiful buoys, 3.7 grade average. I mean, it was just like, I mean, you know, she would never want to talk to someone like me. And so we found ourselves in a little coffee shop, and we were talking, and I just thought, I mean, she's like, you know, the 1% of the gene pool.

You know, how does God make certain people like this, and then there's the rest of us? And I remember talking to her, and after a couple hours, I was, like, shaking my head and saw the dissonance between objective reality and how we can view ourself. As I listened for two hours, I listened to a girl who hated herself. I listened to a girl who objectively thought she was ugly.

I listened to a girl that didn't date very much because she thought all these guys that were asking her out all the time, which were many, and she said no, is they were patronizing her because they wouldn't ever really like her, and if she went out with them, then they would get to know her and realize the kind of person she is, and she would never get a second date, so she said no to most of the first ones. Of course, what happened? She was perceived as being this stuck-up beautiful blonde, and I listened to her, and I thought, 3.7, well, you'd understand. You know, perfection is 4.0. I'm a failure. She was in one of the most rigorous places. I was at a school, they trained dental hygienists, and it was really hard to get in, and there was five or six people for every slot, and of course she got it and was at the top of the class, so on the one hand, this girl has everything going for her that you can imagine, you know, from brains to looks, and on the other, her perception of herself was ugly, unworthy, failure, unacceptable. See, over time, some people had given her a reflection of some mirrors that said, Marilyn, you don't measure up.

You're unlovable, and so how did she respond to people? It framed her whole life, and I want to encourage you by the fact that all of us have had some warped mirrors in our past. All of us have insecurities and some fears of relating to others. We all have warped mirrors. Over the years, I've seen this in pastoral counseling and not always to the extreme as a Marilyn, but everybody has some pictures of herself that really don't add up. We experience distortions that affect our lives, our relationships, because of mirrors past and present.

It's a lot like when you're a little kid and you grow up, it's like, you ever been to one of those fun houses where you go to, you're getting one mirror and it looks like you're like eight feet wide, and then you run to the next mirror and it looks like you're a toothpick and eleven feet tall, and then you go to another mirror and you go to another mirror, and it shows you all these different mirrors and then there's sort of the regular one that's quote normal? You need to understand there have been people, experiences, trauma, rejection, media that have happened in your life that have implanted little warped mirrors that have come together to tell you who you think you are. One author put it this way, it was very insightful, he says, we are not what we think we are, we are not even what others think we are, we are what we think others think we are. We're going to talk about overcoming a warped self-image, and a self-image is the mental picture or concept of oneself as a person, it's your own idea of who you are, your sense of worth, it's the composite picture of all those mirrors that have come together over time, and you get stuck here, you get stuck here, I mean we had a whole movement, unfortunately the self-esteem movement was built on, we wanted everyone to feel good about themselves based on almost nothing, but what I want to do is I want to spend some time and we're going to look at sort of the problem and here's the outline in your mind, we're going to talk about how did you, how did I, how do we as people develop our self-image, how do those mirrors come together where you have a picture, a composite picture in your mind of who you think you are, then what I want to do is show you briefly what's the impact of that if it's inaccurate, and then we're going to get to the really good news where God's going to say there is a mirror that's accurate, there's a mirror that's accurate 100% of the time, and you're going to have these kind of mirrors, they don't go away do they, you have neighbors, church members, people, sons, daughters, friends, you're always getting perceptions from people, and God's going to say here's a mirror, and I'm going to show you who I not only think you are, but who I made you to be, I'm going to show you that you're fearfully and wonderfully made, and I'm going to show you that with your warts and your hurts and your background and your baggage, I'm going to say some things about those of you that are in Christ that will shatter the warped mirrors of your past. Now what you know from all the research is that the most powerful influence in your life about your self-perception is your parents, your family of origin, your mom, your dad, or lack thereof. The second most powerful thing we learn over time is that authority and role models as well as peers over time, people that you look up to, people that have leverage, it can be an older brother and sister, it can be a sports hero, it can be a pastor, we all have people in our lives that we look up to, and so what they think carries more are our peers, there's a season especially in the teenage years where what our peers think, and then you have the media sending you messages all the time, all the time telling you this is how you need to look, this is what you need to drive, this is what's cool, this is what's out, this is what's in, this is the kind of school you need to go to, these kind of people are really wonderful, these kind of people are not very wonderful.

You need to be so tall, you need to be so skinny, you need to own this, you need to do that, and then all the while God has given us a conscience and the conscience inside of us is built to say this is right and this is wrong, but your conscience gets trained, and so your conscience gets educated and trained, so some people have an overdeveloped conscience where they feel very guilty about things that God says are not wrong, and so they live with overwhelming guilt and shame, often early on this comes from a family of origin background or from an ultra legalistic view of life, on the other hand some people's conscience it's underdeveloped and they can use people, abuse people, not even feel bad about it, but your conscience and the condemnation, lack of condemnation, if it's not accurately attuned to scripture, it sends you messages as well. All this together then you have a world system that's very interesting, and the world system basically says it's about your appearance, your performance, and your status. So the world is going to tell you that how you look, what you can do, and who do you know, right?

I mean, isn't that? So for example, if you would take, I only brought one, often I bring five or six magazines, so I decided not to bring some of the usual ones, but I thought I would start with, if you go out of the grocery store, every time you go out of the grocery store you need to understand that the messages of the media of the world are screaming at you and saying to you, this is how you need to look, this is what you need to have, this is what makes you secure or significant or worthwhile. And so People magazine are going to tell us things about, oh, those are the beautiful people, right?

And Forbes is going to say, if you get more zeros, then you're really a somebody. And Cosmo or Seventeen or Vogue or us are going to say, if you can look like this, right? And so I have, you know, if you're on the first few rows here, I picked up today, just a little at the, went to the grocery store, this is Vogue magazine, you have two beautiful women on each side, and then you have a guy whose full time job is to create abs. No one gets bodies like this without a lot of money, surgery, and your full time job is in the gym. And yet, so I walk out, and I'm just, you know, I'm like, I only got three small kids I'm taking care of as a woman, or I'm a seventeen year old, and I look at seventeen or us, and what I'm told is, guys, that's acceptable. This is one percent of the gene pool with a lot of money and a lot of time and touched up pictures. But you're fed that, every commercial, every billboard, every magazine. And then if they really want to sell you something, if you're a woman, they have someone who looks like this.

This does not exist. No one can be that's beautiful. I mean, this is hours of makeup.

There's a fan blowing. This is, I mean, the cheekbones have been, you know, raised by the computer. I mean, no one can actually look this beautiful in this kind of light. But just so the guys don't feel out of it, does that man look absolutely vampire? Is this man sexy or not, huh?

He is a hunk. And if you wear this cologne, the women will come after you. And then page after page after page in this magazine is of people who, if you only looked like them, then you'd be a somebody. All I want you to see is you are living in a system that rewards maybe one or two percent of the entire population that focuses on things you can't control and tells you resounding messages from the day you were born, you're unacceptable, you don't measure up, you're unwanted, you're not significant, and you're not secure. And even as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, whose Spirit dwells in us, left to ourselves with our minds not renewed, and without a sensitivity to block some of those messages, we can love God, think things are going exactly the way we think we think He wants us to go, and we can spend our time and our energy and our money performing and seeking status and doing all the kind of things that those messages say to fill holes in your hearts of a warped self-image, thinking, if you know what, if I could only look like that, if I could just get that surgery, if I could just drive that car, if I could just have more of those bags with the little designs so people at the airport know I'm a really important person, if I could just get the kind of watch that people understood, if we could just get this remodeled, you know what, if we could just go to vacation in these kind of places, if I just got to know someone, if our kids could just get SAT scores, if they could go to prestigious college, if my kid could get on the traveling team, why, why? Because there's deep holes in who you think about yourself and who I think about myself, and we are searching for significance and security and acceptance in how we look, what we can do or perform, and the status that we achieve. And we achieve status by our wealth, by our notoriety, by our education, by the people that we know, and then what we can do is we can take all of those and sort of baptize them and bring them into the Christian community, and then we know really cool Christian people, and it's by how much of the Bible that we know, and it's, right?

You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Before we hear the rest of Chip's message, let me remind you that we are a listener-supported ministry. Your regular, consistent gifts help us create this program, develop new resources, and encourage pastors globally. Prayerfully consider becoming a monthly partner today. Then go to livingontheedge.org to give a gift.

Thanks so much for your help. Well, here again is Chip. The impact of a warped self-image is insecurity and inferiority. It produces a performance orientation.

Anybody know any fellow Christians that are workaholics? Why? Why would you be driven to work, work, work, go, go, go, achieve, achieve, achieve? Because that's your worth. For others, it produces withdrawal.

I mean, how many times as a woman, how many times are you going to see this and realize, you know what? I don't think I can ever compete with that. I don't have a full-time chef. I don't have a full-time trainer.

I don't have people that can give me surgeries when I start to sag. And you just withdraw, and you say, I just can't go there. I quit.

I give up. In the Christian community, we're not immune to any of this. And so our responses are denial. Often our responses are we compensate. We do things like give stuff to our kids to make us feel like we're successful. We have addictive behavior.

Now as Christians, often it's the same as the world. It might be prescription drugs or alcohol, but often it's, you know what? It's eating.

It's going to the refrigerator. It's ministry. It's people-pleasing. It's co-dependency. There's a lot of unhealth and dysfunction that become sort of respectable Christian sins. But you know what? You don't experience the power of God. You don't experience the love of God, and we reproduce the dysfunction in our own children and grandchildren.

And so we have these unfulfilled longings for significance and unconditional acceptance that results in people that are very, very unhappy. Now here's the thing. Here's the thing.

Here's the irony of God. I don't know the three people on the front of that magazine. I don't know their names, and I purposely didn't go with the big stars. And I could name, you know, we could say, well, who are the people that are the big baseball stars, football stars, basketball stars, and whatever reality shows coming in?

Whatever names are not changed, five years will be different names. All I can tell you, the 1% of the gene pool that's making 10 to 12 to $20 million a year, who are the most beautiful people in the year, have the most prestigious jobs, and whether that's entertainment or whether that's business or whether that's CEOs, you just look at the pattern of suicide, divorce, relational fallout, misery, unhappiness, and addictions. So what we all, consciously or unconsciously, are chasing, the 1% that have it, tell us it produces no happiness.

It produces no peace. So what I want you to understand here too is that's not just sort of psychological stuff. There is an enemy to your soul called Satan, who led a thirst of the angels, who are now called demons, and his primary MO is lies.

You don't need to have stuff move in your house. You don't need to have visual manifestations of demonic activity. You don't need to be in places where it's overseas, where it's bizarre, where demonic activity is occurring. I will tell you what. As long as we believe lies given to us gently about performance, status, significance, and success, that you need to look like that or perform like that or own that, you know what?

You'll be glad to stay undercover and let us chase the wrong things and ruin our lives trying to fill these holes in our warped self-image. So there's a spiritual battle going on. When we're going to talk about making some of the changes and renewing your mind and getting a new focus and seeing how God sees you, I just want to warn you, it won't be just some new thinking. It's going to be resistance to you disciplining yourself to learn who you really are in Christ. There'll be some discipline to say, you know something?

There's certain things I can't watch anymore. There's certain people that maybe I shouldn't hang out because it always drives me to these same places of comparison, these same places of condemnation, these same places of I don't measure up. I'm unworthy. Now the great thing is is that God has some amazing good news, awesome good news, powerful good news. He's going to say that I want you to see yourself the way I see you. Notice at the very top of your notes, it's Romans chapter 12 verse 3. What does God say about self-image? He says that you're not inferior. He says you're not worthless, you're not insignificant. He says I made you exactly the way I made you. You are unique, you're valuable, you're loved, you're accepted if you're in Jesus Christ and here's the deal. Here's his command. For through the grace of God given to me, the apostle Paul would write, I say to every man, every person among you, not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think is to have sound judgment as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.

Like in your notes, underline the word think every time it comes up. He's just told you to offer your body as a living sacrifice, verse 1. He said stop being conformed to the pattern of this world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind so you can experience God's will, that it's good, acceptable and perfect. Now what he says is you need to have a right view of yourself. Don't think too high of yourself, don't think too low of yourself, think, think, think and then that word sober judgment, the word for sober, same root word as think.

All significant life change begins in your thinking, not your behavior, not even in your attitudes, not even emotions or trying hard. As a man thinks in his heart, so he is. The mind set on the flesh is death, the mind set on the spirit is life and peace. Set your mind, Colossians 3, on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, where Christ is. Chapter 4 of Ephesians, what's he say?

Take off the old man, have your mind renewed, put on the new man. Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking. He says think accurately about yourself. The opposite word, this word for sober is used, the opposite of is people that are drunk, they're intoxicated. When you're drunk or intoxicated, what's true of you? You have a warped perception. Hey, you know what?

It's only four stories down, hey watch me, I can go on this ledge. Duh, dumb, perception. See, when you're drunk, your mind is influenced in a way where reality is blurred. And what God is saying is, for some of us, your self-image has been warped. And it's been warped by the sort of the spiritual, emotional, media and family alcohol so that when you think about who you really are, it's wrong.

It's not true. And he says, I want you to think accurately about yourself according to the measure of faith. And this is not a subjective faith.

Here he's talking about the objective faith, the truth of scripture. And so here is the mirror. I'm going to share some stories about where we've been and the transformation in our lives.

I can tell you, I'd never opened the Bible until I was 18 years old. And when I began to deal with, and my wife and I began to deal with, the lies that we believed about, you know, my performance is who I am, or you have to look a certain way. One is, in this life, I don't think you ever fully get over it, but when you renew your mind with God's word and you begin to see yourself the way God sees you, and you first think it, and then you believe it, and then you feel it, amazing things happen.

Transformation occurs. A lot of the pull, a lot of the temptation, a lot of the addiction, a lot of the stuff that you deal with, all of a sudden it loses its hold because you break it. You'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free. This is Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and you've been listening to part one of Chip's message, Overcoming a Warped Self-Image, from our series, Unstuck.

Chip will be back shortly to share some helpful application for us to think about. Pain. It's an unfortunate part of the human experience. Whether it's a broken promise, a dysfunctional family relationship, or prejudice, we've all had to deal with being hurt.

So what are we supposed to do when that heartache cripples us to our core? In this insightful series, Chip reveals the hope and restoration that Jesus promises. As he studies the book of Ephesians, Chip will remind us who we are, whose we are, and why our past pain doesn't have to define our futures. To learn more about this series, visit LivingOnTheEdge.org. Well, Chip's back with me in studio, and Chip, you know, I think it's safe to say that we all get stuck at some point in our lives, and when that happens, there are a variety of self-help solutions we could turn to.

So what makes this series different and more beneficial? Well, first of all, Dave, what you said is really true. I mean, it's a multi, multi-billion dollar industry, and as people kind of look at some of the topics or the titles of the messages, you might be led to think that. But this is actually an exposition of the book of Ephesians, chapters 1, 2, and 3. And I studied it for years very, very carefully, and then what I realized is the reason the self-help industry makes so much money and offers so many things to people is they've tapped into the big issues that people struggle with, a poor self-image, shattered dreams, unjust suffering, broken relationships, dysfunctional families.

But what they do is they give a lot of maybe some skills and even some helpful things to sort of cope. The first three chapters of Ephesians says this is who you are. This is who God is.

This is regardless of circumstance, past, relationships. This is who you are in Christ. That's Paul's great word, you're in Christ. And what I help people understand is that you can overcome a warped self-image or a broken relationship or a shattered dream or a dysfunctional family not by trying hard and kind of learning psychobabble, but by understanding how the Spirit of God has changed you and made you, and when you can see yourself as God sees you, those things one by one by one like dominoes begin to dissipate.

So those of you that are theologians even, you want to go verse by verse through some of the greatest theology in all of Scripture? Join me. It's going to be great. Well, I hope you'll join us for every part of this series. And because of how universal this topic is for every believer, let me encourage you to invite a few friends to listen with you, either through the Chip Ingram app or at livingontheedge.org. With that, here again is Chip to share his application for this message.

As we close today's program, let's lean back a little bit and think about what we've just heard. I want to remind you that warped self-images produce an inaccurate view of who you really are. And God's desire, His goal, is to give you a clear, accurate picture, not of how you see yourself, not even how important people see you, but how He sees you. And here's what you need to know is that when you have an inaccurate picture of yourself, it produces some very, very negative outcomes.

No matter what people say, no matter what people have told you, no matter what the peers, the media, your parents, maybe even a traumatic experience, I want to remind you that the accurate view of who you are is what God says. He made you. He loves you.

He cares about you. A lot of what happens in our lives—you, me, I mean, I don't care how long you've been in Christ—these inaccurate views, we compensate. And so some of us become workaholics, and some of us withdraw, and others go into denial.

We compensate. We're going to prove that we're really a somebody. For some of you, as you were listening, a little light went on and you thought, you know what? I think I'm seeing where that addictive behavior came from. And so these outcomes sometimes, instead of being blatant and negative, sometimes they actually turn out fairly positive, like you have this super strong work ethic, or you have an accommodating personality, and everyone loves you, but the truth is you're a people pleaser and you're overextended, or you have this super can-do attitude, and you're the go-to person.

But what people don't know privately is you don't really like yourself, and the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Here's what I want to tell you. Join us for our next broadcast.

We're going to talk about how to get God's view of you, and it is one of the most precious, powerful gifts you'll ever receive. Don't miss it. Thanks, Chip. And I hope our listeners will join us for our next broadcast. Before we go, I want to quickly thank those of you who regularly give to Living on the Edge. You're making a big difference in helping Christians live like Christians. But if you're benefiting from our ministry and haven't started giving yet, let me encourage you to join the Living on the Edge team. Now, you can do that by setting up a recurring donation at livingontheedge.org, or by calling 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003, or visit livingontheedge.org. Atlas News tap donate, and thanks for doing whatever the Lord leads you to do. Well, join us next time as Chip continues his series, Unstuck. Until then, I'm Dave Druey, thanking you for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.