Or Oh gosh, let's see. I think it's. Great. Oh. Hi.
Yeah. I'm uh had something in my eye. And I gotta tell you, you know. The mirrors are so good. to fix stuff that's in your eye because You know, your eye can't look at itself, it has to look in a mirror to do this.
So, it's very helpful. I'm saying this is a good thing. Just give me a second, I think I got this. Uh yeah, here we go.
So, why are we standing in front of the mirror, especially in the men's bathroom at church?
Well, there's a couple reasons. It ties in very closely with what we're talking about today. This series that I've been calling the Pocket Messiah. It's kind of tongue-in-cheek named, but it's still very serious because things that have normal and great utility. Can oftentimes, on the back end of it, turn into sources of kind of seductive dependence.
Now, when it comes to a mirror, I I'm not seductively dependent on a mirror. I mean, it has great utility. It does great stuff. I can do great stuff. But wouldn't you be a little concerned about me if.
You came in and you found me not fixing my eye. Right? Or combing my hair or adjusting my hat. Wouldn't you be a little bit more concerned at me if what you saw was something more like this? Hmm.
Oh. Ah Ah Ah Kind of disturbing, huh? Because there can be a seduction with the mirror. In fact, there's a very famous legendary story, a myth actually, of a guy named Narcissus. And Narcissus, what actually is probably pronounced more like narcissus.
But what Narcissus did was he fell in love with his own image. I mean, he went to get water in the story, presumably. And then looked down at the surface of the water and then realized that who he saw in the reflection of the water was more beautiful and attractive to him than anyone he'd ever met before.
So he was really entranced by the image in the water. It was just a picture of him. It was just an image of him. And so he stood there. And gazed upon his own beautiful appearance, and was so satisfied with that that he built a dependence on looking at himself.
His own reflection. Hmm. Now you would say that's kind of twisted and warped. But there's something that goes on in the internet and with the phones that we use. that start off with great utility.
In terms of reflecting reality, in terms of showing the way things really are, it's very useful. not only for reflecting it to ourselves, But also taking our image and reflecting it to other people. But then, somewhere along the line on the back end of that, we can be seduced. in a narcissistic kind of way. to gaze on our own Appearance.
In fact, this whole syndrome of following in the footsteps of narcissists, well, of narcissists, is called a narcissist. A narcissist, someone who's more enamored with their own appearance, with who they are. And let me just give you what Wikipedia says: what narcissistic personality disorder is, NPD. It says this. Narcissistic personality disorder.
NPD is purse is a personality disorder. Characterized by By a lifelong pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance. An excessive need for admiration and a promoting yourself, hoping to develop worth in other people's eyes. In fact, the side effect is it has a diminished, you create a diminished ability to empathize with other people's feelings. It is this excessive need for admiration, this promoting yourself, hoping to develop worth in other people's eyes.
And this is the back-end danger and seduction. Oh, how we use the internet.
Now we post many things on the internet. And things about us. And we hope that people are informed by that. And that's not any different than writing a letter in olden days and telling what I did with my summer vacation, stuff like that. I mean, it's really it's pretty harmless.
And it's an activity of of just letting other people into our world like a mirror that transmits. It sees us and transmits us accurately. But when we get to the point that we actually are doing these things and posting these things, hoping That people will increase their admiration for who we are. You see a lot of this, for instance, on TikTok.
Some of the self-important TikTok videos that you see. that are characterized by people having exemplary Emotional reactions to injustice and hoping that people see them as justice warriors that way. And a whole host of other things, not just that, but just even interests, or maybe things you cook, or when you put them out, then you share them with people. But what do you normally do when you share these things? If you are being seduced by narcissism, You'll be really hooked on seeing how many.
Views there have been of your personal life you've posted, and not only that, but how many likes, how many likes, how many views. And of course, if you post something that's really important to you and the response is almost zero, You feel like no one appreciates who you are. And actually, you're starting to step into the realm of the narcissistic personality disorder, where you're promoting yourself, I'll quote it again, hoping to develop worth in other people's eyes. That is. the seductive danger.
So when we go to the Internet and we post things, Again, I'll just say I do this all the time too. I post innocent things about who I am because I know there's friends and relatives that live far away from me who don't share that, and it's just a fun way to do that. But when you start developing your sense of worth, based on the response to what you post.
Now you're treading into dangerous land because what you're doing is you're tying your identity and your sense of worth. To a response to what you post online, and that's always going to be a dangerous thing to do. It's going to be something that also tends to shift from day to day based on what you post or what you don't post. It's a dangerous seduction in terms of tying your worth. To how people respond to you online.
Now, it's really no more than just an outgrowth of what you used to do in junior high, or maybe you continue to do, I don't know. Where you wanted to fit into a certain group, you wanted to be appreciated by a certain group, you wanted to be belonging into a certain group. And so you changed your behavior, you changed what you said, how you dressed, I mean, all that stuff, in order that people would love you, so that people would accept you and they would find esteem in you. In fact, Maslow's hierarchy of needs It starts at a very primitive level. There's five levels.
And the lowest level is physiological needs, right? I mean, I need to eat, I need food, I need shelter. That's number one level. Number two is safety.
So wherever I find myself, Can I exist there safely? Is my food safe? Is my housing safe? Is my transiting from one place to another safe? The third level is the one I'm talking about here.
It's really the need for love and belonging. The need for love and belonging. And so If you find yourself tying your worth, your sense of identity and value, To responses that you get online when you post snippets about your life. Then you're really looking to Maslow's third level of need, this need for love. and this need for not only love, but belonging.
That's when it gets dangerous.
So, again, I'll say this for the last time. I'm not against posting stuff about your life. It informs people who are far away most of the time with what we're experiencing. And you share some of the best of your life that way. That, in a very natural sense, you want to share with other people: hey, have you seen this?
Have you heard about this? There's nothing wrong with that. But many people get kind of cloistered with their phones and with their internet systems. and they find that their only sense of belonging comes from the responses in their postings. Your worth.
cannot be tied. to the response that people give you online. It can be a piece of it. But you don't want to be dependent on it because at that point, suddenly. What happens if your phone breaks?
What happens if you're blocked on Facebook or any other internet stuff? Suddenly, Not only are you disconnected from the world, which is kind of a tragedy, but But your sense of identity starts to be erased. because we have no feedback for that belonging. That's the danger seduction, and all these things with this Pocket Messiah series. We start off with a front end that has great utility.
I can find the thing that's wrong with my eye, and I need that to do that. Great utility in the sense of sharing this picture with the world and just having community as a result of that. Nothing wrong with any of that stuff. The seduction on the back end. is becoming hooked.
on how people respond. to who you are. That's dangerous.
So from a biblical perspective, how do we fix this? How do we counteract that? If we find ourselves inordinately relying on feedback and likes. To to to shape our sense of worth. How do we fix that?
Well, your sense of worth from a biblical perspective is tied to something completely different. And in fact, it's tied to something that's out of this world. Your worth. is actually set by what God thinks about you.
So you can You can counteract this by constantly reminding yourself Not what do other people think of me. But what does God think of me? Because that in the end is the decider. I'm going to get out of this boomy room. and sit someplace else so we can look some passages of Scripture, because they're just great determiners of your worth that never change and are eternal.
And it'll decrease your appetite for looking for belonging and love. online where it's very transitory and many times Kinda snippy. Let's get out of here. Come this way. Worth.
How is your worth set? And does it really work? to tie your worth to what God thinks about you. I think that's the challenge. But when we remind ourselves how God thinks of you, what He thinks of you.
how much he loves you, and the concreteness of that. It can be extraordinarily encouraging. even when you're in a downtime.
So worth Belonging. Being loved. You know, we were so concerned about these things in junior high, but it turns out that we really haven't graduated. from junior high. in terms of that need for belonging.
It still sits there as Maslow's third need level. It was more chronic in junior high. But um But it still continues in all of this.
So How do we break this pattern of being Uh being Enslaved what people think about us so that we can somehow change our sense of belonging, change how people love us. And of course, it's so flighty that one day someone might like you, and another day they may not. I mean, and your sense of belonging, your sense of worth suddenly goes down. What you need to do is. is untie your dependence from other people's.
opinion of who you are. and worrying so much about doing the right things that they'll accept me. And you know, just connecting from that. And instead, tying your sense of worth, your sense of identity to an eternal opinion. about who you are.
And that eternal opinion, of course, comes from the Bible, where God is speaking to us about how He sees us.
So you can stop being concerned about what other people think of you and trying to modify your behavior in kind of superficial, phony ways, and sort of that they'll include you, they'll accept you. And instead you can rest upon what God thinks of you. And in this particular case, this isn't just God's opinion. This is God telling us that this is how He sees you.
So let's just remind ourselves of some scriptures where it really hits deeply upon the idea. of how God sees us and how much he loves us. Let me just read a couple of scriptures from you. I've got them down in front of me here. Psalm 17:8.
It's a great room to start. Because he says, keep me as an apple of your eye, hide me in the shadow of your wings. Do you realize that you are the apple of his eye? Do you realize? He looks at you.
And just delight in who you are. Even when you're wayward.
Now, you know, when we're wayward as children, if you've had children, you understand there's this kind of fight going on in your heart about the child that you love so immensely, but you hate their behavior. But the love you have for that child doesn't wane. It doesn't go away. The love remains there. We grieve a little bit at the misbehavior.
and how foolish it really is, and how irritating it can be. But that doesn't change our fundamental love for the one. And that's what the writer of Psalm 17 is saying. He says, keep me, which means treasure me, embrace me, keep me as an apple of your eye, great delight to your eye, and hide me in the shadow of your wings. Such a great picture of this nurturing care and protective care from the one who loves you so much.
Let me give you some more Psalms, in fact, because Psalms is just such a great source for understanding how God sees us and who He thinks of us as. Um Psalm 36, 7. How precious is your steadfast love, O God? The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. The same kind of idea.
And even at the time of the Exodus, when God was bringing them out of the enslavement of Egypt. Um God said, you know, when we come out of Egypt We need to sculpt a new covenant between you and me. And he's clear about that covenant. But what he does is he says, and really, In a remarkable way, he says, Here's my part of the agreement. This is who I will be to you, this is my covenant agreement.
about my relationship with you. And this is who I am, and this This Is the bedrock from my side of this covenant. And he says this in Exodus 34, 6 and 7. He says, the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord. The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger.
Abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love. For thousands. Forgiving iniquity and transgression. and sin. Abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
Faithfulness to what? Faithfulness to you, in his love, dedicated to you. Chesed, the dedicated. Devoted love. That's what God thought of Israel.
That's how He thinks of you. He thinks of someone that he's devoted to in his love. More Psalms. Psalm 42.8. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, And at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.
I love that. I just love that. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love. He makes a command, and his command is: my love will not change, and it will not waver, according. To how I display myself to you.
By day, the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night, His song is with me. His song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. That's how much God thinks of you. Let me give you another: Psalm 52:8. But I'm like a green olive tree in the house of God.
I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever. A green olive tree is a tree that produces wonderful fruit. Fruit, wonderful results, and blesses those who come nearby. And in a way, what he's saying is that I'm like a tender green olive tree that's productive and delighting to God's eyes and to his tastes as he tastes who I am. And he nurtures me, he waters me, he causes me to grow.
I'm like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust In the steadfast love of God forever. and ever the steadfast love of God. Has it been a matter of fact? devotion.
Psalm 66, 20. Psalm 66:20. Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love for me.
Now that's particularly helpful in times when you feel like a failure, when you feel like people are criticizing you. Wrongly, sometimes rightly, because you know we do fall short of being perfect quite a bit. But when you're in those down-in-the-dump days, you wonder if His love has been removed from us. And so that's what the writer of Psalm 66 says: Blessed be God, because he hasn't rejected my prayer. I mean, he hasn't stopped listening to me, he hasn't rejected my prayer.
or removed his steadfast love from me. He has not removed a steadfast love. And why? Because it's steadfast, it never changes. It's not tied to my behavior.
One day he likes me, another day he doesn't. Steadfast love. Yeah. This one actually is on, the next one is not from a psalm, but it's from a picture, a graphic that I have hanging in my office. It's Zephaniah 3:17.
Who reads Zephaniah? Yeah, I know. But listen to how tender, how wonderful. Think as I read these words: this is how God sees you. Zephaniah 3:17.
The Lord your God is in your midst. He's in your midst. a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love.
he will exult over you. with loud singing. That's what he thinks of you. I need to read that again. Are you ready for this?
The Lord your God is in your midst. He's not out somewhere off in the corners of the universe. The Lord your God is in your midst. He's near the goodness of God, He's near. He's a mighty one.
Who will save? And he will rejoice over you with gladness. He will Quiet you. with his love. He will exult over you with loud singing.
Do you realize when God looks at you the apple of his eye? He wants to sing about you. Yeah. And it's a love song. And he's in your midst.
Zephaniah three seventeen. What a great verse. And of course when we flip the pages into the New Testament, Jesus is sitting with Nicodemus in a dark room because Nicodemus doesn't want to come in the light of day and be seen talking to Jesus. And he says a very famous thing, but listen carefully to it. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.
That whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
Now, eternal life doesn't just speak of the length of it, it's not a time factor, it's a quality of life that actually can start today. Eternal life, life as defined from heaven. What is life really like? And Jesus says life really starts and ends with relationship with God. Paul, when he writes his Romans treatise, Uh you would think uh it's a very dry treatise about Sin and forgiveness, and that stuff is in there.
The first Adam. Second Adam, first Adam brings sin into the whole world. The second Adam relieves those who believe in him from that sin. You'd think it'd be very dry, but in chapter 5 of Romans, Romans 5:8, he says. God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners.
Christ died for us. He didn't wait for us to transform ourselves. He didn't wait for us to do a personal self-makeover to make ourselves attractive to Him. We don't have to do what we had to do in junior highway. We have to make ourselves different so that people will accept us and they'll include us.
in their love. Don't have to do that. While we were still sinners, while we were still in rebellion. Christ died for us, for God so loved the world. Even in your worst days, even in your down days.
God looks at you, He's in your midst, He sings over you. And he sacrifices for you.
so that you might know his love. One last one, and this is not from Paul, this is from John, the gospel, not the gospel, but actually the letter, one of the letters that John wrote. And John is characterized as the apostle, the disciple whom Jesus loved. He experienced that love from Jesus that we talk about here, and he experienced it face to face. And so he says in chapter three of his first letter.
John, 1 John 3.1, in fact, he says, And I I love that I love the tone of how he writes this. See what kind of love the Father has given to us. Ha ha ha. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God. And And and so we are we are The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
He has transformed us into being like Him, not just made in His image. But he transforms our heart to love like his heart does, which is why he says the world doesn't know us. Because that's so uncharacteristic of the world. It's so uncharacteristic. of junior high belonging.
See what comes. kind of love. the Father's given to us. Do you see it? Do you see it, the kind of love the Father's given to us?
that we should be called the children of God. That we should be called the children of God. And And so we are. We are the children of God. Do you realize you've been adopted into the family of God?
As sinners, you were outcast in rebellion and at war with God. And despite all of that nastiness, all of that irritation on God's part. He dies on our behalf that we might be able to participate in the full life, the eternal life, as the way God had intended it to be in relationship and fellowship with God, and understanding and experiencing and knowing. his intense love for you. Look, the Lord your God is in your midst.
So mighty to save. And he constantly rejoices over you with gladness. and he exults over you with loud singing. This is the God that we know. You don't have to go fishing on the internet to have people say how great you are, to talk about how much they love what you do and you're unique and you're not like anyone else.
You don't have to do that. Because we have a God who's proclaimed in powerful words, biblically speaking, and in. the example of dying on the cross on your behalf while you were still sinning. You have a God. who exults over you in singing, you are the apple of his eye.
You know, with that in full view, I really don't care what people think of me.
Well, I do sort of. I mean, I won't offend them. But in terms of trying to gain approval, trying to fill that Maslow's third level of need for love. And for belonging. I already belong.
And that's what John says in 1 John 3: you belong. Why? Because he's called you his children. It's a remarkable new truth. He calls you his children, and so we are.
So you belong. You're loved. You don't have to look for that at the internet. Mm-hmm. My phone's buzzing.
Ooh. I've got a new follower.
Someone likes my. Oops.
Sorry. You don't need that. You need God. who loves you tremendously. the utility of letting people know What's going on in your life through the internet is a great thing.
It's tied together people that I've lost contact with for decades because of that. It's really great. But watch out for the back-end seduction. It's there. Where you will actually start to believe that who you are is dependent on the response you get on the internet.
And that's the seduction that kills. Forget about that. God loves you. He's in your midst. He died for you.
You belong. Because what? Because he called you his child, and so we are. Thanks for being here, and I hope this triggers some thinking. Again, just be on guard for the back-end seductions of what has turned out to be an extraordinarily useful device in our lives.
Watch out for the seductions, because in time they can pull you away from God. Repeat to yourself how great God loves you. And if you ever have need for an example and you think he hasn't loved me recently, go back to the cross and say, Yeah, but look, while you were still sinning. He died for you. That's how much he loves you.
Okay, we'll come back next week on the next part in the podcast. pocket messiah, the seductions that you carry around. while you use this very useful tool.
So I'll see you next time. And we'll think more about that. Bye.
