The Esteem of God

I know you by name and you have found favor with me. —Exodus 33:12

I heard Gigi Tchividjian give a talk in which she admitted to low self-esteem. She said, “Whenever I was introduced, I was referred to as Billy Graham’s daughter, the wife of a Swiss psychiatrist, or the mother of six children.” She concluded that she had no identity of her own, but she sought it and found it in Christ.

As God earmarked you for a work in the future, I would urge you to get your sense of self-esteem from knowing you please God alone. Just Him. He isn’t hard to please. First, the blood of Jesus washed all sin and imperfection away. Second, Jesus is at the Father’s right hand and is moved with compassion over our weaknesses. Third, the Father, in any case, “knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14).

It is true that God will refine you so that when your time has come you will be ready and trustworthy of a greater anointing. But you won’t be perfect. “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). God isn’t waiting for you to get perfect before He can use you. Otherwise He wouldn’t use anybody—ever.

Do you have a heart after God? Do you yearn to honor Him? Do you aspire to seek not honor and glory from your peers but the honor that God alone can bestow? If so, God will find you. Your parents may not see in you what is there, however well they think they know you, but God does. He will find you. He will discover you. Someone said, “It takes fifteen years to become an overnight success.” God’s time has come when someone who knows all that is needed to know about you steps in without your raising a finger.

Excerpted from The Anointing: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Charisma House, 2003).