Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Where Does Your Self- Worth Come From? | The Writings | Psalm 8

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

If you aren't successful, you don't live up to expectations and you don't have the community you want, what now? Are you exhausted from trying to prove yourself? In today's episode, Jensen looks to��Psalm 8 to find hope when asking, "Who am I?", "Am I enough?", "Am I worthy of love?" Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 8

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt-McNair. Where does your self-worth come from? Definitionally, our self-worth is our internal sense of being good enough and worthy of love and belonging from others. And if you ask Google where your self-worth comes from, you'll find many, many articles and TED Talks and masterclasses, all saying something very similar. According to a theory in psychology, our self-worth is determined mostly by our self-evaluated abilities and our performance. Essentially, we derive our self-worth from our abilities, social standing, achievements, and even what we believe were capable of achieving.

There's a master class you can take on how to build self-worth. Its stated focus is to teach you how to unlock the ability to love yourself. Now, that seems to be the advice that we find when it comes to self-worth. We will find our self-worth, our sense of being good enough and worthy of love, if we can achieve success in this world and love and acceptance from others and ourselves. But what if we don't have those things? What if we aren't successful? What if we failed again and again, never living up to our family standards, our boss's expectations, or even our own desires for ourselves? What if we don't have community like we'd want? What if people aren't too happy with us, ignore us, or have abandoned us? What if, no matter how hard we try, despite all that,

we can't seem to figure out how to love ourselves as we are? Because when the world doesn't think we're worthy, when the people around us don't see us, then how can we be able to be? believe in our own worth. How can we love ourselves? In my own life, I've been failed by this advice. I tried to find myself worth in how good I am at a job, how funny I can be, how the people around me see me and love me. I've done it for years in so many different scenarios. As a middle schooler trying to make friends, as a high schooler trying to climb the social ladder, as a college student trying to figure out my purpose. And as a young adult trying to prove myself and my career as a wife, as a mom, as a daughter. Again and again, I feel worthy when I achieve goals,

find success and gain the praise and acceptance of the people around me. And again and again, when I fail, when I make mistakes, lose friendships, feel the disapproval of others, and watch people in my life walk away from me, I feel unworthy. And no matter how hard I try, I can't quite figure out how to unlock the ability to love myself in all of that. If the root of my self-worth is found in my own performance, then I will always find myself back at the same place, exhausted from trying to prove myself and devastated by my failure to do so. Luckily, throughout the cycle I have long found myself in, I've also found hope from a different kind of wisdom, a wisdom that I can so clearly see on display in Psalm 8. Psalm 8 begins and ends with

this proclamation, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. See, the repetition should clue us into this Psalm's theme. The majesty of the God that we follow, He is Lord, Yahweh, the great I am, the one who always has been and always will be. He is with us. The psalmist continues in this theme in verses 2 through 4 saying, Through the praise of children and infants, you have established a stronghold against your enemies to silence the foe and the Avenger. When I consider your heavens the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings, that you care for them? The Lord is worthy of praise. He overcomes his enemies. He created the heavens, the sky, the stars. David the psalmist ends asking, Who are we? Who are human beings that you, God, would care for us? That you would even think of us? And next to the majesty of God, we're nothing in comparison. And this may seem like bad news for our self-worth, right? Who are we? When an infinite, good, just, merciful, majestic, powerful, powerful, creative God exists. Who are we? Why should God care about me? I'm just a sinful, messy human.

I've never made stars or established strongholds against my enemies. I'm lucky if I can convince my toddler to eat a meal and only watch one hour of TV a day instead of many hours. David takes us to the question we all ask ourselves at some point. Who am I? Am I worthy of love? Am I enough? And the answer David seems to give us is that we aren't worthy. We aren't enough we don't deserve for a majestic God to care for us. But David doesn't leave us there. He continues on. You have made them humans a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands. You put everything. under their feet. All flocks and herds and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky,

and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the sea. God isn't just mindful of us. He has given us a place of honor and glory. Verse six tells us that we have been made rulers. David is referencing here a passage all the way back in Genesis 1. Genesis 1, 26 to 28 is often called the cultural mandate in scripture. It goes like this. Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So he created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female, He created them, and God blessed them.

And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. All the way back in the garden, God had a plan for humanity. He gave us purpose to rule over creation alongside him, to care for it, to use its resources as well to fill the earth to build cultures and cities from the very beginning. We were called to rule alongside God in helping the earth and its inhabitants flourish. Humans were the pinnacle of creation, made in God's image set above creation to rule it in partnership

with God. But as you may know, in chapter three of Genesis, we failed. And all of creation was cursed. Our own hearts long to rule over creation for ourselves, to be the ones in control to find our worth, our purpose somewhere else, to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong. And yet, in the midst of that, rather than start over, rather than wipe out the cursed creation and the humanity in it, God chose to begin the work of redeeming it. And throughout scripture, we can see a God who calls, pursues, and rescues his people, even as they fail over and over and over again. Until at very last, he came to be what we couldn't be, to be the human who could rule perfectly alongside him. Jesus became human and lived a sinless life and he died a sacrificial death

so that in his resurrection, we could be free of the curse we brought up. upon ourselves in Genesis 3. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name and all the earth? That the Lord would even be mindful of humans is a wonder. But he went beyond that, rescuing us and calling us to rule alongside him despite our failures. He looked down on his creation. He saw the men and women he had made in his image

marred by the curse, rebellious and broken, and he did not abandon us. My worth does not come from within me. My worth does not come from my performance. It does not come from the people around me. I am worthy because the Lord of all creation, the majestic king, the one who is far greater, far more wonderful, far more lovely than I could ever imagine,

crowned me with glory and honor. He gave me a purpose and a place in this world that no one can take away from me. No failure, no disapproval, no rejection. I am called by my king for a purpose. My self-worth does not come from within me, from my abilities. It does not come from the world's perception of me. It comes from the Lord of all creation. And the truth of the gospel tells me that from the very beginning, God chose me for a purpose. It tells me that while I was still a sinner, God came down to dwell among men

so that he could die from my sins and resurrect from the dead so that one day I can rule alongside him in his good kingdom. The gospel tells me that when the Lord looks down upon me, he does not see my failures, my mistakes, or even my achievements. No, he sees Jesus, the spotless lamb. Our worth is found in Jesus. It is found in who he says you are. You are. You are worthy and loved enough for Jesus to die for you. You are worthy because the king of creation crowned you with glory and honor and made you in his own image. Today and every day, let us live in light of that truth. If you find yourself feeling unworthy, unloved, remember how the king of creation sees you. He calls you worthy, and he has given you glory and honor.

No matter where you're at today, remember that you will never be able to find true, lasting, unchanging self-worth outside of King Jesus. Thank him today for crowning you with glory and honor, forgiving his life so that you could find belonging in his kingdom, and for showing you that you have a purpose and a calling to live out today and every day. May we rule over the gifts we have been given with the same sacrificial love, and humility that our King Jesus does. Amen.