Overcoming Inferiority

Aside from salvation, the biggest miracle God has done in me has been to help me overcome strong feelings of inferiority. For many years, I had a hard time shaking off feeling not good enough at anything. I felt unneeded and worthless. I disliked my personality and started to be envious of those with the personality I wanted. I knew I didn’t like myself. I knew I had days of deep discouragement that stemmed from these feelings. But I didn’t know how to get beyond these cycles.

And then God came and through His grace the backbone of my nemesis was broken. God kindly revealed my root issues weren’t “inferiority” or “low self-esteem” at all. The root of my issues was pride -wounded pride- that fed these feelings. Envy and jealousy ate away at me and led me to feel inferior to others.

As awful as the diagnosis was (pride, envy, jealousy), I was grateful to finally realize what I was dealing with. For years I hadn’t found a way of getting beyond the heaviness and sadness that came when I was reminded how secondary I was. But when the root causes were finally revealed, I recognized God’s power to both forgive me and help me overcome the sins my dark discouragement was rooted in. In exchange for the old thought patterns, I had to learn to focus on who I am in Christ.

By God’s grace, my thought processes have changed and I have experienced victories I never dreamed was possible. Yet I’m like an addict who kicked his habit but will forever be susceptible to the old life unless deliberate steps are taken to stay away from it. I know I could fall back into old thought patterns and feelings if I didn’t recognize them and reject them when they first come to tempt me. In fact, lately I’ve been fighting off a lot of these feelings and decided that now is the time to implement a month of focusing on victory.

Since God “fashions our hearts alike” (Psalm 33:15), I thought some of you might like to join me in this exercise.   

DAY ONE:

   The battle is either won or lost in our mind. One of our strongest weapons against being debilitated by feelings of inferiority is to catch negative thoughts when they first tempt us, reject those that are not God-honoring, and choose to refuse to let them take over our mind.

   If a random thought has the potential to drag us towards more negative thought patterns, let’s reject it before it has the chance to lay its mantle of heaviness across our shoulders. Catching thoughts early diffuses their power before they can control us, plus they are much easier to stop when they are in their infancy than after they have beaten us down for a few days.

    I used to wonder if thoughts or feelings came to me first. Sometimes I felt a spirit of heaviness and when I tried to figure out what caused it, I could come up with a zillion reasons why I should feel that way. I wasn’t as talented, as good, as popular. . .and there I went down the spiral of discouragement. So whether it is a thought or merely a feeling of heaviness, don’t let it have its way today.

Action for today: Deliberately and diligently guard your thought life. Purpose to reject thoughts that do not pass the Philippians 4:8 test. According to this verse, we should think about things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, full of virtue and praise. Anything else must be rejected. (And a side note for the crafty among us: Our thoughts need to pass each category listed there, so what you think about yourself can’t just be perceived truth; it also needs to praise God and be of a lovely report.)