How you see yourself Vs how God sees you!

"I entered this high-level office, the gentleman in there, stood up, gave me a firm handshake, looking very happy to see me." a friend of mine narrated during one of our unusual lunchtime conversations. "The respect this high-level gentlemen showed me was way more than I'd ever received before," She continued, "To the point that I began to feel very uncomfortable_ guilty even_ thinking he had mistaken me for someone 'important'. I almost started apologizing, to bring it to his notice that, 'Am sorry sir, me am just a university student here, from a very humble background, am just here to..."

I too would very much relate to this my friend's story, because I have felt like this so many times to so many people. I guess it's an issue of self image, isn't it? Maybe poor self image in this case.

Well, let's look at it deeper and see. According to Cambridge on line dictionary, Self image is the way a person feels about his or her personality, achievements and value to society.


Poor self image
Sometimes we feel like we don't deserve to be in certain places, or to hang out with certain individuals or groups of people. We tend to feel like we're way less than the people we meet in those places, we feel like we're just enough being "small", unknown, unmattering, and totally "out of the spotlight" at all times.

I could quite associated such a feeling to what Oprah Winfrey once termed as the inability to receive or accept abundance when the abundance comes your way.

Poor self image makes us refuse the things that we think are too good to belong to us.
Proper self image, on the other hand, helps us live life to its fullness, always having room for favor and promotion.

Proper or good self image is indeed very important, although for this blog post we shall focus more on how God really sees us, or you can call it our God-image.



God's view of us:

Doesn't depend on how I feel or how I am acting

Judges 6:11-12 gives us an interesting story of Gideon and the children of God who had been tormented by the Midianites for 7 good years, in that they lived in caves. We see Gideon threshing wheat in a wine press to keep it from the bad guys. Poor Gideon was always afraid and in hiding. You just imagine that level of cowardliness, one where you could find yourself washing dishes from under the table.

At this point Gideon might have thought to himself like, "Well I am the worst fellow here, afraid, and unable to defend my people. I am just useless; why don't I just die?"
Now, those thoughts would be based only on "facts", simply because of how Gideon was feeling and acting at that moment. He was only doing what he knew best to do, and that was being afraid.

But when the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, this is how he greeted him:
"The LORD is with you, mighty warrior." (Judges 6:12)
"Mighty warrior"? Seriously?

So you see that while we, with all the clear proof and evidence, may choose not to see any form of might in Gideon, God did not base on any of that to see/view Gideon. Even when Gideon was acting and feeling cowardly, God did not see him as such. God sees you as a mighty man/woman, irrespective of how you feel about yourself.



Doesn't depend on the type of work I do. 

Whether you are a student or a member of parliament, a stay-home mother or a successful career woman, an engineer or a social worker, God sees you as a magnificent, awesome person who is more than ready to change the world for His glory.

We see Jesse in 1 Samuel 16:11, when Samuel told him that God had chosen one of his sons to be the next king, he only lined up the sons who, according to him, were the skilled warriors, had well-built bodies, broad chests, and every physical aspect of a king-like character, and he totally forgot about David.

Think about this in context of today, when for example parents are introducing their children to some favorite visitor, and they only introduce the siblings who do science courses (because those ones are usually perceived to be smarter in class), or those who are well employed. And then when it comes to you (no offense), they only mention briefly about you as though you're just a by-the-way.

God's view of David was the same, whether he was a farm boy or a king. God continued to see the cute handsome David as a mighty awesome person that would change the world for God's glory.



Always focuses on the bigger picture, or on the greater good.

God doesn't see you as a broke guy who is struggling to pay rent, neither does he see you as a mere student or whatsoever. God looks at you as the arrow He needs to shoot into the devil's eye.

Gideon was the least in his family, and his clan was still the least in the tribe, while David was the youngest and least favored in his family. God did not look at that, he saw them as mighty men, ready to deliver their people from torment.

How about the men with leprosy in 2 Kings 7:5-6, God didn't see them as starving lepers, He saw them as mighty men, ready to bring God's word to fulfillment; to deliver His people from hunger.
(2 Kings 7:16 Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a seah of the finest flour sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley sold for a shekel, as the LORD had said.)

God does not see you as you see yourself, even through your worst failures, your stupidest mistakes, he see you as a mighty man/woman who is ready to overcome.

How God sees you doesn't depend on:

• How you act,
• 
  
• How you feel,
• 
  
• What you have or don't have,
• 
  
• Where you work,
• 
  
• Where you are born,
• 
  
• Not even the position you had in class.

God's image of you:

You are the apple of his eye (Zechariah 2:8),

He has your name engraved in his palm (Isaiah 49:16),

No minute passes without him thinking of you (Psalm 139: 17-18),

You are his child, his look-alike, made in his own image (1 John 3),

He is so proud of you, so proud of how far you have come, and how far He's yet to take you!

Well done, good and faithful daughter/son.


God sees you depending on His relationship with you through His son Jesus Christ. Allow your self image to be in agreement with God's image of you.

Please share with us some inspiring experiences of how God put you in situations or places you thought you didn't deserve.

Thank you!