When you look at yourself in a mirror what’s your first thought about what you see? How do you view yourself? Are you a failure? A success? Someone other people would like? Someone others would never love if they really knew?
In almost every case, particularly in western cultures, how we view ourselves is based primarily upon our performance. When we’re doing well we feel good about ourselves. When we fail or struggle we feel negatively about ourselves. Or, if you’re like most Christians that I’ve encountered, you generally just feel bad about yourself because you’re incredibly conscious of just how short you fall from God’s standards.
There’s a shift that needs to be made. It’s one I’ve written about before and will write about again, because it’s so crucial to living the loving, joyful, hope-filled life that is yours in Christ if you’ve been born again: we need to start evaluating ourselves based upon how God sees us. And, mind-blowingly, God sees you as glorious and honorable.
Crowned with glory
Have you realized that you’re absolutely glorious? David marvels at this reality when he writes about humanity,
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet
Psalm 8:5-6
David’s not the only one to point this out. In the creation narrative of Genesis God declares that humanity is “very good.” As a human you are created in the image of God, given a portion of the glory that is God’s own. But it doesn’t stop there.
In John 15 Jesus declares to the Father that, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them” (v.22). Those who are disciples of Jesus have been the same glory that God the Father gave Jesus. In his epistle to the Romans the apostle Paul goes so far as to say that creation itself, “waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed” (8:19).
If you’re a disciple of Jesus, there is so much glory and beauty indwelling you that the very molecules of the universe are eagerly awaiting for who you are to be fully revealed.
This should – this must – change our view of ourselves.
But what if you can’t seem to see the glory that God has given you? What if when you look at yourself all you see is failure, frustration, ugliness, and pointlessness?
How to discover your glory
Discovering your glory starts in a counter-intuitive place. Let’s return to Psalm 8 and let the Psalmist guide us.
Begin with looking at God
Psalm 8 starts and ends with the declaration, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
Unlike the mountains of self help books, personality tests, and motivational speakers meant to help you discover your strengths, skills, and what makes you special (i.e. your glory), the biblical path to discovering your glory always starts with looking away from ourselves and gazing upon the majesty of God.
Starting with yourself will inevitably end in failure and frustration because, let’s face it, there are plenty of days when we aren’t particularly amazing.
See your smallness
After expanding upon how amazing God is – how he uses even the weakness of infants to dominate the most powerful of his enemies and creates the massive expanse of the heavens – David turns his eyes onto himself and his fellow humans to see their smallness and apparent insignificance. “what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (v.4)
Seeing that smallness and admitting it while simultaneously acknowledging the reality that God himself is mindful of humanity, cares for us, and as quoted earlier has, “crowned him with glory and honor” is the key turning point to discovering your glory.
Discover your glory
The reality of your glory is that it’s not something inherent in you. It’s not something you developed or created. Your glory was given to you, a crown bestowed by your creator.
That’s incredibly good news, because it means your glory isn’t dependent upon you. A crown’s value isn’t determined by the appearance of the person wearing it: it’s determined by the value of what the crown is made from.
What discovering your glory does
When you begin to see just how much glory and honor you’ve been given, the Psalmist points out at least three things that result:
You realize you are cared for
“what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”
When you begin to see just how much God has given you you can’t help but look back on your life and realize just how much God has cared for you. He has been mindful of you through every step of your journey, crafting every scene, both the painful and the joyful, for the sake of revealing the glory that is in you.
You realize you have massive purpose
“You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet”
The glory that you have also means that you have a significant purpose in your life. In the Psalm David ties this back to the first commission God gives Adam after creation, to rule the earth and subdue it. You, like Adam, have been entrusted with authority and power to shape your world into something better than what it currently is. You have massive purpose.
You give God praise
“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
All of this can’t help but lead our souls to spontaneous praise, joining that psalmist in declaring “O Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
Far from the narcissistic tendencies bred by humanism and human-based glory, biblical discoveries of the fact that we are indeed crowned “with glory and honor” results in outward focused joy and love the flows toward both God and our fellow humans.
When you look at yourself in a mirror, what do you see? What you should see, first and foremost, is the crown of glory that your God has given you. It makes you utterly delightful to look at for those who have eyes to see.
Let’s give up on tying our self-perception to our accomplishments. Instead, settle back into the reality that God has given us all we need and made us into who we are meant to be in Christ. When we do that the reality of who we are will begin, without striving, to flow out into the way we act. Glorious.
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