Self-Esteem Won’t Save You
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By John Piper About Sanctification & Growth
Audio Transcript
I’m not on a mission to help you feel good about yourselves. I am on a mission to help you feel so good about the greatness of God that you forget about yourselves and live a life of love, making others glad in God. I’m going to say that again because in our twenty-first-century mold and time on the back end of the crest of the wave of self-esteem, it needs to still be said.
I am not here to make you feel good about yourself. That’s a low salvation. That’s a low-level, American gospel message. I am here to make you so happy in God — to help you feel so good about the glory, majesty, beauty, justice, love, truth, and power of God — so that in all that, you forget about yourself.
Some of you have heard me say, “Nobody goes to the Grand Canyon to increase his self-esteem.” Because on the edge of the Grand Canyon, as you feel your soul being drawn out into this vast opening, that’s not what happens. What happens is wonder and awe, which is what you were made for. Heaven will not be a hall of mirrors in which you like what you see. In fact, I just have this suspicion there won’t be any mirrors in heaven because anything good and beautiful about you will be radiated back to you from the other people that you’re loving so much it just bounces back to you. But mainly it’s going to be about Jesus everywhere satisfying your soul.
So, thoughts about you in this world cause us so much grief. We think that the solution is “If I could just feel better about me — better about the way I look, better about my height, my weight, my complexion, my hair, my mathematical ability — if I could just feel better about me, I’d be healed.”
You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t be healed. You’d have low-level, low-grade, non-satisfying measures of contentment. You were made to see God, love God, delight in God, and be stunned by God.
So, I’m not here to help you feel good about yourself. I’m here to help you feel good about God and forget about yourself and give your life away in love to others. It is more blessed to give than to receive.
