Soul Cravings Series: Working for Worthiness
As I was preparing for this portion of the series, I looked up the word work in the dictionary. You are welcome to take a guess at how many definitions were listed. However, I will help you out a bit: thirty-eight definitions! And all I could think was there are thirty-eight ways we work for our worthiness. Oh, friend, this should not be.
Working for Worthiness
I lost my dad and mom in a day: I lost my dad physically to cancer, and my mom emotionally. I was nine years old trying to figure out how I could be loved, how to receive some type of connection, especially with my mother. I tried all the people-pleasing, all the “notice me” things and when that did not work, I swung to the other end of the pendulum and became the spawn of Satan. No matter what the response was from my mother at least it was a connection with her. This became quite a tumultuous relationship that kept opening a soul wound which created intense cravings for worthiness: to know that I mattered to someone, anyone.
Fast forward thirteen years, and my mother and I were finally able to patch our relationship. However, two years later she died of cancer. At twenty-four, I was an orphan. This re-opened multiple wounds, and my cravings were all over the place. I found myself in tumultuous relationships, unhealthy friendships, and toxic environments. This is not the life I had in mind, yet here I was living it all because I craved connection.
Robert S. McGee in Search for Significance (2003) states, “Many of us are hurt emotionally, relationally, and spiritually, but because we are unaware of the extent of our wounds, we don’t take steps toward healing and health.” Instead, we wrestle with our cravings feeding on performance-oriented meals with entrees of church attendance and/or volunteering, with sides of perfectionism and responsibilities, and desserts of excess “yes’s” to all things. By the time all is said and done, we have gorged ourselves on what we believe will satisfy our cravings and heal our wounds only to find ourselves still starving.
It is this cycle to which Brené Brown refers to as “hustling for worthiness.” We find ourselves constantly performing, pleasing, needing to prove something to someone that will notice because we do not believe that we are innately worthy of love and belonging. Because of our overwhelming cravings, we may find ourselves tolerating toxicity and abuse for the sake of meeting our need to matter and feel worthy.
Additionally, when we tether ourselves to people, positions, or projects to determine our worth and value, we will find ourselves always lacking satisfaction. People and positions are always changing, and projects get cancelled, deterred, and completed. When they change, we are left wondering what that means for and about us. And no environment is off limits when this craving cranks up. We will hustle in friendships, romantic relationships, work, church, and even with God. Yet, with all the hustling, all the work, all the performance, we will still feel famished in this vicious cycle.
While this cycle can feel never-ending, there are ways to halt it. While on this side of heaven, we may struggle with this cycle on and off, we can still implement ways to lessen our work in worthiness.
Three ways to Stop Working for Worthiness
1) Know your own worth
Jesus calls us to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). We are often great at telling others how wonderful they are and loving them. We shower them with praises and help them battle any thoughts that may deter them from their worthiness. But how are we at loving ourselves?
Loving ourselves is not easy because the enemy has done well in keeping us in traps of shame and guilt leading us to believe we are unworthy of anything. However, the truth does not reside in his lies, but in the proof that God not only has spoken, but also has shown us: Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection.
God thought his children worthy enough to send his only son that we may be rescued from the death of sin and eternal separation from him. And he did all this while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). There was no working for worthiness before he loved us. He simply loved us. Additionally, in knowing Christ, we are “royal priesthood, a people belonging to God, God’s special possession” (1 Peter 2:9). We are princes and princesses proving our innate worthiness which God has supplied us!
2) Know the lies
Often we tell ourselves that we are not enough, useless, inadequate, or that we do not matter. Additionally, we may believe that we need to be perfect, and when we fall short (and we will because we are human), we cycle into shame and guilt leading us to believe we are unworthy. To stop this process, we need to identify the lies causing the cycle.
To identify the lie, we can ask ourselves if the statement we are thinking is something God would say to us. For instance, the lie “I am not enough” is nowhere in scripture. And if God calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves, could we picture telling our neighbors they are not enough? Moreover, this statement does not reflect the character of Christ.
Now, there is a caveat to this. A statement such as “I did something wrong” may have truth to it. We are all human, we are going to make mistakes, and we are going to sin. Therefore, we hold two truths in this instance. We hold the truth of “I did something wrong” (i.e. hurt someone, made a mistake, etc.) and “I can say I am sorry” or “I will try again.” God offers many chances for change throughout our lifetime; maybe we can offer ourselves the same.
3) Know God’s word
Knowing God’s word is critical in this battle for our worthiness. We cannot battle the enemies lies, if we do not know what he is lying about. Therefore, knowing God’s word, hiding it in our hearts, and using it to replace the lies with truth is necessary for knowing and truly believing we have worth.
As previously mentioned, a lie such as “I am not good enough,” cannot be found in scripture. However, what can be found is how we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139), made in his image (Genesis 1:27), each part of us is known and valued (Luke 12:7), his handiwork (Ephesians 2:10), and lavishly loved (1 John 3:1). This is truth, friend. If we will take time to write these scriptures out somewhere so we can read them everyday, then we have an opportunity to replace the lies with truth.
This will not be easy work. The enemy does not like to lose, but power is within us to defeat the enemy. We can shout out and claim confidently what God has so graciously and lovingly given us that the enemy will have no other option but to flee!
Final Thoughts
Jesus is clear, “In this world you will have trouble…” We are going to face hard times that may lead us to question who we are and whose we are. However, we need to know the rest of this verse, “Take Heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). He is fighting with us and for us (Exodus14:14)! We can walk with our worthiness intact, and our head high because we are children of the King!