I was
feeling pretty good about myself as I rode my motorcycle around the little town
of Wasagaming in Riding Mountain National Park.
The sun was shining, it was hot outside and the place was packed with
people. Many times in the past I had watched
guys ride through this town on their motorcycles and thought, “Look at that
lucky dude! What a great place to ride!”
and now I was the “lucky dude” that everyone else was watching and
envying. It felt good to be the centre
of attention.
As I turned
the corner and headed back down past all the shops to show off one more time, a
couple of guys stepped out on the street right in front of me. I grabbed the brakes and the clutch lever and
stopped. The guys jumped back and gave
me one of those “Oops – sorry about that” waves. I waved back, let out the
clutch… and stalled the bike.
I had been
cruising around town in second gear and when I stopped so quickly I forgot to
put it back into first. Now, stalled in
front of an ice cream shop packed with people, I could not get the bike started
again. As a line of cars formed behind
me, my “cool biker” image was fading fast.
In fact, the line of cars made even more people come over to see what
was going on and soon I had a huge crowd staring at me for all the wrong
reasons. Finally, I got the bike fired
and drove straight out of the park. I
was too embarrassed to be seen there anymore.
In a split second, I went from “Hey, look at me!” to “What are you
looking at?”
Isn’t it
strange how often things backfire when we are motivated by pride or the desire to
impress others? When we buy into the
idea that our self-worth is dependent on our performance and other people’s
opinion of us, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment because we cannot
do everything perfectly and we cannot control what others think of us. Maybe what we need is a different reason to
feel good about ourselves.
What if
your self-worth was based solely on the fact that you are created in the image
of God (Genesis 1:26-28) and that he loves you?
What if your self-worth had more to do with “Who you are” rather than “What
you do”?
Maybe we
would feel better about ourselves if we were less “self-focused” and “others-focused”
and were more “God-focused”.
“For God so loved the world [including you] that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
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