Worthy To Be Loved: By Myself and Others

By Jean Branson Shepard

Do you feel put down, always put yourself down, or have you lost hope in both God and yourself? Do you have a poor self-image?

Worthy To Be Loved is designed to help you realize your own personal worth, both in the world and in God's Kingdom work. Many people are discouraged, always being "put down" by others; the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Dec 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9798887384948

Jean Branson Shepard

I have been a conference planner, speaker, seminar and workshop leader, and retreat leader for over forty years. My husband, Claude, and I worked with the Discipleship Training Department of the California Southern Baptist Convention in Marriage Enrichment Conferences and MasterLife Discipleship Training, traveling overseas and in the U.S. After Claude's death in 2001, I traveled overseas on short-term mission trips, as well as serving in conferences in California. I moved to Virginia in 2004 and married Billy Shepard, a pastor in Woodbridge, Virginia where I have worked as a Women's Ministry leader, planning and leading conferences, speaking, and much more.

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Worthy To Be Loved

(BY MYSELF AND OTHERS)

- By Jean Branson Shepard

WORTHY TO BE LOVED is a study on Self-Esteem According to the Bible and includes, but is not limited to, such topics as:

What is Self-Esteem and How Do I Get It?

Why Am I the Way I Am?

How Can I Change?

Releasing Guilt

Emotions — Good and Bad

Controlling Emotions

God’s Cure for Anxiety

If you are: struggling with guilt feelings; depression; fear; feelings of inferiority to others; uncontrolled anger; having trouble in relationships; often anxious or worried; wonder why you act or think the way you do and feel that there’s no hope—THERE IS HOPE!

I hope I can help you understand these emotions, fears, reactions, and problems and teach you ways that, if you will apply them, will change you into the person you want to be.

This is not a lecture, but a time of learning together, sharing together, crying together, changing together, and laughing together.

(All Scripture references are taken from the KJV Bible.)

Worthy To Be Loved

INTRODUCTION

It seems that everywhere you look today there are books upon books on the subject of self-esteem. Some call it self-worth. Others approach it from the idea of positive thinking, and so forth. So, you ask, why on earth are you writing another? The subject seems to have been covered upside down and inside out. Well, this is true, except for one thing. I don’t believe real, biblical self-esteem has been fully dealt with and understood, even by those written from a Christian standpoint. Biblical self-esteem is a paradox, and only God can cause a paradox to work.

A paradox, according to the dictionary, is a statement essentially self-contradictory, false or absurd; one whose character or behavior is inconsistent or contradictory. It’s like a set of instructions that tells you, on the one hand, to do something, and then tells you to do the exact opposite. True biblical self-esteem tells you on the one hand to love and accept yourself. On the other hand, it says to forget about yourself and seek to love others, meeting their needs.

We will be looking into the Scriptures to see how this can be done—and it can be done, but only through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I have been asked why I don’t take my seminars into schools, and so forth, because self-esteem is needed so much by our children, young people, the poor and abused, as well as adults. My last statement in the preceding paragraph should explain that. There is no way to have true self-esteem apart from Christ. The schools and other public organizations would not permit me to present this from a biblical standpoint. They would not allow me to share Christ and His salvation. Therefore, the only hope I could give would be a false one with no permanent foundation. It would be a waste of my time and theirs.

It is my earnest prayer and hope that you will be able to begin experiencing true, biblical self-esteem as you read through this book. I pray that you will be courageous enough to put into practice the principles you will discover; strong enough in faith to believe in yourself for the person God created, is creating and will continue to create; and bold enough to share these truths with others to help them become all that God wants them to be.

I believe one of the greatest detriments to marriage and family life, to Christianity, and to the ongoing work of the church is the poor attitudes of people toward themselves. As we see those who constantly put themselves down, pity themselves, have a poor self-image in general, we see a consistent pattern of bad relationships and failures in their lives. Until a person’s attitude is changed inwardly toward self, any success in changing their attitude toward others, bettering relationships, or helping them become useful and effective Christians is, at best, usually superficial and temporary.

The best reason for you to feel worthy and love yourself is found in Romans 8:15–17:

For Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God; and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.

This shows the very fact of the identity you have as a child of God.

We must realize, also, that every person is not a child of God. Every person is a creation of God. Only by accepting Christ as one’s personal Savior does one become a child of God (John 1:12; 3:16–18; Ephesians 2:8–9; Romans 8:3–16).

We can go overboard on loving self with the positive thinking ideas of today, but remember, for every positive, there absolutely has to be a negative. This is also not the humanistic teaching of I’m okay, you’re okay. Do your own thing, and I’ll do mine and it’s all okay. But it is okay to be yourself. You don’t need to, nor have to, be anyone else, or be like anyone else. But it is not okay to be content to stay like you are. You are to work at being better. If you’re a husband or wife, seek to be a better one; if you’re a parent, strive to be a better parent, and so forth. The truth, then, is that I am okay, and you are okay, as long as we are not content to stay just okay, but strive to be better and work together to make things better for each other and everyone in our realm of relationships.

What we really need is to know how to get the proper scriptural balance in all of this. As the Bible says, Do not think more highly of yourself than you ought (Romans 12:3). With this in mind, let’s look at ways in which we can love ourselves in the correct context and then love others and make our relationships better, and thereby our lives, a greater source of joy and strength to all.

First, I want to give you my testimony, because I had to work through the things I’ll be sharing in this book myself, before I ever learned to love myself. I know how hard it is and how poor self-worth can keep one down in the pits, as Erma Bombeck would say.

Chapter 1

My Testimony

My favorite answer to any question as a young person was, I don’t know and don’t care anyhow! I felt that anything I had to say on the matter wouldn’t be accepted anyway, so I gave my smart-aleck answer.

It seemed like I was either being put down or told to shut up all the time. I was told I was too loud or stuck-up, because I talked too little; I was overdressed or underdressed; wore too much makeup or too little; laughed too much or didn’t laugh enough; my hair was too long or too short; or I sang too high or too low. In other words, I never was just okay.

I accepted Christ at the age of eleven, but was criticized even more for not living up to the expectations of my relatives and others in the church. I was never spiritual enough for my church or my relatives. I never prayed right, sang right, sat right, and on and on.

My parents were divorced when I was very young, and my dad married again soon after. I knew my mother loved me, but I thought she loved the children she babysat more than she did me. I didn’t realize that they were babies or very small children and needed more care and attention. All I could see was the care and attention she gave them. She could never go to see any play or function I was in at school—she was not able. But she could go to visit friends or relatives and do many more stressful things. I took that as a sign of love for them and not for me. As I said, somehow, I knew my mother loved me—I didn’t experience the criticism and such from her that I did from others. She was usually encouraging with her words when she actually talked to me, and she seemed to be proud of me. However, I