Recognising ourselves

By Rev Bruce Moore, Moderator

Have you ever found yourself in a place where you question or second guess decisions that you need to make? Maybe you find yourself overthinking things … over and over again. In a study that was undertaken recently with a sample of over 10,000 people, they asked the participants whether they struggle with overthinking. Guess what? 99.5% said yes!

If you’re not convinced – let me ask you one more question. Have you ever caught yourself re-reading a message or an email you have already sent? As if that is going to change anything?

OK I rest my case…

But if we are honest, overthinking is a thing for most of us. Maybe we are fearful of being judged or making a mistake, maybe we are driven by what others will think. Sometimes we all find ourselves on repeat… we have developed our play list, soundtracks of messages that we play to re-tell ourselves about how it didn’t go so well last time.

Research shows that leaders often find themselves frozen, reluctantly questioning, second guessing everything. Some talk about this as the “imposter syndrome”, where you feel like a fraud, that you shouldn’t even be here in the situation, wishing you hadn’t said yes, feeling totally ill-equipped for the task at hand, or wishing you were somewhere else. 

I wonder – how much time, energy and bandwidth do we waste doing this? Because most of the time overthinking doesn’t change anything.

So how can we change? Where do we draw our identity from? What is the reference point that defines who we are and who we are becoming?  How should we define ourselves, recognise ourselves?

The risk is that we take our reference from what everyone else says or thinks we should be. We sometimes listen to our worst critic… which is often ourselves!

Instead we could recognise ourselves as a child of God. In the Bible we read that we were all created in the image of God – not God but like God. This means that every person matters to God, and this is where we draw our recognition and identity from. 

You matter to God, and I matter to God. 

What greater recognition do we need, than to know that we were designed and authored by the Creator of the Universe? We have the assurance and joy of being a part of the family of God, a child of the most high. That is an identity that no one else can give you.

It is my prayer that you would know this for yourself.

I pray that you would find your identity in God, who we learn in the stories that Jesus told – chases after you, who will not rest, until you know how much you are loved! Let us recognise ourselves as loved by God.

Let us also recognise ourselves as blessed by God. Jesus makes this promise to the world – I have come that you would have Life in all its fullness.

May that be so for your life today!