Think about yourself less...

I'm one of several pianists that play monthly at our church.  I consider this a great privilege because it allows me to serve the Lord while simultaneously growing my skill. One time, I accompanied our choir on a particularly difficult piece.  I'd worked really hard to master the difficult, ever-changing chords that made up this great tune.  When I arrived, one of the other pianists - the better than me one - was singing in the choir.  I immediately got intimidated thinking "oh no, what will she think of my playing?"  After the rehearsal, she approached me with a thoughtful compliment and then I thought "oh good, now I can relax 'cause she knows I can play hard stuff."

Pretty pitiful, huh?  The reality, though, is that we all suffer this way in one area or another. We spend our time either boosting our self-esteem with personal affirmations or relying on others to do the boosting for us.  We belittle ourselves when we think we don't measure up or we make excuses for our imperfections.  We live at the whim of other people's impressions and then deal with these created impressions by either thinking high of ourselves or low of ourselves.  WHEW! What a nuisance...to ourselves AND to others!

Thank God there's a better way.  Paul speaks of it in 1 Corinthians 6.  But rather than try to teach some difficult theology here, I'll just offer you Tim Keller's simple summary. He says the key to this high/low emotional roller coaster is not to "think more of yourself OR to think less of yourself.  It's to think about yourself less."

Get it?  Here it is using my piano playing example:  The key to my confidence at the piano is not to pat myself on the back for how I was able to master those difficult chords nor to beat myself up when I realized that, no matter how hard I would have practiced, I would have never been able to play that tune as good as the other pianist.  The key to my confidence is to not think about any of that and instead simply enjoy worshiping my Lord and Savior with the exact amount of skill he granted me for church piano playing.  Period.  Be blessed by her playing and blessed by my playing because both are expressions of worship.

It's not building yourself up OR tearing yourself down.  It's just resting in God's opinion of you - his love for you - and he thinks you're simply fantastic!