ACCEPT the HONOR !
By Neil Gass

“Now, don’t you go getting the big head about yourself!” Did you grow up hearing words like these? Any hint or sense of self worth would have triggered a barrage of scriptures such as, “Pride comes before a fall,”“Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall,” etc. A lifetime later I have observed that most of us struggle not with an inflated, but with a debilitatingly deflated sense of self worth, that keeps us from excelling and maximizing our God-given potential!

Ever know anyone who could not gracefully accept a sincere compliment? They become awkward & uncomfortable when reminded of something admirable about themselves; some significant achievement; a job performed with excellence; an act of kindness or simply a new garment that looks great on them. They view even genuine compliments with suspicion, as though the complimenter had to be working some personal angle!

They typically appear modest & self-effacing & instead of saying an appropriate, “Why, thank you for your kind words,’ they say something like, “Oh don’t compliment me. Really, it was nothing anyone else couldn’t do.” Or if they’ve been conditioned by a certain religious philosophy they may say, “Oh no, don’t give the credit to me. I didn’t do anything. It was God who did it. Give all the credit to Him alone.”

I want to say, “Get a life already! God didn’t sing that song so beautifully. You did it! Yes God gave you the talent, but He gave lots of people talent & they’ve chosen to waste it or not use it. You chose to use your God given talent. You learned the song, practiced it, got up in front of that huge crowd, risked failure & criticism, stuck your neck out & succeeded admirably.” If they’d hissed you off the stage, you’d say, “I deserved that. I was terrible!” When they cheer for your performance you say, “I didn’t deserve that!” Go figure!

It’s not about the sin of pride. Humility isn’t equal to an abysmally low self worth! It’s about the irrational,debilitating conviction, the deeply rooted erroneous belief you hold about your being worthless, useless, undeserving, inadequate, etc; the insidious thought that you should apologize for taking up space & oxygen on the planet! The problem is that the compliment runs headlong into that self-negating personal conviction & the inconsistency it creates within you makes you reject the well-earned, appropriate compliment. It simply doesn’t fit with your low self worth, so it’s not accepted as genuine or true.

Now the real irony is that God doesn’t share your conviction about yourself! He believes you are created in His image. He’s convinced you “can do all things through Christ.” He’s not the least embarrassed to call Himself your friend, God & Father. He gave you “the right to call” yourself “the son or daughter of God!” He believes He is in you & you are in Him! You have to decide whose opinion of you really counts! Adopting His is logical & rational!

It plants a new “seed” in you; a conviction that aligns you with God’s conviction & that will produce confidence in God & help you maximize what & who He uniquely made you to be!

When you adopt His belief about you, you’ll find it easy to accept well earned, genuinecompliments as a gift from God. It is His word that instructs us to “Give honor to whom honor is due.” Not only are you to “give to God what is God’s,” you are also to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” God doesn’t want Caesar’s honor. He wants that to go to Caesar. He wants His own honor to go to him. He doesn’t want YOUR honor either. He sends that to you to boost your confidence & faith that you are in His plan & that He’s blessing you by using recognition from others of your honorable efforts!

You & He are bound by His own law which insists that “what you sow you shall also reap.” You sow excellence, you are intended to reap recognition & honor from those who recognize your worth and reflect that back to you in genuine honor! Learn to enjoy it as God intends you to & don’t be robbed any more by false humility & a lying low self worth.

The genuine, well-earned compliment is one of God’s ways of challenging& disarming the limiting, paralyzing, minimizing, disempowering LIE at the core of your belief about yourself, & to set you free to revel in His abundant blessings!