Too many people live with regret – regret over the past. Of course it doesn’t make sense to let the past ruin your present and rob you of your future. But all too often, it’s really hard to get over the regrets of the past.

Over the past three weeks we’ve spent a lot of time talking about weight and diet and how to eliminate many of the diseases that whilst they were virtually unheard of just a century or so ago are today’s major killers, obesity, heart attack, stroke, diabetes. What we have seen is there has been significant dietary changes that have happened in the last hundred years or so through the introduction of refined carbohydrates, sugar in particular and white flour and all that other stuff which have by and large caused the epidemics in diabetes and cardio vascular disease and the answer to virtually eliminating those diseases is simply turning the clock back on our diets and taking out all the rubbish in the so called western diet that’s killing us.

If you want to find out more about that hop along to our website www.christianityworks.com and you can listen to all fifteen episodes in this series of A Different Perspective called “Healthy Living To A Ripe Old Age”.

But today we’re moving on from the physical to the emotional because our health isn’t just tied to our bodies, its tied to our minds and in particular to our emotions. Many, many people are living rotten lives because they have some poisonous emotions pumping around inside them and this week we’re going to talk about what, in my view, are the top five of those.

When I was setting out to prepare these programs I asked my friends on Facebook to suggest the negative emotions that perhaps they would want me to talk about on the program. I was kind of shocked, I was shocked by the number of negative emotions they came up with, yeah it was pretty scary actually but this week only has five days in it so I’ve settled on these five, regret, disappointment, stress, envy and low self esteem.

So today we’re kicking off with regret, which is why I asked you that question a few minutes ago, what is it in your past that you regret? Something you find difficult to let go and get over. You know as I get to know people I almost always discover something, I mean something in their past that’s holding them back today.

For way, way, way too many people their past is ruining their present and robbing them of their future. You may have heard me say that before, I say it often because it’s so true, just stop and think about that for a moment. The past is the past right? It’s locked in, you can’t change it, no matter how much you want to change it nothing that you or I or anyone can ever do can change the past and yet for so many people the regrets of the past are messing with their emotions.

It may be a deep hurt or a loss or a failure and try as they may they just can’t move on from it. It continues to make you emotionally sick today so you can’t enjoy it, you can’t live out today to the full. People who are sexually abused as children find that in particular. The abuse lives on in their emotions and tragically those who were abused find it difficult to form intimate lasting relationships. They’re carrying around shame and guilt and anger and unforgiveness. It eats away at them and the grim statistics are that someone who was abused as a child is far more likely themselves to become an abuser of children when they become adults.

That’s not true of all, please don’t think that’s what I’m saying but statistically speaking adults who abuse children are very likely themselves to have been abused when they were children.

But it’s not just child abuse it could be that you feel your parents didn’t love you. I know one man who is a very prominent leader whose parents abandoned him and it’s something that still affects him today. Or perhaps you’ve been through a divorce, perhaps you’ve lost your position or your status, perhaps you made some mistake, a big mistake that continues to affect you emotionally to this day.

We’re amazingly complex emotional creatures and our emotions are often still attached to that regret from the past even though the physical impacts of that regret are long gone it continues to ruin a person’s present and rob them of their future and that my friend is such a tragedy because you and I only have this one life to live here on this earth. It’s not a dress rehearsal, once it’s gone it’s gone, this life, this precious life that you and I have been given to live on this earth.

People go to counselling to try and get rid of the effects of the past. I just want to help you today to think through that reality. There’s a saying “don’t cry over spilled milk”, sure clean up the mess, sure learn from your mistakes but once the milk is spilled on the floor you can’t un-spill it, you can’t turn the clock back and change it as much as you wish you could.

It’s time to forget what lays behind and to strain forward and make the most of what you and I have been given, what today is about, the opportunities that lie ahead for tomorrow. You can’t change the past but you can change how you react to it. You can’t change the past but you can change what you do with it today and how you live with it today.

When I look back on my life hey I’ve made some really stupid mistakes, some big ones, mistakes that cost me the things that mattered most to me and those mistakes have left scars on me emotionally, they’ve changed who I am, they’ve changed me for the better. Today I’m hopefully a more understanding person, more understanding of people who make mistakes than I was before I made my mistake.

Today I’m a more compassionate person and I’m not naturally a compassionate person I have to tell you but today I’m more compassionate because I’ve lived through some times in my life where the compassion of others literally saved my life. Those are good outcomes, those are the things that I take and use for the benefit of others. If I could wind the clock back on some of those mistakes I would but I can’t that’s it, it’s done.

What I can do is learn from those mistakes. What I can do is to use the positive changes that came out them to help others. And what I can do is to look forward to a healthy future where okay I will still make some mistakes but I can know that I’ll recover from them, I’ll learn from them, I’ll forgive myself and I’ll get on with my life, this one precious life that I’ve been given to live here on this earth.

For some people today it’s time to move on from the regrets of the past but that’s not something we can do for the most part just on our own; a counsellor, a psychologist, some joker on the radio trying to encourage you to get over your past. For the most part none of those have the power to help you get over the regrets of the past. The only person who does is Jesus.

Jesus died so that you and I could be forgiven our sins and if you and I put our trust in Jesus God forgives us our sins. In fact the Bible clearly says that God remembers our sin no more. So if God has forgiven us our past isn’t it time for us to forgive ourselves? And listen Jesus rose again to give us newness of life, literally a new life, a fresh start with the slate wiped completely clean. Writes Paul the Apostle:

If anyone is in Christ then they’re a brand new creation. Look the old things have all passed away and everything is new. (2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17)

Yes we can grieve over the past, we should grieve over the past, Paul also writes to his friends in Corinth:

For Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret but worldly grief produces death.

When we grieve over it we turn away from our part in whatever happened back there, that’s called repenting, we turn away from that, we turn back to God, we take it to God and God is the one who takes it and transforms us and makes everything, us, our emotions, our circumstances, everything new.

My friend Jesus, Jesus is the power to change, Jesus is the bringer of new life; Jesus is the answer to your grief and to the regrets of your past. My friend He’s the only answer – Jesus.

Every now and then, we get disappointed with someone or something. That’s only natural. What’s not natural – is living in a constant state of disappointment. A great many people do – and it’s ruining their lives.

Disappointment, it’s an interesting emotion. You don’t often hear people talk about it, what it is, how to handle it but that’s in fact what you and I are going to chat about today because it seems that there are so many things out there that can disappoint us. So let me begin by asking you exactly what is it, what is disappointment, have you ever thought about that?

Here’s my definition, it’s a basic mathematical formula. The degree to which we’re satisfied with something, with a person, a situation, our basic lot in life, whatever it is, the measure of the degree to which we’re satisfied with it equals our expectation minus the reality. Expectation minus reality equals satisfaction. So if the number is positive then we’re satisfied with it, the bigger the positive number is the more satisfied we are.

On the other hand if that number is a negative one expectations minus reality becomes negative, in other words reality falls short of expectations – maybe it’s a minus five or a minus seven or a minus ten – then we’re disappointed. And the bigger that negative number is the greater our disappointment.

So you who are wives you married this great romantic, good-looking, chivalrous guy fifteen or twenty or thirty years ago and these days you look at him and wonder, “where’s the romance? What happened to him?” Your expectation minus your reality is definitely in the negative right? That’s telling me that you’re disappointed with him.

Or you start a new job, it sounded great at the interview, their website looked good and the building and offices were fantastic. This exciting new job with career prospects and opportunities but now you’re six months into it you realise you’re just a small cog in a big machine. No one really cares about you; no one cares how happy you are in your job, how you feel, whether you’re enjoying it, they’re not interested in your ideas to improve this or that. Expectation minus reality equals minus eight – you’re disappointed because the reality has fallen way short of your expectations.

In fact when we think about it the more there are enough things in our worlds to keep us disappointed 24 x 7. Our spouse, our children, our friends, our boss, our co workers, our house, the neighbours, the weather, the rain, the heat, the traffic, the noise, the smell, how we look, how we feel, our lot in life, the dogs barking out there, the flies, the mosquitoes, that clever person over there, the colour of your fingernails, the dress you bought, our reactions, our behaviours, our incomes, our bank balance, our credit card bill, the list goes on and on.

And the more the advertising industry in particular dangles images of success and perfection under our noses the higher our expectations become and the greater the gap becomes between our expectations and the reality and so the greater the level of disappointment right?

There literally are enough things out there to keep us disappointed with the whole world 24/7 and can I tell you the more we expect perfection the more the disease of disappointment is going to afflict us.

I remember once as a child seeing a cartoon of a character, I can’t remember who the character was, who had this rain cloud following them around everywhere they went. It didn’t matter where this little fellow went there was a black rain cloud right over his head and it rained on him, just on him, nobody else. Everyone else was having sunshine but this little fellow had a perpetual rain cloud hanging over his head.

See that’s the picture of someone whose living in this perpetual state of disappointment and more and more people are living like that with their own personal little weather system, that cloud of disappointment that rains on them all day long.

Now in a sense disappointment is a natural thing. When we’re relying on someone to do something and they fail us, they don’t come through its pretty natural to get disappointed. I was preparing a message on disappointment recently to deliver at my Church and so I hopped on the Internet to look for some images on disappointment. There was this one like a big green road sign that you see and it read this, “welcome to disappointment, don’t stay too long” and for me that says it all.

Of course sometimes you and I are going to experience disappointment as an initial reaction, it’s only natural, what’s unnatural is staying there too long. What’s unnatural is pulling off the highway and setting up home in this place called disappointment because disappointment, well not only is it a negative emotion it’s a completely useless emotion. Disappointment doesn’t achieve a single thing.

If someone falls short of our expectation and we wallow around in our disappointment for days and weeks and months even a lifetime we’re allowing ourselves to fall victim to their shortcomings and if not to their shortcomings then certainly to the gap between our expectations and their reality.

And that’s the thing, so often the problem isn’t out there with the people or the situation or the circumstances that we’re disappointed with, the problem, the real problem is in here with our unrealistic expectations. The opposite of disappointment isn’t joy or success, the opposite of disappointment is satisfaction and contentment.

So when we can’t modify the reality what we can do is modify our expectations of the reality. We can bring our expectations closer to the reality. It’s that whole thing; you’ve heard this saying:

Dear Lord, give me the courage the change the things I can’t accept and accept the things that I cannot change.

Often when we accept reality and work with it instead of against it the disappointment goes away. Wives, your husband is who he is so love him how he is and chances are that will change him. My encouragement to you today is to examine your reactions to people, places, circumstances, to your lot in life and really take a cold hard look at the degree to which disappointment is robbing you of joy and peace and contentment and satisfaction in your life, the sort of joy and peace and contentment and satisfaction that you’ve always been looking for because all too often it’s our unrealistic expectations of those places and people and circumstances and our lot in life that lie at the heart of our disappointment.

Jesus said something really interesting about disappointment, He said:

I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (John chapter 6, verse 35)

See the whole thing about bread was told in the context of satisfying hunger. He’s just performed an amazing miracle of feeding five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish and He was leveraging that miracle to teach people about contentment and fulfilment.

And that’s a verse of Scripture that’s become such a powerful reality in my life because here’s how it works. The closer I get to Jesus, the more time I spend with Him, the more I let His grace fill my heart with joy and peace the more without me ever trying He modifies my expectations of people and places and circumstances and my lot in life.

See it’s completely effortless because His joy fills my heart and what I’ve noticed, the fruit that that’s born in my life is that I get far less disappointed with things much less often. It’s like looking at things through a different set of eyes and experiencing things through a new heart.

Friend, Jesus is the power to change and so now someone comes along and disappoints me the level of disappointment is far less and it lasts nowhere near as long. I end up praying for them, accepting them, hoping the best for them not because I’m super spiritual, I’m not, not because I’m naturally tolerant, I’m definitely not that and not because I’m some good guy because I’m not but because Jesus satisfies me.

Jesus is the bread of life; He really is the bread of life. I’m no longer hungry, I’m no longer thirsty, Jesus has satisfied me and He continues to satisfy me and you know when you’re satisfied with your life it’s so much harder to get disappointed. He takes that rain cloud away. It’s a Jesus thing.

Stress is one of the biggest killers in the world. It leads to heart attack, stroke and even some cancers. But in this crazy, hectic, hurly-burly world in which most of us live, how exactly do you get some balance back into your life?

Now it’s true that some stress in life is a good thing. Think about it, if you were a cave man being chased by a woolly mammoth or a sabre tooth tiger you’re going to experience some stress and that’s a good thing because it gets the right hormones pumping, the cortisol and adrenalin to give you that burst of energy that you need to get out of that dangerous situation you’re in.

Now cortisol is made by the adrenal glands and it’s often referred to as the stress hormone. Your body makes as much of it as you need from time to time. It’s actually the second most abundant hormone in your body. You make about ten to twenty milligrams of it a day under normal circumstances which doesn’t sound like a lot but remember hormones are incredibly potent.

But here’s the problem, when you’re under a lot of stress you make a whole bunch more of this cortisol stuff and that in turn inhibits the production of another hormone called DHEA. Now without going into all the details because I am not an Endocrinologist, DHEA is a mother hormone, it’s the precursor for the production of a whole bunch of other hormones, good hormones, that are vital to your health and it’s a strong marker for ageing and ill health.

Study after study confirms that inadequate levels of DHEA lead to premature ageing and an acceleration of the degenerative diseases of ageing including atherosclerosis which leads to heart attack and stroke, diabetes, cancers, osteoporosis and lowered immunity. In fact low DHEA is a much better predictor than high cholesterol of an impending heart attack. Your chances of contracting many cancers increase as your DHEA levels fall.

As one medico writes, “to put it more bluntly the lower your DHEA the more likely you are to die sooner rather than later from an age related disease.” And DHEA production is suppressed by unhealthily high levels of cortisol, which in turn is caused by constant stress. That’s cheery news, isn’t it?

I’m sharing this stuff with you because all too often while we know we’re under a bit too much stress we simply aren’t aware of the incredibly negative impact that that stress is having on our bodies not just our emotions. So whilst we were made to be at heightened levels of stress now and then for short periods of time, that’s normal even good for us, we were not made to be under the constant stress of modern 21st century life.

I’m old enough to remember the good old days when there was no email, there were no mobile phones, there was no sms, there was no Facebook, there was no twitter. In fact when I was a young lad we didn’t even have a phone in the house. There were only four TV channels, they were all black and white, there was no internet, ipad, cable TV and all the myriad of other things that constantly put our senses under bombardment.

In fact many of us today are living in sensory overload. You know many companies expect their managers to be connected to their emails via their mobile phones when they’re off on holidays with their families.

The natural delays that we used to have built into our lives are fast disappearing because we’re connected and accessible for many of us twenty four hours a day seven days a week. In western countries almost all teenagers have mobile phones and a very high percentage of those leave them on all night by their bedside in case an important message comes through from a friend. Hello!

Can you see why this stress thing is such a big deal? Here are some stats from a website called WebMD. 43% of all adults suffer adverse health effects from stress. Between 25 and 90% of all Doctors offices visits are for stress related complaints or ailments. In the US the Occupational Safety and Health administration has estimated that stress costs the American Industry more than three hundred billion dollars a year.

Here’s the insight for today, your body is not, I repeat, is NOT a machine. Your levels of DHEA naturally decline over time as you grow older although with good health and exercise you can maintain a reasonable level of that hormone but in the absence of that with naturally declining DHEA levels coupled with stress that further decreases those levels through the over production of cortisol you’re putting yourself in the fast lane for premature death or at the very least disability.

Is this message getting through to you? My friend your body is not a machine and over work with incredibly high levels of stress is not what your body or your mind or your emotions were designed to do. And dealing with the stress in your life isn’t something you should be putting off. I’m hoping that today’s a bit of a wakeup call to all the lunatics out there – and friend I used to be one of those lunatics – who are working like madmen and they’re wondering why they keel over with a stroke or a massive heart attack. Constantly high levels of stress don’t feel good, they lead to sadness even depression and they’re not good for our bodies either.

So here are a few simple pointers for reducing the levels of stress that you’re currently under. The first one is learn to say no. When your boss at work heaps more and more work onto you that has you working nights and weekends and missing rest and time with your family, simply say ‘no’. And if they don’t like it go find another job.

I’m a master on taking on too much. I have done so for way too long. These days I say no more than I say yes. Okay sometimes people don’t like it but I pretty much get 6.5 – 7.5 hours sleep at night which is my optimal band every night because I’m learning to say no. Who or what do you need to say no to, to reduce your stress?

The second one is to disconnect from the electronic world. I enjoy social media but you know I very rarely check my work emails at night or on weekends. It’s not because I’m lazy, I work ten or twelve hours most weekdays, it’s because I don’t need the stress of having to think about a work problem when I’m trying to rest. Your body and your mind and mine too for that matter, they need to rest, they need to relax, they need to switch off from the hurly burly of life that has cortisol pumping through your veins all the time.

And the last tip is to reduce your levels of anxiety. Only one way I know how to do that and that’s trusting my problems and all those things out there that I don’t have any control over to God. The Apostle Paul while he was on death row wrote these words, Philippians chapter 4 verses 6 and 7:

Don’t be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanks giving. Let your request be made known to God and the peace that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

And I found that verse absolutely to be true. When I spend the time that I would have previously spent stressing over something and use it instead to pray, thanking God, laying out my needs and my problems before Him, His Holy Spirit takes over in my heart, I get a peace in my heart and mind that often under the circumstances simply doesn’t make sense, that peace which surpasses all understanding.

And it is exactly the case that God guards my heart and my mind, it’s like He puts a impenetrable barrier around them that the worries of the world can’t break through. And so then worry turns into peace, the stress is gone out of the situation, God knows what we can handle and what we can’t and He is there, He is here right now, right in this place with you to take the burdens from you, to lighten your load, to put His shoulder to the wheel and push on your behalf and to give you peace.

Do not let stress rob you of your peace. Don’t let stress rob you quite literally of your life.

Envy is a dark and destructive emotion. So dark in fact, that all too often, we don’t even dare to admit it to ourselves. It ruins lives and relationships. How do you know if envy is gripping your heart? How can you overcome the destructive power of envy?

Way back in 1974 American writer Gore Vidal during an interview said this, “Every time a friend of mine succeeds a little something inside me dies”. And again he said, “It’s not merely enough for me to succeed someone else has to fail”. Mmm, what do you think about those statements? Me? I really relate to them because for almost the first four decades of my life that’s exactly how I felt.

I remember a few years after finishing University in my early twenties an old school friend of mine was telling me how successful another mutual school friend of ours was being in his business and truly I felt that a little something inside me died that day. When a few years later I discovered that that successful friend was struck down with an illness and so had to leave his business something inside me rejoiced and I’m sad to say that’s how it was for me back then.

You’ve probably never heard some joker on the radio admit that but this whole “envy” thing is such a terribly destructive emotion. So what is envy? Well my dictionary tells me that it’s a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities or apparent luck. It’s that desire to have something that belongs to someone else. It’s that desire not only to succeed but as Gore Vidal so honestly said, for others to fail.

Envy is a dark emotion. It’s one that we hide away in our hearts. We don’t want anyone else to see it because it speaks of a craven desire for self-success. We don’t even want to admit it to ourselves because we all know it’s wrong, it’s horrible, it’s so self-centric as to be completely abhorrent.

Envy is unlike almost any other emotion. Anger for instance is an emotion that we wear on the outside as well as the inside and most of our emotions are like that. We harbour them on the inside for a time and every now and then they break out on the outside. But envy is so bad that we bury it deep down and we try to hide it from others as well as from ourselves.

Okay so lets poke around inside your heart today. Who or what are you envious of? If you’re a woman you may quite likely envy someone else’s looks or her age or her hair colour or that great husband that she seems to have snagged for herself. If you’re a man you may envy another man’s success, his stunning looking wife compared to the one you’re stuck with, you may envy another man’s position, his car, his job, his title, his exclusive golf club membership. You may envy the influence he has over others, the sort of influence that you can only even dream about.

And as I’ve rattled through that list note something important, it goes back to what Gore Vidal said about his envy. Listen again, ‘Every time a friend of mine succeeds a little something inside me dies’. Who did he envy the most? His successful friends and that’s pretty much the case with us. Our envy is strongest of the people who are closest to us.

We might envy the life of some famous movie star but it’s not a strong envy, it’s more of a distant, ‘Wow, I wish I could have what they had’ and we don’t think too much more about it. But when the person is much closer to us, a good friend, a brother, a sister, some young niece or nephew twenty five years younger than us who’s earning more than we are, that’s when envy can grip our hearts with a dark desire.

Envy leads people to isolate their friends because not only do we covet what they have, we want to see them fail. It leads us to do and say things to undermine people we care for. Envy can even lead to theft or murder. Envy is an emotion that’s as powerful as it is dark.

I spent a good twenty years working as a consultant in a few hundred different organisations; envy between co workers was something I saw rather a lot of. Someone was envious that this person had been promoted ahead of them or they were envious that the boss seemed to listen to her but not to me and I can’t tell you the number of times I saw those envious people going around undermining their co-workers, silently stabbing them in the back, demeaning them, damming them with faint praise.

That sort of behaviour is so destructive in organisations, in families, in communities and it’s totally irrational.

For us it seems the grass is always greener on the other side, we want to have what they have without ever considering how much we already have ourselves and that’s what lies at the core of envy. It’s an insatiable appetite for more without ever being content with who we are and what we have.

So the key to overcoming envy is really taking a good look at what we do have and being content with that. Who you are, how you look, what you’re good at, what you’re not good at, the house you live in, the family you’ve got. The other day we spoke about disappointment and I made the point that the reason so often we’re disappointed is that we have unrealistic expectations of perfection from people and our circumstances in the first place.

Well the same, in a sense, is true of envy. The reason we’re envious most often is not because of what the other person has, it’s because we’ve never really become content with what we have and no matter our circumstances we each have rather a lot.

What’s the matter with us that we have to compare all the time? It’s the sort of thing two year olds do when one tries to take the toy off another. Envy is a sign of immaturity and that immaturity is so incredibly destructive.

So that’s the anatomy of envy if you will. Now back to our own lives, back to your life. Who or what are you envious of? Come on, I want to encourage you today to confront this dark, destructive, hand wringing emotion in your life and slay this dragon once and for all. For everything and everyone that you’re envious of let me encourage you to focus of what you already have and not just focus on it but do something with it because here’s what I know.

That thing over there that you see in the other person’s life, that thing that you’re envious of it may have an upside but it also comes with a downside, all that glitters is not gold and once you become content with who you are and what you have that dark emotion of envy is sent packing.

It’s interesting the Ten Commandments includes a Commandment about envy, it’s the very last one, number ten. Here it is, Exodus chapter 20, verse 17 from the Old Testament:

You shall not covet your neighbour’s house, you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife or male or female slave or ox or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbour.

To covet means “to desire, to envy, to want for yourself”. It’s right up there with don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t commit adultery. The reality is that there are very few things that God tells us not to do, just a handful actually and the reason that envy is one of the ‘don’ts’ is that He knows how destructive it is and how much it’s going to hurt us.

And the key to ditching this envy is to be content with what we have. This is how the writer of the New Testament Book of Hebrews puts it in Hebrews chapter 13, verse 5:

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have for God has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.

And the reason we can be content with what we have is that Jesus promised never to leave us or forsake us and that my friend is huge.

A W Tozer once wrote this, he said:

“The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Many ordinary treasures maybe denied him or if he’s allowed to have them the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary for his happiness. Or if he must see them go one after one he will scarcely feel a sense of loss, for having the source of all things he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight. Whatever he may lose he has actually lost nothing for he now has it all in One and he has it purely, legitimately and forever.”

He’s absolutely right!

The term “low self-esteem” wasn’t known at the beginning of the 20^th century. In fact, in many so-called developing nations it remains, largely, an unknown. And yet, it’s ruining millions of lives around the globe. What is it? How can you overcome it?

The term low self-esteem didn’t exist a hundred years ago. It seems that something’s happened in the last hundred or so years to change how we see ourselves. The social observer and commentator in me looks at it this way, over the last hundred years particularly in the western so-called developed world people have become much more individualistic in their thinking.

As we’ve become wealthier, as we’re able to afford more and more things that emphasise the individual over the community, our way of thinking has become individualistic. People drive to work alone in cars whereas a hundred years ago they walked together or they rode in carts together or more recently they caught public transport together.

It always amazes me to see thousands of cars in peak hour traffic each one with just a single occupant and because in many places the supermarkets are open 24/7 we no longer need to go next door to borrow the proverbial cup of sugar because in an economically developed society as opposed to say a subsistence farming society people are way more self-sufficient, they become less accustomed to thinking as a community and more accustomed to thinking as individuals.

The low self-esteem is not a term that’s used very much in so-called developing countries because people still rely very much on one another as families and as communities and so they think collectively. I remember hearing an eminent theologian and social anthropologist from a university in the Philippines speaking and she made this point. She said we don’t think individually, we always think collectively. We think in terms of families and communities not in terms of individuals.

So that’s one thing, the progressive march of affluence leads to an individualistic view of the world which knocks away our support piers that uphold our sense of belonging, our sense of contribution and so our sense of self-esteem in a community context.

The second thing is the more affluent a society becomes the more emphasis there is on “things” like materialism, how we look, what we have, how we perform, what we live in, what we drive. So there seems to be this marriage of individualism and expectations that have become a fertile breeding ground for feelings of inadequacy, particularly as we and our children become more and more connected through social media, through mobile phones.

So that rather having our self-worth confirmed in the context of a loving family and an interdependent community we now see reflections of ourselves in the distorted mirror of individualism and materialism.

So that’s my take on it. Low self-esteem is a thinking disorder where a person sees themselves as inadequate or unworthy and incompetent even unlovable and once a person has that view of themselves in that light it permeates every thought. They think and behave based on false assumptions that simply perpetuates an ongoing pattern of self-defeating behaviour.

According to dosomething.org among high school students 44% of girls and 15% of boys are trying to lose weight. Over 70% of girls aged fifteen to seventeen avoid normal daily activities like going to school when they feel bad about their looks. More than 75% of girls with low self-esteem reported in engaging in negative activities like cutting, bullying, smoking, drinking and disordered eating. That compares with just 25% of girls who have normal or high self-esteem.

I could go on and on with the whole bunch more grim statistics but I think you’re getting the point. It’s a terrible thing this whole low self-esteem thing and whilst it’s rampant in developed worlds it’s also starting to take hold in developing nations as western influences of affluence and technological connectivity and individualism take hold creating all sorts of inter generational tensions because parents just don’t get it and isolating and marginalising beautiful people who until now were cocooned in supportive family and community structures.

So what does someone do who suffers from low self-esteem? How do you deal with it? How do you get over it? Here are some pointers, the first step is always recognise there’s a problem. Admitting to yourself there’s a problem. Hey that takes a lot of courage especially if the problem is low self-esteem but if you suffer from low self-esteem the sooner you take that step the better it’s going to be for you because at that point you’re going to need some help and at that point, at that point of admission you’re going to be open to receive some help.

Low self-esteem is not normal, it may be pervasive, it’s not normal, it’s not what you and I were created for, it’s no way to live the sort of life that you’re capable of living.

The next step is to get connected back into a supportive family and community environment. Now look the vast majority of us have a family that loves us. Sure they’re not perfect but they love us and I understand not everyone has a loving family but most of us do and if you do it’s time to reconnect with your family, it’s time to talk to your parents, find out what they think of you, you would be surprised how much they love you, how proud they are of you or if they’re no longer around connect with your wife or your husband, your brothers or your sisters or your cousins or your children, whatever it is.

It’s sad but true that many of us in the developed world have forgotten how to be a family and if you don’t live in the developed world hang on to and treasure your family relationships. People who love us are the best ones to give us an honest assessment of who we really are. Come on, none of us is perfect, none of us are good at everything, we all come as a wonderfully unique bundle of strengths and weaknesses, that’s fine. For me the biggest thing for overcoming low self-esteem which I used to suffer from, that nagging sense of inadequacy and insecurity was accepting my weaknesses.

Getting really happy with who I’m not as much as who I am. There’s a huge liberation in that, huge. Well we can’t be good at everything. The trick is discovering what we are good at, who we really are and doing those things.

And that brings me to my next point, its then time to live in an interdependent community, in a community where I depend on you and you depend on me because you can do things I can’t and I can do things you can’t. Hey when you think about it that’s exactly what makes the economy go round and it’s how communities should work.

When we know that we’re contributing our little bit to the puzzle to make the community work all of a sudden we discover our sense of value, our sense of worth. So get connected with family, get connected with community and finally and most importantly get connected with Jesus because He made you who you are, He chose the gifts and abilities that you have and by the way He also chose the ones that you don’t have. He made you wonderfully, beautifully, exquisitely unique.

Have a listen to what He says about you in His Word, the Bible. 1 Corinthians chapter 12 beginning at verse 4:

There are varieties of different gifts but the same spirit and there are varieties of services but the same Lord and there are varieties of activities but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. All these are activated by one and the same spirit who allots to each one individually just as the spirit chooses.

The key point there is that we’re all different because God exercising His sovereign will chose to give what gifts and abilities to give to you and which ones not to give to you. Who you are is His choice and that makes all the difference.

When we discover who we are and what we’re made to do then all of a sudden we know where we fit into the community, what our contribution is and it’s that sense of contribution that gives us a sense of worth. It’s knowing who we are in Christ that gives us the sense of value.

Who we’re not and what we can’t do is not the ruler against which we should measure ourselves, who we are because that’s how God chose us to be, that’s the true measure. It’s pretty obvious when you put it that way.

Hey Jesus didn’t die on that cross for you so that you would live the rest of your life being miserable about who you are, come on He just didn’t.