Do You Know How Much You’re Worth?

Dannah Gresh: When you find something you like, don’t you like to share it? Like when you find a recipe or restaurant or podcast, it’s always more fun when you get to pass it on to someone else.

Linda Carullo feels that way about the book, Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free, written by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. She shared that book with women in her church over and over.

Linda Carullo: I’m Linda Carullo from Valparaiso, Indiana. I lead a women’s Bible study. When we went through Lies Women Believe, we used the workbook, which I highly recommend, and the hardback book. The women that I am with, including myself, struggle with our worth. And when we are not looking to God’s Word to get our worth, then we’re going to believe the lies.

Dannah: Nancy first wrote Lies Women Believe in 2001, but Linda has found that it addresses the needs women have today, because the book points us to the timeless truths of God’s Word.

Linda: I will tell you about a single mom in my Bible study group. This is a representation of so many single moms. This lady is divorced and has two precious girls, and she is working so hard to be a godly mom to her daughters. She is met with constant friction from the father who belittles her to verbally abuses her to manipulate her to push her buttons to get what he wants.

When she first started coming to Bible study, she was a believer, but she wasn’t embracing her identity in Christ. So she was learning in Bible study just how much God values her and what all Jesus really did for her. She started embracing her identity in Christ and started thanking God for specific ways that He was valuing her.

Probably several months later it dawned on her that when the father of her children was trying to push the buttons, she was not responding the way that he used to to try and get her to respond. She was being respectful of her words.

She was telling me about that. It was like when you embrace the identity of Christ, it breaks the button for those who are trying to push it, because she’s grounded in what God’s done with her. So she doesn’t have to feel defeated and frustrated in these conversations anymore.

Dannah: Over the next few days, Nancy will share some of the timeless truths from Lies Women Believe. She’s going to focus on lies women believe about themselves.

This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast for Monday, August 8. I’m Dannah Gresh.

It’s so easy to fall for the lie, “I'm not worth anything.” Nancy’s going to help us counter that lie with biblical truth in this classic message. Let’s listen.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: How many of you in this room would say at some time in your life you have struggled with this deep sense that “I’m not worth anything”? Almost everyone of us in this room.

We’re talking this week about “Lies Women Believe about Themselves.” This is one of the most pervasive common lies that we as women believe about ourselves. In fact, we surveyed several hundred women as I was writing a book, Lies Women Believe. We gave them a list of lies and asked them, “Which of these have you found yourself believing?” And almost half of the women that we surveyed said that they had believed this lie.

Now, this is a very powerful lie. Let me read to you some of the things that women have written about what has happened in their lives as they have believed this lie: “I’m not worth anything.”

One woman said, 

Feeling inferior has been a lifelong struggle. Many times it has caused me to withdraw from relationships, even though I am a people person and outgoing.

Another woman said, 

Because of the hurt in my marriage, I felt that I was useless, and that nobody—not even God—could love me. I just didn’t measure up. And since I’d always felt that I had to be perfect to be loved, then obviously God would not love me neither.

Now, in many cases (and there are those in this room who can relate to this very specifically) those feelings of worthlessness are often the result of believing things that we have heard from others, especially in our childhood. Isn't it amazing how something we hear on a playground as a child, or in a classroom from a teacher, can stick with us?

It was years ago that perhaps you heard that statement, but you've taken that statement with you through life and found yourself believing it. I see some heads nodding in here.

One woman wrote and said, 

I have a memory of being about six and being told that I had no right to live, and I should never have been born. I don’t know who said it, but I do remember my mother just standing there and not doing anything about it. I became very withdrawn, and it was extremely difficult to talk to people.

Notice the progression here. First, she’s told this terrible destructive lie, and then she begins to dwell on this lie. She said, 

By the time I was to start seventh grade, it was decided I belonged in special education. I was accepted into the classes, but there wasn't room so I went to the normal junior high school, but I never believed I belonged there.

As she began to dwell on this lie, she began to believe it because she did not know how to counter the lie with the truth. Then she said, 

Until this weekend, I have believed that I was stupid, not normal, and I should be locked away somewhere. In junior high I had no friends and people went out of their way to hurt me. As a result, I withdrew even more. I became very depressed, and I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.

You see what happened? She listened to the lie; she didn't counter it with the truth. She was told that she should never have been born. That's a lie. She didn't counter it with the truth. She dwelt on the lie. Ultimately she came to believe that that's really what was true about her. Then she acted on what she believed as inevitably we always do. She said, 

I became very depressed and wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.

The tragic consequences of listening to a lie. You see, what we believe about ourselves determines, ultimately, how we live. If we believe lies, we're going to act on lies, and we will ultimately end up in bondage.

Listen to how these women expressed that believing this lie of their worthlessness threw them into bondage.

This woman said, 

For the longest time I thought I was not worth anything. Even after I was saved, I thought I was equal to pond scum.

That's a lie. We're going to look today and tomorrow at what God's Word has to say about who we are in Christ. But she said, 

I believed this, that I was equal to pond scum. This threw me into depression.

You see the depression was really her acting on, emotionally, what she had come to believe that was a lie. She said, 

I began to isolate myself. [Now she's continuing to act on the lie that she's been believing.] And, as a result, was not living the life of joy that God had intended for me.

Here's another illustration of the bondage that results from believing and acting on this lie.

This woman said, 

"I am not worth anything" is a lie that I believed. I've always struggled with this lie and with the constant need for the approval of others. It got to the point of being maddening. 

And believing lies ultimately really can drive a person to madness. She said, 

It got to the point of being maddening. Trying to please everyone. Trying to have the appearance of what I thought I should look like.

These letters and so many others just describe what many of us have experienced, and that is this desperate longing and drive for affirmation–driven to gain approval. So many of us are trying to balance the scales of the negative input we have received from others against some positive input that we hope to get from others.

But you know what's interesting? I find with many women who've bought into this lie, that no matter how many positive things you tell them, they don't believe it, because the lie has become so deeply ingrained in them. They can hear a hundred compliments, but then one family member says one hurtful or critical comment, and they're devastated. You know why? Because they're letting others determine their worth.

First Peter chapter 2 tells us that Jesus was rejected by men. He was lied to about His worth. He was rejected. Men said, “You are not worth anything.” In fact, some of the people in Jesus’ day likened Him to Satan. He was rejected by men, but He refused to believe something that wasn't true. Instead, the Scripture says He was chosen by God–rejected by men but chosen by God. And therefore Peter says, “He was precious.”

Now, what determined Jesus' worth: what men thought of Him or God's choice of Him? He knew that He was God's beloved, chosen Son, and He chose to believe the truth. His worth, His preciousness, His value was not determined by what others thought of Him but rather by the truth that He was chosen by God.

I'm looking into the eyes of some women who have experienced deep, painful rejection—rejection by a mate, by a parent, by a sibling. You've been rejected? Have you found yourself believing that that determines your worth? That you are worthless because others have said that you’re worthless?

I want to encourage you to consider the fact that, if you are a child of God, you have been chosen by God. It's God's choice of you that determines your value. That’s what determines your worth.

Now, who are you going to believe? Are you going to believe what the world has said about you; or are you going, by faith, to believe the fact that God says, "I have chosen you, and you are precious to Me"? 

Now, it’s interesting that just knowing the truth, for most of us, is not enough. We need to embrace the truth and surrender our hearts to it by faith and believe God to make the truth a reality in our being.

“I’m not worth anything.” This lie that the enemy tells us is something that many of us believe deeply.  So how do we counter the lie? Well, again, we go back to the truth. We need to go to the Word of God to get our perspective on ourselves and find out how God views us?

First of all we know from the Scripture that we were created by God–created by God.

I remember as a child growing up, my parents had an old LP album that was of the series of poems called “God's Trombones” by James Weldon Johnson. I don't know if you've heard any of those, but in one of those there is a very tender, dramatic account of God's final, crowning act of creation.

Here's how that passage reads where it talks about God creating man. It says:

Up from the bed of the river,
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeling down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;
Then into it He blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen, Amen.

What a picture of the tenderness, the mercy, the grace, the power of God in taking a lump of dirt and fashioning it into a man, breathing into it the breath of life and making a man after His own image or likeness.

We were created in the image of God. The Scripture tells us in Psalm 139, one of the most wonderful passages of Scripture about how God views us. It says that “He knit me together in my mother's womb. He fashioned all my parts, all my pieces, before anyone else had ever seen my substance. There in my mother's womb God, my heavenly Father, fashioned me.”

The Scripture tells us not only was I created in His image, but I was created for His pleasure–for His pleasure I was created to rule with Him over God’s creation.

We were created to display God’s glory, to make Him known on the earth.

The Scripture tells us that we are the object of His tender love and affection and attention; that He ordained all our days and wrote them in a book before one of them ever came to pass.

Someone was saying to me this morning, "I don't know yet why this incident happened to me as a little girl. And (she said) I may never know.”

But God wrote that day in His book before it ever came to pass. That day did not slip by God's attention. It wasn't an "Oops! I forgot to be on My throne that day." God was there. He was caring and He was fashioning. As I said to that woman, "That day was a part of God making you into gold, fashioning you into a woman who will reveal His glory to our world."

Scripture says that God thinks about us all the time. Again, in Psalm 139, "How precious concerning me are Your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of the sand."

Think about God thinking about you all the time, having more thoughts toward you than there are grains of sand on the seashore.

And so many other things that the Scripture tells us how God reveals Himself to us. He has compassion on us. He’s merciful to us. He hears us when we cry out to Him. Even in our fallen, sinful condition, when we were His enemies, He pursued us. As the Hound of Heaven, He loved us, He pursued us. He sent Christ to die for us, to bring about our redemption. He chose us to belong to Him. He adopted us into His family. He chose us to be a Bride for His Son.

The Scripture says He cares for you. He accepts me that I am His cherished treasure and possession, that I am united with Christ. I am a member of His body.

Scripture says that He has a purpose for my life and for your life, that He wants you and me to be fruitful and for our lives to bring Him glory.

There's a wonderful passage that I was reviewing just this morning in Ezekiel chapter 16. And what a picture here of the sovereign love of God for us. I want to read this story to you. God is using it as a picture to His people in the Old Testament of how He had been faithful to them even, as the story goes on, when they were unfaithful to Him. Listen to this word picture that God paints for His people. This is what the Sovereign Lord says:

"Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite."

God says you came out of a pagan, idolatrous background. You weren't born loving God; I was not born loving God. We were born separated from God and His enemies. God goes on to say: 

"On the day you were born, your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.

Then [God says] I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood, I said to you, 'Live!' I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. . . . Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and I covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign LORD and you became mine. I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you." (Ezekiel 16:3–6, 7–9)

Now, notice God didn't just choose those who had something to offer Him. None of us had anything to offer Him. He didn't choose those who were beautiful, who had their act put together. He chose those who were wallowing around in the muck and mire of their own sinfulness and selfishness.

"I bathed you, I washed you, I put ointments on you. I clothed you with an embroidered dress [a picture of the righteousness of Christ] and I put leather sandals on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry." (vv. 9–11)

Then down to verse 13: 

"You became very beautiful and rose up to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect declares the Sovereign LORD." (vv.13–14) 

Ladies, the fact is that you and I have no worth of our own. We have no value apart from Christ. We are worthless apart from Him, His creative redemptive choice in our lives. It's His love for us, lavished upon us, His grace poured out upon us that is what gives our lives value and worth.

I want to read a portion of one other passage from the psalms, Psalm chapter 8 that I think puts this all in proper balance and perspective. Psalm chapter 8, and here's the balance. He begins by a high view of God.

Oh LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens. 

That’s the starting place for a right view of ourselves is to get a right view of God.

Our problem is not really a poor self-image. Our problem is a poor God-image. And so the psalmist says, "God, You are high and lifted up–no worthless idol. You are the great God." Then he says, verse 3, 

When I consider your heavens,
the work of Your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him? (vv. 1–4)

An exalted view of God will give us a humble and right view of ourselves. The psalmist says, "I stand in amazement, in awe, that You would consider me.

And not only that You would care for me," but verse 5, 

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings 
   and You crowned him with glory and honor. 
You made him ruler over the works of your hands; 
   you put everything under his feet. (vv. 5–6)

Then we come to the last verse of chapter 8, and he ends up right where he started, 

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is Your name in all the earth! (vv. 8–9)

You see, the goal is not to keep looking at ourselves. But having seen God's tender care and mercy and choice of us, then to lift our eyes and say, "O God! You are worthy of praise. You have made me. You have chosen me. You love me. You brought me close to your heart. You care for me. I am Your cherished treasure and possession. I don't know why. For all of eternity, I'll never figure out why You would have poured Your love upon me; but I accept it and I give You praise. 'O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!'" 

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth helping you understand why you are so valuable. 

God created you. That idea sounds basic, but when you truly believe it, it will change the way you look at everything else. When you understand basic truths, everything falls into place.

Nancy will help you dive into life-giving truths from the Bible in her book, Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free.

Maybe your heart has just been touched over the last few minutes as you’ve finally begun to see yourself as the valuable creation of a good God. Well, multiply that kind of truth and conviction to book length. That’s what it’s like to read Lies Women Believe. The truth in the book could radically shape the rest of your life, and we’d like to put it in your hands.

So, when you support Revive Our Hearts with a gift of any amount, we’ll send you Lies Women Believe. Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com and make a donation to support this program with a gift of any size. When you do, you’ll find a place to check, “Yes! Please send me Nancy’s book.”

Again, the website is ReviveOurHearts.com, or call 1-800-569-5959.

If you’ve listened to Revive Our Hearts for a while, you’re probably familiar with the phrase Nancy’s listeners love. It starts like this:

Nancy: Anything that makes me . . .”

Do you know the rest of that phrase? We’ll hear one of the first times Nancy said it on the next episode of Revive Our Hearts, and we’ll continue to explore “Lies Women Believe About Themselves.” Please be back next time for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants to help you walk in truth. It’s part of our mission calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the NIV84.

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