Seeking validation from others is infidelity to God

In The Good and Beautiful You, James Bryan Smith writes:

“People are fickle and their evaluations of us are unreliable, often saying more about them than us. If we have enough ‘likes’ or get enough praise, we can feel, for a moment, that we are wanted or desired. But that can all change in the next hour.

“To be hidden in Christ (Colossians 3:3) is to be taken out of this world that has drugged our original selves with cheap satisfactions.

“Attempting to establish [our] worth in this world is not only being unfaithful to God, but it’s actually being disloyal to yourself… [When we do this] we are rejecting our unique selves that came into existence without our asking for it or deserving it.”

• In what ways are you “drugging” yourself with cheap satisfactions? Name the things you are replacing God with (e.g. the search for a soulmate; money and material possessions; validation from other people).
• Remember that, as Smith says, the void in our hearts is too vast to be filled by anything but God.
• In what ways can you start celebrating the unique person God has made you to be and leaning into God’s will for your life? (and so bring God glory)

Smith finishes Chapter Three with this beautiful poem by Adrian van Kaam:

Whisper to me again
How you formed me in my mother’s womb,
Fashioned me over generations,
Over eons of unfolding of the earth,
Until it could bear life
On its flaky crust, the dust
From which you formed our earthly frame
Endowing each of us with a name
Known to you alone.
Remind me how I dwelt in you,
My source and origin,
A call from eternity,
An archetype of life to be
Unique and irreplaceably
Your own.

Praying you’d know God’s love and delight deeply today and always.

In Christ,

Ali