See Yourself As God Sees You
We live in a world which perpetuates an impossible standard of perfection, and browsing through social media every day only reminds us of how we fall short of being the perfect child, parent, or spouse in every way possible. At every turn, we’re shown something that reminds us—“you’re not good enough.”
Through the following excerpt from my book, Give Me This Mountain—Faith to Go from Barely Surviving to Actually Thriving, I pray you’ll be comforted and uplifted as you see how the Lord wants you to perceive yourself as God sees you, and live boldly and confidently knowing that He is more than enough for all your not-enoughs!
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”
Most of us are probably familiar with this adapted line from Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in which Snow White’s evil stepmother, the queen, obsessed with being the most beautiful woman in the world, would utter this question every day before an enchanted mirror and wait in anticipation for its favorable reply.
While the idea of having a talking mirror that magically assigns you a score on some scale of beauty or perfection can seem like something out of a fairytale, doesn’t it also bear worrying resemblance to our society today?
We live in a culture more obsessed with appearances and self-image than ever before. One that’s constantly telling us what “the dream life” should look like, and in the same breath, how far we fall short. Social media and its ranks of influencers plaster our feeds round the clock with curated perfection—framing, filtering, and Facetuning the snapshots of their lives so that all we see are perfect looks, perfect relationships, perfect vacays, perfect latte art, perfect moments, and perfect lives.
Now if you haven’t realized this about life and reality yet, perfection is pretty hard to achieve. We might think we know that, but the unreal and unrealistic standards on our screens still subtly and insidiously infiltrate our hearts and affect the way we see ourselves and our lives.
With every scroll and every swipe, we feel smaller and smaller, and further and further away from what it looks like to be thriving in life. Every day, we stare into this talking mirror that tells us we don’t measure up. Every day, we let it instill the perspective that we’re not successful enough, not good-looking enough, not popular enough, not rich enough, not achieving enough.
The problem here is this: perspective = reality.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 12:35 NLT that the results you see in your life have everything to do with what’s in your heart. So whatever the perspectives you have in your heart, they’re going to play out in your life.
We see this in the story of the 10 spies who came back with a bad report of the promised land. Listen to what they said: “There we saw the giants . . . and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight” (Num. 13:33 NKJV).
Wait a minute. How did they know the giants saw them like grasshoppers? Did these spies, who were scouting out the land in secret, go up to them and ask?
Obviously not.
They didn’t get that report from the giants. It was their opinion of themselves presented as fact.
The sad truth was that the whole time, the giants were terrified of the Israelites because they’d heard about the power of their God (Josh. 2:9–11 NLT). But it didn’t matter what the truth was because the perspective of the 10 spies defined their reality. They saw themselves small, helpless, and a long way from ever possessing the promised land—and that’s how their lives played out. They never inherited the land.
Friend, more than the reflection you see in the mirror, it’s the image you see on the inside—in your heart—that matters. It defines how you feel about yourself, how you respond to unexpected situations that come your way, how confident you are in the face of your challenges, and ultimately, how much you thrive in life.
And while social media can help us stay informed and connected, God doesn’t want us looking into a warped mirror every day and letting it tell us what to think about ourselves. He wants to replace it with another mirror—the 100% truthful and unchanging mirror of His Word.
You see, He has filled His Word with pictures that show you who you really are:
- If you’ve been seeing yourself as someone who’s constantly struggling just to get by, Jeremiah 17:8 NKJV gives you a picture of yourself as “a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when heat comes; but its leaf will be green, and will not be anxious in the year of drought, nor will cease from yielding fruit.”
- If you’ve been seeing yourself as someone who’s small and inadequate with nothing to offer, Judges 6:12 NKJV shows you how God sees you—a mighty man or woman of valor.
- If you’ve been seeing yourself as someone who’s not pretty or good-looking enough, Song of Solomon 4:7 ESV reveals God’s opinion of you: “You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.”
- If you’ve been seeing yourself as someone unwanted, someone who will never find anyone to truly love you, Psalm 88:18 KJV shows you how Jesus bore the curse of rejection, being without lover and friend, so that by the divine exchange that happened at the cross, you have the promise that you will not end up alone.
Friend, the more you behold these truth-bearing pictures, the more you allow them to infiltrate your heart and transform your reality.
The world tries to change their realities by doing everything they can on the outside to feel better about themselves—get on that workout regime, adopt this new diet, get a bunch of new clothes, gadgets, or things—and yet, inside, their deep-seated perspectives can stay the same. And so, sadly, they don’t see the changes they’re hoping for.
As children of God, our Father gets straight to the heart of the matter and changes our reality from the inside out. He gives us powerful faith pictures that change our perspectives and lives. And you know what? He doesn’t just stop there.
Beyond compelling faith pictures, His Word reveals to us the basis on which we can own them. Behind every picture, behind every detail, behind every word in Scripture, is the beauty and grace of our Savior who joined us together with Him and gave us access to all that He is and all that He has (Rom. 8:17 TPT).
When we open the Word and see Jesus above all else, it’s as though we are looking into a mirror at the reflection of who we are in Him. We find ourselves completely and inseparably one with Him, and we see all that He has irrevocably superimposed on our lives. In these moments, when we are lost in awe of His glory and magnificence, we are inexorably transformed into His image—becoming more and more like Him (2 Cor. 3:18 NKJV)!
So friend, will you take up the mirror of God’s Word today and allow your heart to be convinced that you are who He says you are and you have what He says you have? That’s how you align your perspective with His and see your life transformed!
Today let’s try something really radical. Take a break from your phone and social media feed for the entire day and spend time with the Lord. Get out, take a walk with Him in the park, disconnect from the digital world. Ask Him to show you the areas in your life where you’ve developed an inaccurate or unhealthy image or opinion of yourself. It could be in the area of physical looks, your interpersonal relationships, or even your ideals for your career or future.
Write them down and begin to look out for pictures in God’s Word that you can replace them with.
Read
Numbers 13:33 / 2 Corinthians 3:18
This excerpt is taken from the book Give Me This Mountain (Base Camp 2: Day Four—Mirror Matters, pp. 95–100) by Joseph Prince.
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