the flow of significance

We are significant because we are created in the image of God, by God. But we get that all wrong because our beliefs are wrong. We search our environments for affirmation of our significance (or lack thereof), and when we find it, we turn to God and offer the evidence to him as proof that he should either accept us or reject us.

I have been successful, therefore God accepts me.

I have been a failure, therefore God should reject me and if he doesn’t, he’s probably going to any day now because I’m just going to keep screwing it up.

Or worse, I have been successful today, therefore I am loved. Tomorrow I will fail and therefore I will be hated.

I thought this was not a struggle of mine until I was recruited to deliver the concept and the message to a group of about 100 women over the course of about three months. Now that I am in the midst of “teaching” this concept, I have discovered how much I have to learn about it. Funny (ha ha) how God works sometimes. It’s not like this message was even forced on me. It was completely up to me what the “theme” of this teaching would be. I selected Significance because I discerned that it was something many people struggle with.

What I have found is that I struggle profoundly with it and I didn’t even realize. But through some life events that have illustrated to me so very clearly that I have found my significance, in large part, through my role as a mother, I have become a living example of that struggle to those 100 or so women, and I will continue to live out this struggle and this journey of discovery right in front of them for another month or so, culminating in a weekend event of intimate Christian community where we will share this teaching with 36 more women.

It is so humiliating to be placed in a leadership role and find that your role is really to be transparent and vulnerable as you lead. But what else should I have expected to be asked to do by my brother Jesus? It’s rather disturbing to think that I actually expected to lead from an “I’ve arrived” perspective. I should have known better. Leaders are simply those who are willing to take the first step in becoming better followers of Jesus. Willing to be the first to take up the cross and die to self, willing to serve first, willing to be broken first, willing to be watched by a Christian community as the Potter shapes and reshapes.

I can’t even really claim credit for being willing. I feel like I was drafted. At least I’m willing not to go AWOL, yet.

Psalm 8 speaks of this flow of significance, which is from God, through me, and to the world:

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

2 From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise ^[b]
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,

4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings ^[c]
and crowned him with glory and honor.

6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:

7 all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,

8 the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

9 O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

And William P. Young speaks richly to this idea of our significance in his book, The Shack:

“The truth is this: “Significance originates from ‘being’, not from doing.” Doing adds nothing to our significance and doing takes nothing away. Doing is directly related, not to significance, but is largely an expression of who we think we are. “As a person thinks in their heart, so are they (so they will act).” Because we are already significant, our choices and actions matter. It is not the choices that make us significant, it is our significance that make our choices meaningful. Every human being is significant by nature. They are imprinted with the very image of God, they are each the center of God’s love and goodness. True significance is individually wrapped up in the uniqueness of each person and each one being created in the image of God, regardless of what Madison Ave says, or how an individual may be damaged or broken. “

There is really only one way we can identify ourselves, and that is by our status as children of God. There is nothing else that can remain, in the end. Everything else that we might draw some significance from can be taken away. Motherhood, accomplishment, power, fame, intelligence, health, wealth, relationships, beauty, youth, age, wisdom, whatever. It all goes away, it is all shifting sand. This is my lesson to learn, and I’m not sure how that’s going to happen because I am one of those damaged and I fear, permanently broken individuals. All I can do is submit myself to Jesus, and like Paul, say “follow me as I follow the Lord.”