The Original Image
What you were created to have and how to get it.
By Pastor Wendy Treat

I was the middle child of six kids raised in a pastor’s home, a normal family, with no abuse or problems that would get me on any talk show today. When I was born again at 17, God began to deal with me. I recognized that although I didn’t have any huge problems, in my mind there wasn’t anything special about me, either. Consequently, I didn’t feel good about myself.

I had grown up as Miss Average. I never had achieved anything. I never had excelled or been pushed to be all I could be in any realm. There was never any sense of destiny or drive. I just lived a ho-hum, boring, mediocre life.

Many of us settle for this same kind of life. Picture it: We go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, have the average 2.5 kids, live in a split level in the suburbs, one dog, one cat and, one day, life is over.

This is not God’s best.

Life is about so much more. It’s not about existing. It’s about soaring.

God is way too creative, too big and too loving to just want you to hang around on earth waiting to die so you can go to heaven.

He has a much greater purpose for you than simple existence; take a look at what you're doing in your life. Don’t let your present self-image keep you at that level.

Go for more!

You have a destiny to fulfill. When you walk in your destiny, every season of your life has a meaning; every part of your life has a purpose and a reason.

You - and your self-image - have been created in the image of God Himself. He created you. He is your heavenly Father, and He sees you as His child. He created you to have dominion on this earth, and to never be dominated by the circumstances surrounding you.

Taking it a step further - you are never to be dominated by the lies and ploys of the devil. You are never to be dominated by thoughts that you are not appreciated, by all the negative words ever spoken over you, or by the wrong self-image that has developed over the years of your life.

But you are to be dominated by the Word of God, and who He says you are...

You are more than a conqueror. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us (Romans 8:37).

You are a new creation. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).

You were chosen before the foundation of the world. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will (Ephesians 1:4-5).

You were saved by grace through faith. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8).

And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Being born again - accepting Jesus as the Lord and Savior of your life - being filled with the Holy Spirit and then learning who you are in Christ is the very foundation to a good self-image. It is the only foundation that will hold you up through the trials of life, and get you to His destiny for you.

We have an enemy that comes to steal our self-image. He wants to steal your self-image every single day. If you try to step out and do something new or good, it is the devil that bombards you with accusations of fear, failure, and insecurity. The devil comes immediately to steal that from you.

Jesus taught this and it is recorded in John 10:10: The thief [the devil] does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I [Jesus] have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

Satan is cunning. He comes to strip you of your identity. He comes to steal the person you are and the unique, beautiful qualities God has put within you. He comes to steal your potential. By coming in through your thought life, you naturally think those thoughts are your own, and you accept them as your own. You believe them to be truth.

But you can combat his destructive efforts.

If you will find out from God’s Word who you are in Christ, you will begin to change your self-image into His image. If you plant God’s Word in your heart, you will change the image of what’s in your heart to match who God says you are. You will begin to understand and use the gifts and potential God has put within you.

Now, as you think about this, “impossible” may be what comes to mind. Fight that hopeless thought with the Word: Jesus said to him, If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes (Mark 9:23).

That is the truth. All things are possible to those who believe.

All things.

His image is your image.

What is true about Him is true about you - and that is what you should think.

In her book, You Are Somebody, former Miss America, Cheryl Prewitt-Salem, tells the story of how when she was getting ready for the Miss America pageant, her front teeth were temporarily bonded together because of an accident. She needed braces to fix her crooked teeth, but they couldn’t put them on because it would break the bond and adversely affect her mouth. She couldn’t believe she was going to the Miss America pageant with crooked teeth. And when she looked in the mirror, she saw that she still had hundreds of scars on her face from the accident. But she determined that what she didn’t see, others wouldn’t see either. She didn’t see herself with a scarred face or with crooked teeth.

And since she didn’t see herself that way, she didn’t project herself that way.

As she mentally and spiritually prepared herself to step out in front of the cameras, she remembered a childhood friend who didn’t have any fingers and who had clubfeet. Cheryl never realized that her friend was handicapped until her friend’s mother pointed it out to her six months into their friendship. Cheryl had simply never noticed. Her friend played the piano and did everything as if she had fingers. She had worked on her image so she didn’t project herself as handicapped.

Cheryl remembered her friends’ example, used it, and became Miss America while having crooked teeth and hundreds of scars on her face. She projected confidence and a positive self-image and that is what others saw!

How people perceive you is developed through what you speak with your words or convey with your actions. How many times have you spoken the same negative things over yourself that others have said, and then told everybody else all of your negative qualities? Even to the extent of having a sense of pride for them, instead of not even noticing them.

That’s not what God says to do about our weaknesses. He says to copy Him! We should want to have our concept of ourselves - our identity, and our abilities - wrapped up in the image of Jesus Christ. Then we’ll see, feel and act as Jesus did on this earth.

There are times when friends call me and ask for help, sometimes I feel like throwing up my arms and saying, "I need help too!" That’s what I want to say, but my image needs to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, so what was His example for me to follow? In my hurt, I give. In my depression, I give. In my low times, I give. It's His example I choose to follow.

Both Luke 6:38 and John 3:16 say that God is a giving God.

Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

God gives all the time. So I’ve had to renew my mind to a right self-image - one that’s a giver. Then I had to act on that Word and begin to put it into practice everyday. And as I gave, I found it became who I was.

When the disciples needed anything, they rested on Jesus. And when parents brought their children to Jesus, the disciples said, “No,” but Jesus said, “Bring the little children to me.”

Jesus' social life was filled with compassion - and people, people, people. He drew people to Himself. Is that your image of who you are on this earth? Or are you always afraid of people? He designed us to be just like Him. God is a people person … and guess what? So are you!! As a Christian, you can love people, minister to people, and reach out to hurting people, just like Jesus did. That’s who you are!

Remember that God is all about balance. He doesn’t want us to go to one extreme or another in how we see ourselves. He wants us to view ourselves in a true light where we don’t think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think (Romans 12:3), nor does He want us to think of ourselves as something lowly that He didn’t create us to be.

Unless you are born again and have the life of God on the inside, you are working on a self-image that can never be what God wants. You cannot conform yourself to His image in the power of your flesh. Only when you are born again, and submitted to the Holy Spirit, can He begin a work of change in you that is eternal. But with His help, your self-image can change from just average and boring, to soaring high in all God wants you to be!

Excerpted from Mirror, Mirror On the Wall: Seeing Yourself Through God’s Eyes, by Pastor Wendy Treat.