Precious in His Sight - From Cinderella to a Princess, Part 1

After 30 years as a pastor.

One of the most devastating things that keeps people from being who God wants them to be his unresolved issues about yourself if you're struggling or feeling like you're going nowhere.

God has a message for you today stay with this addition with shipping trips or Bible teacher discipleship program motivating Christians were in the middle of our series, precious in his sight taught by Chuck's wife Teresa in this program shall open up about. But severely damaged herself true change.

So if you're ready, let's join Teresa now for today's talk, titled Cinderella to a princess parent I can't because he designed our bodies just the way he wanted today and we learn that true beauty is that which comes from the heart filled with God and that are value our worth as a person is not by our outward appearance because were already people as we are made in the image of God. We were created to express his very life through Myers and that his life dwells within trusted him as our Savior. He chose the common language and our earthly bodies within the and then we become his holy temple, and she will express himself through us as we depend upon him, and we also defined our self and that is the picture that we have of ourselves in our minds when we are in that picture can be positive or negative and healthy self animator healthy deal of ourselves as being is to be able to see ourselves just as God sees no more and no less talk a little bit about how develop that self-image. How did we come to think the way we do about who we are. From the very time that were little, little children were beginning to develop a picture of Mark and fortunately unfortunately sometimes our parents are those innocent cared for us as we grew up playing a major role in the development of how new ourselves today and and how we view ourselves throughout our adult lives and how the parents how a parent relates to a child. The attitude rest in the hall whether affection is given or whether it's withheld the quality of time spent with the child.

All these things are registering in that young child's mind and therefore picture of who they are and they will believe that the narrator loved either not logged.

They'll believe that there either wanted or not wanting they'll believe that they are important not important. For example, my mother when I was growing up she had a lot of fears she was. She tended to worry about everything is messages in my own life and and told me things about myself that I needed really careful and that I shouldn't do this or that because I might get hurt that I wasn't allowed to have the bicycle I was going out because it was too dangerous to have a bicycle and so I learned to be fearful of many things, and of doing something because the outcome might be doing so I learned to worry a lot, not appearance my husband's parents on the other hand, encouraging him to try new things to take risk, to stand out and do something new and they had a very adventuresome attitude about life and so he learned about himself that he can step out and take risk his life and try new things without the finger being hurt or became very confident and and so our parents the way that our parents, their attitudes towards us and the way that were there.

They express their anti-stores in the home will determine a lot of how we think and how we believe about ourselves. I like to Regis quote here from book by Josh McDowell called his CMH Miami and it's he says parents are God's agents, as has been said, the initial development of our self image lies in our relationships with our parents. Self images are most of all derive from the assorted figures to whom during submission. In childhood we learned who we are and what we like from them. I child literally discovers what kind of person he is and how he feels about himself by the reactions of his parents to him. Our parents evaluations of us were transferred to our young minds. We saw ourselves in light of their thoughts and actions toward us from their attitudes. We sense their feelings about us those experiences, even long ago forgotten, serve to form our self-concepts. Thus, the everyday experiences of our childhood not solely the traumatic ones were what shaped our self images. The general atmosphere in our families contributed more to our view of ourselves in any single event. We adopted the general attitude of our families internal rising these feelings understanding that parental influence is a significant ingredient helps in our tents to see our our self image is transformed and is very important for us to understand how we came to view ourselves the way we are not to blame anyone we see we can't look at ourselves as victims and were not to blame, but is important to understand how we came to thank the way we do, because then we can allow God to work in that situation and help us to think what's really true, and although our parents do play a major role in how you learn to define ourselves.

We also have learned to define ourselves by the kind of fears that we spent time with by other significant people in our lives by major events that happen in our lives. Maybe her parents were divorced when we were when we were young.

Her early loss to parents her dad RM and also were just bombarded as we talked about last night with the media that tells us who we should be and that we should look a certain way or that we should have certain things or that we should be a certain kind of person personality to be successful to be a somebody and were filtering all these things into our minds to every day to figure out who we are because we all have the need.

We all have a great need to be significant to know that were loved and that were wanted and if one of those ingredients seen in our lives they were going to try to fill that way and in our own efforts. Usually we try to conform to what we believe is a worthwhile person and we try to fit into the world small just telling us is telling us that that to be significantly need to dress a certain way. We just need to have close to Messrs. or I we need to live in a certain kind of house insert part of the city or have this much education on this kind of job or accomplish this in anything and if we can do it ourselves.

You know some of us we try to do a fine can be assigned that event.

I'll make sure my kids are somebody and I'll make sure things work out for them, but you what God says. He says all these things all these outward things that we tried to do to make ourselves a somebody to make herself significance our faulty foundations on which to build our worth, because when a crisis comes in our lives are life-changing times then these foundations crumble and they won't hold us up. They will sustain us for all of us to some extent learn to view ourselves from imperfect people as our parents were and we live in an imperfect world and the messages we pick up about ourselves are false and God wants us to know from his word.

We truly are humans is to know what he says about us and he tells us that were already us at eight were already worthwhile in his eyes and when he looked at his children.

He sees a valuable person of valuable person who doesn't see a mistake and he doesn't see a failure and he doesn't see a second-class citizen and he doesn't see somebody, let's keep trying harder and harder to prove their worthwhile person he sees someone who is already significant and already valuable, but I grew up with a very poor self-image and I had the first 25 years of my life trying to prove to mice elf that I was really a somebody that I was really a worthwhile person and I tried to do this by using the world is to fill up places in my life and I thought I could just be free – Vicodin education funding. And then if I get married by the time the older you know if I can isolate things if my can be successful know those things I thought would make me significant but at age 25 God began to teach me some very important lessons that all things on those ways. I was trying to make myself significant and I thought would make me a somebody which is into buckets just empty buckets because, down deep inside I still had that emptiness.

I still had that lack of self-worth constantly had to keep trying to fill them out in other ways, and by working harder back on that those early days of my life is my Cinderella story to tell you little bit about that this morning I was born to parents who were not believers who are not Christians and I was the second born of three girls. We grew up in a very small town in the hills of West Virginia. We were called hillbillies back then. I don't know all that related life. My mom was a housewife and she didn't drive a car she's never never got her driver's license. We didn't have any kind of socializer she didn't and she did and spending time with friends and and her whole focus of her life was was her home and and she she did take good care of her children. She was a very sweet and kind of person very quiet person and I can't remember her verbally expressing her love to me growing up, but I knew by her actions. I knew that she loved me because she works so hard to take care of us missing that our needs were met and she would give up things that she wanted herself to make sure that her three daughters had what we needed as she was a very fearful person. As I told you she worry a lot about a lot of things that might happen.

One of her greatest priorities was about keeping the house spotless. It had to be spotless all the time and cleaning her house just seem to be the major priority of her life. While my dad was a lot different.

He was a very very strong disciplinarian. He ruled our our house with an iron hand. He he worked away from home a lot during the week in my growing up years and he was home on the weekends, which, as I look back now is probably one of the saving graces of my life. Even though when he was away at work I conceal his presence, watching over me and just waiting for me.

Amasa and because he had rules for everything he had rules for everything we did and they were strictly enforced by hard spankings. If you messed up and everything had to be done perfectly. Whatever you did he. He was a very hard worker. He provided for physical needs, and he expected us to work hard and as I said, whatever we did to do perfectly. He never told me that he loved me. He never hugged me or touched me affectionately never played with me growing up he never praised him for doing the job he never encouraged me to accomplish anything with my life and never got got involved in anything that I was that I was going on in my life I he was a man that was never able to resolve conflicts in his own life as other people said he would just not to them anymore.

He would just kind of forget that they even were alive and he was very paranoid and he thought others were always out to get them and he drank a lot and early on. I remember thinking that drinking was a good thing because he seemed happier when he was drinking with his friends.

So I thought that was a good thing and terribly frightening because he had the highest dictations and I could never meet them and I long for his approval. Even though I was terribly afraid of, and I try hard to do whatever I need to to get his approval and to get his love, but I never got it, and he never expressed to me that I ever did a good job and he was everyplace anything that I did because of where we lived because my parents were not social people because we were not allowed to participate in parlaying activities outside of our our home. It was very hard for me to build friendships when I was growing up.

So I spent a lot of time by myself and I was said and I would daydream about what life was like outside this little in West Virginia. I dreamed about what I could be if I could have been born someplace else. If I kid has been in another place and another family. In fact, the love that I have for reading. Now came out of those years of being a lover I would add, go to the library or we can have a library than the mobile came through anything I can get about nice and who had careers and for a while it was like I was in I would dream about what it would be like to really be someone significant to really be a somebody. And I remember early on, watching the movie Cinderella on TV and she sang the song that was sung this morning and so touched my heart because I thought back to when I feel like an I would sit alone in my house or I sometimes I would go way up on this hill behind our house with my dog would daydream and think about what it would be like to be a somebody to live someplace else and you know in the Cinderella story. She said in the corner and she sang a song that her fairy godmother showed up for my fairy godmother didn't come that I did something better became later during those years I was developing a picture of who I believed that I was negative.

Things began to develop in my mind this is just some of them I can't really expect to do anything significant with my life when I thought if I make a mistake it would be devastating if I make a mistake or do anything wrong person and should be punished. I must work hard to prove that I'm somebody if something goes wrong, it must be my fault.

And those are some of the negative beliefs and begin to form in my mind during my high school years I I watched as my older sister she I felt that she got really got the brunt of our parenting even worse than I did.

She could handle all the restrictions that we had in our lives as we were not even allowed to date and were not allowed to mention voice in our home was almost like I was a bad word, and so she can sneak out and go one day and I knew all this was going on. She got dressed up and went to the prom parents knowing that she will get out around and there's some.

She was a beautiful girl she was beautiful inside and now she was tender and sweet and she was found to be with being around her love being with her that she became pregnant and of her senior year in high school and I just watched as her this beautiful girl turned into an angry and bitter woman. Over the years and to this day to the stations never embraced all God has for her all that he wants to give her and she's never been able to resolve the bitterness she has in her heart is my dad while I was determined as I watched her life and I was gonna be like that and that I was going to break free from my dad. I was going to make some online life was going to be a somebody. And I knew that if life was going work out for me. I was going to do it myself and the only problem was a single recording step Line over and over in my mind now you'll never be significant and I still Hearing the same things. I went to college now is my guest blessing that he did agree to let me go and at the same time though, I got involved with the young man and is evolved into a very unhealthy relationship was desperate was just to be loved and I didn't want to lose him and we dated for a couple of years and then we got married and now is finding fulfillment now is finding fulfillment in that. Now I was married and I had a job and highlight in my has was working on his degree and going someplace with my life. I was finally thinking I am really becoming a somebody and during that time my husband was involved a lot in drugs and very party type lifestyle and I just can face that these things could destroy our lives and not because I watch my dad drink all these years and dancing her hand inside his concern me all that much. As I watched my husband go through these things. When he graduated from college in a in our twin boys were born in August and at the time they were six months old. He left us, and he just walked out.

I had quit my job to take care of our children and so he left us with no income and got involved with another woman and my life is devastated and in my my efforts to become a somebody all those things and I thought would make me us by came crumbling to the ground and this devastating time just validated in my mind that what I believed about myself is true. I really do mess everything up that I failure that I'm not important, but she said I had a faulty belief system. I didn't know what it's like the story about the cooking, little man. He had a crooked wife and he had a creek and cannulated house and she didn't know that everything was all he knew he had a faulty belief system and I didn't know that my belief system was crooked and I know that in this room there some that have been living your lies with crooked police you are you faulty beliefs about who you are and for every area of your life side effects your relationship to the fixture marriage and God. When she began to become aware of what those beliefs are in this start turning the corner in the process of allowing, to transform those faulty beliefs those thoughts you have about yourself and begin to believe what's really true that you know what God says about us and he says that his truth gives us free breaks the bondage in our life, truth says it sets us free.

Well, about six months after my husband left the most wonderful thing happened to me in the Cinderella who thought that she would never be significant is about to become a princess and I just happen to get a job in an office where my boss was a born again Christian and for the first time in my life. I began to hear about my I didn't hear about a God who bumped me and wanted me to heal the wound of the broken heart and sets the prisoners free in a God who never ever recheck desk, a God who loved me and that'll never ever turn his back on me and so at age 25 and little Free Methodist Church in West Virginia.

I invited Christ into my life as my Lord and Savior, and I didn't realize at that moment when that was happening. What God was doing inside me. I didn't realize the changes that were happening at that moment and how I would change even more over the next several years of my life and some amazing things happen to all of us at the moment we receive Christ at the moment of salvation would change four different people were not the same people that we used to be, and all of us. This happens all of us no matter what our backgrounds are were transformed, armed at that moment from the Cinderella into a princess into loyalty. We become the daughter of the king and become princes and so in in your notes that he had tears in your notebooks open. He will return to the hearts of this session that spiritual transformation occurs at the moment of salvation. This is so important for us as far as our identity is concerned. Understand we are in Christ understand what happened to us at the moment say that this is before work and this is who I am now a huge difference and it makes a huge difference in how I view myself and how I live out my life so I just briefly take you through that if you look at that shark there says first evolved before Christ before Christ before I was say this is who I was. I was spiritually dead and I was separated from God. In Romans 512 it says therefore justice through one man in this Adam sin entered into the world, and death through sand so death spread to all men because it happened because he he turned his back on God sand has been born into every life that on this earth ever since we are born into Dan and that's who I was before I knew Christ I'm separated from God when the moment of salvation. After Christ we become spiritually alive and that means that I become intimate with the Holy Spirit, the very life of Christ, indwells my Bonnie. As we talked about lessons we become his temple, and he lives with me and so were no longer separated from God. Not only do and I have life over here now we have life and are not separated from God anymore. Now we have an intimate relationship with him because he's lives writing me were as close as we could ever be an says in Romans 517 for if by the transgression of the one death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life to the one, Jesus Christ, to those of us who have been born again into new life are over here and we have life and we have intimacy with God before Christ, we had the old nature that is a slave to man, we have the old nature everything we do over here is outside of the will of God. I'm trying to live my life in my own efforts.

In my own flesh within the limits of my own mind and my own ability over here without Christ and trying to everything just as a natural way that I think to be done without Christ. Now that I have become say that I have the life of Christ.

He says I'm changed and I received a new nature. I had the very nature of Christ. Now, second Corinthians 517 therefore if any man is in Christ, he is in creature. The old things passed away the news.

Things have come over here and I had an old nature that all I can do just do things that came naturally in my own mind and my own abilities over here now.

I have the life of Christ in me.

I had his nature, and I had a long email to do what Christ would do not have the power to do it. I'm no longer a slave to sin, but on the slave to righteousness.

In other words, now I will but I don't have to. I had the ability to live out my life in the power spirit who indwells me the power now that I didn't possess before because of the power to live for God will before Christ my identity was determined by faulty foundations that are sometimes good and are sometimes bad that may be. I determine my stuff myself on my identity.

By what other people think or by the world system that we live in, or by my achievements are what I am.

Proverbs 1625 says there is a way that seems right to a man of sin is the way things are blankets we try to tell us who we are to make yourself significant and the after Christ my identity is determined by my relationship with Christ that will ever change your crumble and always good, always good. I become a child of God become loyalty and become a princess who is an heir to all the blessings that God has to offer. In first Peter 29 it says that you are a chosen race, royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

You see, we are chosen race. This is a real priesthood. We belong to him. We had his identity now. Romans 815 and 16 for you have not received us, fear of slavery leading to fear again that you received the Spirit of adoption as sons by which we we cry out Abba father.

The Spirit himself bears witness with that we are children of God and his children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ in the bathroom with him in order that we may also be glorified with him become a part of the family were adopted as his children first part of Argus teacher Teresa Ingram's message from cigarillo to a princess rubber series precious in his sight, she insurable joined us shortly to share some additional thoughts of application to what we heard you often feel like you don't measure up, or that your past mistakes were failures disqualify you in some way from being accepted through the series. Teresa Ingram candidly reflects on her own painful journey with self-doubt and feelings of worthlessness will sure how God freed her from that mindset and opened her eyes to see her true beauty and value don't live so you can experience the freedom to better understand God's love.

For more information about precious in his sight or series resources go to LivingontheEdge.org or call AAA 3336003X AAA 333-6003, or LivingontheEdge.org up listeners top special offers will trip this whole series is built on some of the most vulnerable parts of your wife Teresa story she expounds on what you went through the lessons God taught her in her new book, would you take just a minute and talk about her journey to write this book. What you both. Hope people will go from what I have to tell you you not hurt her teach on this and we reviewed these truth cards together for years and years.

I read the introduction that she wrote fresh air. I learned things about my wife.

I thought honestly, I can't believe she's sharing this, but it's so powerful. What happened was she actually taught this and then the women of the church just kept saying you've gotta get this in writing. You know, we listen to it, but I need to read it and then you know she would write like three paragraphs and walk in and say this is terrible and I know this won't be any good and you know the finally she persevered and persevered and when she got done.

I think she saw this was a God ordained moment will speak into the heart of women and especially women that are really hurting, so I just can't wait for people to read it did say it's a great book. It's a great story, but it has God's truth woven ended to learn how you are precious that your one-of-a-kind that you don't need to be anybody else, and it's is told through her story in a way that I think so many women will say oh that's me, that's me, that's me, and then they'll say while there's hope, there's hope, there's hope. So Dave wanted to take a minute to share with them how they can get this book will trip. It's really easy to order a copy of Teresa's new book purchases site. Simply go to LivingontheEdge.org or call us at AAA 333-6003 and if you're wanting to give this book as a gift for Mother's Day.

Be sure to place your order by April 29 to receive it in time.

Also, if you like to order some books for the women in your church. Discounts are available. Again, you can find all these details by going to LivingontheEdge.org or by calling us at AAA 333-6003 that's AAA 333-6003, or LivingontheEdge.org up listeners top special offers well here stripping Teresa to share some final thoughts while Teresa thanks so much for today's message that was really powerful.

Talking about people's identity and you know there's countless people wrestling with an identity crisis.

You know the really asking you know who am I am I worthy does anyone really care about me.

What would you say or what would you want to say to people who really hurting and struggling right now after they heard what you just taught well first of all I can really identify with with their struggles and as a child I watched an old Cinderella movie.

This was an old black-and-white film and Cinderella's weight probably all know the story she was abused and neglected by her stepmother and stepsisters and end of the film, what, when, I remember so much was that she sat down on a little stool and she began to sing a song and the words have never left knee and and she sang in my own little corner in my own little chair. I can be what ever I want to be and that's how I was living I felt that way for years, lonely. I felt unlovable, unworthy, unwanted and when I became a Christian I realized that none of these things define who I am. I'm reading through the minor prophets in the Bible right now in this verse is in Habakkuk a place that we don't go very much, but it says even though the fig tree has no blossoms and there are no grapes on the vines. Even though all of crop fails and the fields like empty and barren. Even though the flux die in the fields and the cattle barns are empty. We all feel that way at times in our lives like everything is going wrong. Nothing is working out but it says yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in the God of my salvation.

The sovereign Lord is my strength and he will make my feet as surefooted as a deer able to tread upon the heights and so even though things are not looking good and were struggling and we have all these difficulties in our lives with. Maybe our own thoughts and other people that God is in control and he is my strength. He is your strength. And as we look to him, he will lift us up and he will help us to have all that we need to move forward Greek word Teresa as we close a great way to get plugged in with the resources you're Living on the Edge is through the tripping room up there you can listen to best series sign up for daily discipleship and much more. Let us help you experience God in a new personal way. Starting today with the chip: select start was early, say thanks for this addition would bring all the