Esteeming Others

On campus there is a prayer room.  This isn’t just any normal prayer room.  It is a 24/7 worship room with music always playing and there are times when band sets come and play live for hours on end.  Although the entire campus is a place of rest, peace, and pure joy the prayer room has an essence of its own.  A place of complete abandonment to God.  You can pray, you can sing and worship, you can read, bring your computer, work on homework, blogs :), or you can just sit, looking out the windows which frame the extravagant and boundless Pacific Ocean.

We have very full days on campus, between class, work duty, assignments, and scheduled activities.  But as I walk from one class to another and one task to the next, I am surrounded with smiles, praise, greetings of blessings, and people who sincerely care about my feelings and getting to know me.  True, authentic community; how God always intended us to live.  Why can’t this environment spread to outside the campus walls?  Out into the world?

The world is full of standards, temptations, and influences and it all depends on what culture you are born into.  But just imagine a world absent of these factors.  A world absent of comparison.  Whether it is comparison of how you look, what you wear, what kind of car you drive, how financially stable you are.  Comparing yourself to others saying “well I may not be as beautiful or rich as that person, but at least I beat this person over here - so I must be doing pretty well.”  I absolutely use to compare myself in all these ways to other people, girls especially, not with an angry heart but just as a way to see how I am doing to the “standard”.  As I began to find my identity in who God made me to be, all these insecurities about all the little issues of life began to vanish.  When it comes down to it, they are truly meaningless.  I began to view each person I met, not with an attitude of comparison but an attitude of loving the gifts God gave them as the unique person He created them to be.  What a joy to celebrate the differences we all have and to give others compliments and life giving talk that makes the other person bloom with happiness.  This is contagious you know.  The affirmation you get from positive talk can't help but be passed onto the next person.  If this was what the world practiced, low-self esteem and negativity toward one another would be unheard of!

Self esteem is a weird thing.  The view we have of ourselves is greatly influenced by what others think about us and say to us and what our cultures says we should look and act like.  If we receive negative affirmation, or don’t meet the “standard”, even in the smallest way, we begin to carry a low self esteem.  We want others to like us, we want to fit it, we can’t just change who we are.  What if every person lived a life of esteeming others; uplifting one another.  How loved would each one of us feel!  Now this would be a radical transformation in the world.  To esteem means to set high value on.  Don't you want to feel of high value to others?  

God has put it on my heart that I should challenge myself to pray for someone each day, whether it is a total stranger or my best friend.  And this isn’t just behind the scenes praying, but out loud and face to face.  The thought of this scares me still.  But there is power in prayer, especially when you are praying His word.  The day that I felt this feeling I shared it with my girlfriend, and school leader, Vanessa.  She encouraged me to look for God sent opportunities.  I left the café where we met and went to my room.  My roommate was on her bed looking somber.  She is from South Korea and is a little difficult to understand at times but her English is amazing for only being in the U.S. for 4 months.  She explained to me that she was so sad because she felt like she didn’t spend enough time with her mother or do enough for her family before she came to America.  A week before this, she expressed to me that she really wanted to spend more time with me, which I apparently subconsciously disregarded as I’ve been spending majority of my time with the girls that speak fluent English.  All of a sudden I found myself in her shoes: sad, lonely, and difficult to communicate with majority of the people on the campus.  Wow, I’ve been blind to this…  Then I realized - Divine Appointment.  Immediately I asked if I could pray for her.  I went over, sat on her bed next to her, put my arm around her and began pouring out through prayer exactly how God felt about her and what an amazing girl she is.  She buried her head into my shoulder as she wept while I was praying to our Father. 

Proverbs 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

The words that we speak, are they life or death?  Do they give us hope or discouragement?