Me: I think this looks horrible.

Prodigal: I think this might be self image instead of really the truth.

This is from the book The Evangelical’s Guide to Spiritual Warfare by Charles Kraft

Several aspect of Western society are very helpful to our enemy in enabling him to put us down. Individualism and a competitive spirit cut us off from relationships with others. We are taught to define ourselves in comparison with others according to what we do, how we look, how we feel we are accepted and how much we have achieved, rather than in terms of who we are. Our normal standards of comparison with others are usually based on such ephermeral things as possessions, physical attractiveness (especially for women), the number of friendships that we have and how well we have assimilated and can regurgitate what is often irrelevant information.

In all of this, there is a great opportunity to discover and focus on those areas that we fall short in comparison to others. Many of us live our days constantly falling short of our own standards and feeling we are unacceptable to ourselves, others and God. We seem to neither know our standards are unattainable nor that God’s standard’s are quite different.

Romans 12:21

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org