Spir Dynamics 730 11/7/95; 511-512 11/2/94; Eph 1401-2, 1237, 1239, 1113-4, 1147ff; Eph 82, 203, 432, 1097; PPG 210
A. Introduction.
1. There are three categories of spiritual adulthood.
a. Spiritual self-esteem, which is cognitive self-confidence, the beginning of effective function of the ten problem solving devices of the protocol plan of God for the Church.
b. There is spiritual autonomy, which is cognitive independence and the continuation of effective function of the ten problem solving devices of the protocol plan of God.
c. There is spiritual maturity, which is cognitive invincibility and maximum effective function of the problem solving devices for the protocol plan of God.
(1) The problem solving devices are designed by God, so that you are dependent only on the Word of God metabolized and circulating in the seven categories of your own stream of consciousness.
(2) Your spiritual life was never designed to depend upon counseling, advice from others, or in any way use someone else as a crutch. As a member of the royal family of God, your perception, metabolization and application of Bible doctrine determines your ability to deal with every stress, every problem, every adversity, every area of prosperity in life, and to handle these things without leaning on any one except the Bible doctrine which has been inculcated into your own soul.
2. At the point of attaining spiritual self-esteem through metabolized circulating in your stream of consciousness, certain things come into very strong focus.
a. You have plus H or sharing the happiness of God. This begins with contentment, which becomes spiritual capacity for life, love, and happiness in every circumstance of life. This includes your stress, disaster, calamity, and pain which all of us have sooner or later in life.
b. Because of maximum understanding of these ten problem solving devices, you have professionalism. Professionalism is only one part of the modus operandi of the Christian way of life.
(1) The base for the Christian way of life is humility.
(2) Professional is understanding the mechanics of the Christian way of life: mechanics related to your very own portfolio of invisible assets, mechanics related to the ten problem solving devices, mechanics related to every thing that God has given for the dispensation of the Church. Professional demands integrity.
(3) Integrity is the spiritual strength to execute the mechanics you have learned. There must a perfect coordination and synchronization between these three factors. This synchronization of professionalism and integrity for effective function of the ten problem solving devices makes you a winner and begins the road of spiritual self- esteem.
c. The resultant mental stability from the circulation of metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness of your soul’s right lobe is characterized by courage, poise, composure marked by self-assurance. This poise means humility, which is the foundation for coordinating professionalism and integrity.
d. Maximum understanding of the problem solving devices or professional and maximum spiritual strength to execute these mechanics is the status of spiritual self-esteem.
(1) Spiritual self-esteem makes the most fantastic applications, and your life becomes full of meaning, purpose, and definition.
(2) This means the effective function of three of the problem solving devices: personal love for God the Father, impersonal love for all mankind, and occupation with Christ.
e. Wonderful experiences result from synchronizing professionalism and integrity. Wonderful Christian experience under pain, stress, disaster, and calamity includes the following.
(1) Occupation with Christ replaces that form of self- consciousness which is preoccupied with or eyes on self. Therefore, you meet stress, not in preoccupation with self, not in complaining and whining, but through the principle of occupation with Christ.
(2) Impersonal love for all mankind replaces preoccupation with people, that is, having your eyes on people.
(3) Plus H or sharing the happiness of God includes the tranquility and contentment which replaces eyes on things, which is a part of the lust pattern of the sin nature.
f. Doctrinal orientation in spiritual self-esteem includes the following characteristics.
(1) The maintenance of humility, without which there is no authority orientation or teachability in life.
(2) Avoidance of inordinate ambition and inordinate competition, which is always self-demeaning.
(3) The development of spiritual common sense and good judgment related to the divine viewpoint of life.
(4) Correct and accurate application of Bible doctrine through the two advanced problem solving devices of personal love for God the Father and impersonal love for all mankind. Correct application of doctrine in spiritual self-esteem destroys any distortion or attempt at self-justification.
(5) Maximum understanding and utilization of the ten problem solving devices as a habit of life, as a way of life, as a victorious life in Christian experience.
(6) Divine viewpoint replaces human viewpoint so that the believer has the mindset in this dispensation which the humanity of Christ had in the dispensation of the Hypostatic Union. Phil 2:5, “Keep on having this mental attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.”
(7) Good decisions from a position of strength replace bad decisions from a position of weakness.
g. In spiritual self-esteem, the believer keeps his priorities in conformity to Bible doctrine. The function of the stream of consciousness under the filling of the Spirit becomes an important issue and avoids the arrogance of the production skills preceding the spiritual skills in the function of Christian experience.
(1) The three spiritual skills are the filling of the Spirit, cognition and inculcation of Bible doctrine, and execution of the protocol plan of God for the Church.
(2) These spiritual skills are developed after salvation through our perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine.
(3) Production skills are in place at the moment we believe in Christ. For example, our spiritual gift, royal priesthood, royal ambassadorship, our job or profession are all the basis for the function of Christian service and our in place at the moment of salvation. Spiritual skills must precede production skills for the perform of divine good. Production skills minus spiritual skills results in the performance of dead works and the production of human good as well as evil.
(4) In spiritual self-esteem, all of this is corrected. Spiritual self-esteem keeps Christian service in its own perspective. The believer’s production of dead works is eliminated. Spiritual self-esteem has the spiritual strength to avoid the “beyond doctrine” movement with its dead works, human good, and evil.
3. The advance to spiritual self-esteem can only occur through two functions.
a. Bible doctrine must be number priority in your life.
b. There must be consistent postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation (perception, metabolization, and application of doctrine).
4. There are four objectives of the spiritual life; two are tactical and two are strategic. The tactical objectives form the base of operations for the strategic objectives.
a. A personal sense of destiny (analogous to spiritual self- esteem) is the first tactical objective. It is the base of operation for the first strategic objective—parlaying a personal sense of destiny into occupation with the person of Christ. A personal sense of destiny is parlayed into occupation with Christ.
b. The second tactical objective is spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity is the base of operation for the second strategic objective—maximum glorification of God. Spiritual maturity is parlayed into maximum glorification of God.
5. The Profile of Spiritual Self-esteem.
a. Spiritual self-esteem is synonymous with a personal sense of destiny.
b. The doctrinal status of cognitive self-confidence means that doctrinal conceptualism is fully realized, but not fully developed. You have attained the first objective, but that objective is not stabilized. You have a tremendous amount of doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness, but you also have tremendous vulnerability to the sins of arrogance and the emotional complex of sins. The rapidly advancing believer is vulnerable to failure.
c. Spiritual self-esteem frees the adult believer from legalistic bullying and being distracted by dependence on other people.
d. Spiritual self-esteem begins using advanced problem solving devices through personal love for God the Father and impersonal love for all mankind. These two problem solving devices are a stabilizer and motivator for continued spiritual advance.
e. Spiritual self-esteem eliminates emotion as a criterion for the spiritual life. Spiritual self-esteem is the beginning of freedom from irrationality. The spiritual life is a system of thinking under the filling of the Holy Spirit, metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness, and problem solving devices deployed on the FLOT line of the soul.
f. When spiritual self-esteem deploys the two advanced problem solving devices [personal love for God the Father and impersonal love for all mankind] on the FLOT line of the soul, it establishes two things which stabilize spiritual self-esteem: a strongly organized system of humility and spiritual poise. Personal love for God the Father begins to replace the former focus of eyes on self, which is tantamount to the third spiritual— self-absorption. Failure to deploy this problem solving device leads to great vulnerability in the field of the arrogance skills.
g. Spiritual self-esteem recognizes that emotions are never the basis for the spiritual life. Spiritual self-esteem begins the process of the sophisticated spiritual life with the subordinating of the emotion to the intellect. The intellect of spiritual self-esteem is defined as maximum metabolized doctrine circulating in the seven compartments of the stream of consciousness.
h. Spiritual self-esteem does not feel threatened by malice or revenge or vilification or vituperation or violence.
i. Spiritual self-esteem continues to make Bible doctrine the number one priority in the life and fulfills the command of Phil 3:16, “Keep on advancing in ranks by the same system.”
j. Spiritual self-esteem is not discouraged by setbacks in life. Therefore, it is free from self-pity, which is the thumb-sucking function of self-absorption.
k. The momentum of spiritual self-esteem eliminates the three high risk factors on entering the adult spiritual life: the arrogance complex of sins and arrogance skills, emotion as a criterion for the spiritual life, and incompetent problem solving.
l. Spiritual self-esteem begins with the effective harmonizing of the problem solving devices. It upgrades and enhances the basic problem solving devices, where they coordinate with personal love for God the Father and impersonal love for all mankind.
B. Definition and Description.
1. Self-esteem might be defined as respect for self, satisfaction with one’s self, or a good opinion of one’s self. But those are superficial definitions. Self-esteem is confidence in what you know, and how to put it into operation. What has only been a characteristic of a few great leaders in history is now available to each of us as believers.
2. Spiritual self-esteem is maximum humility and minimum arrogance. It is confidence in God, confidence in the Word of God metabolized in your soul and circulating in your stream of consciousness. It is not confidence in the energy of the flesh. Ps 118:8-9, “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to have confidence in mankind. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to have confidence in princes.”
3. Spiritual self-esteem is related to the problem solving devices of the protocol plan of God.
a. Spiritual self-esteem is confidence in the rebound technique rather than in the heinousness of one’s sins. One’s personal sins are never as important as what our Lord Jesus Christ did on the Cross about our sins. We will fail and shock ourselves from time to time.
Spiritual self-esteem is not depending on emotions or trying to get into some form of penance. b. Spiritual self-esteem is knowledge that after rebound the believer has recovered fellowship with God and is filled with the Holy Spirit no matter how he feels. How you feel is never the issue; the issue is what the Bible says.
c. Spiritual self-esteem emphasizes the reality of the faith-rest drill over the reality of one’s problems, adversities, disasters and stress situations.
d. Spiritual self-esteem is grace orientation rather than environmental orientation. Too often, we think that our happiness depends on our environment. Environment is not an issue in life.
e. Spiritual self-esteem is doctrinal orientation rather than empirical orientation. Bible doctrine must be more real to us than what we see, touch, hear, taste, and smell.
f. Spiritual self-esteem has a personal sense of destiny from metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness under the filling of the Holy Spirit.
g. Spiritual self-esteem is sharing the happiness of God, therefore, maximum tranquility and contentment in every circumstance of life whether it is good or bad.
h. Spiritual self-esteem is the function of virtue-love in all three categories: personal love for God the Father, impersonal love for all mankind, and occupation with Christ.
i. Spiritual self-esteem is the first stage of spiritual adulthood, the status of giving number one priority to Bible doctrine, resulting in dependence on God’s grace rather than depending on human power and dynamics. It is the first step in becoming an invisible hero.
4. Since spiritual self-esteem is grace orientation, it is the quintessence of humility rather than any form of arrogance. For this reason, spiritual self-esteem always emphasizes the spiritual skills as taking precedence over the production skills. Spiritual self-esteem never tries to reverse the procedure. It is the status of well developed spiritual skills: consistency in being filled with the Spirit, consistency in cognition and inculcation of Bible doctrine, consistency resulting in the execution of the protocol plan.
5. The Biblical Definition of Spiritual Self-esteem.
a. The Old Testament definition is found in Prov 19:8, “He who gets wisdom, keeps loving his own soul; He who guards understanding shall find the absolute good [spiritual prosperity].”
(1) The person who keeps learning doctrine gains spiritual self-esteem, that is, he keeps loving the doctrine circulating in his own soul. This is not arrogance. Wisdom is the end result of perception and metabolization of doctrine. Wisdom is the application of that doctrine to experience. The application goes toward God, toward self, and toward others. Spiritual self-esteem replaces the former focus of eyes on people. The contentment of spiritual self-esteem replaces the former focus of eyes on things.
(2) Metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness is guarded by the rate of learning exceeding the rate of forgetting doctrine. Scar tissue of the soul replaces metabolized doctrine when the rate of forgetting doctrine exceeds the rate of learning doctrine. This means that the believer must be consistent and persistent in rebound when necessary and doctrinal inculcation. Metabolized doctrine circulating in your soul provides a defense against the various categories of suffering related to providential preventative suffering.
(3) Spiritual self-esteem functions inside the integrity envelope with the virtue of impersonal love directed objectively toward self through the mirror of the soul. The result is self-confidence based on metabolized Bible doctrine in the stream of consciousness and self- realization in that same stream of consciousness. This is the defense by which you are able to face and overcome providential preventative suffering. Self-identity, based on the mirror of doctrine in the soul, is formed from metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness.
(4) In this way, the three mechanics of the Christian life become effective. The three mechanics are the foundation of humility, professionalism (which is learning the mechanics of the problem solving devices and other mechanics of the protocol plan of God for the Church), and integrity (which is spiritual strength to execute those mechanics). Being alive as a Christian does not imply that you understand the protocol plan of God or even how to live the Christian way of life; this comes with spiritual self-esteem.
b. The New Testament definition is found in the last half of Eph 5:28, “He who loves his own wife, loves himself.”
c. Additional New Testament documentation includes:
(1) Eph 5:33, “However, you also, each one of you individually, let him love his wife as himself.” The phrase “as himself” is spiritual self-esteem.
(2) Mk 12:29-31, “Jesus answered, `The most important one is this, “Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord our God is one God; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your right lobe, and with all of your soul, and with all of your understanding, and with all of your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’” Loving your neighbor as yourself is spiritual self-esteem resulting in impersonal love for all mankind.
(3) 2 Cor 13:5, “Test yourselves to see if you are in the doctrine. Examine yourselves [spiritual self-esteem]!” You cannot test or examine yourself to see if your are “in the doctrine” until you have spiritual self-esteem.
(4) Jude 20, “But you, beloved, building yourselves up [spiritual self-esteem] in the most holy doctrine, praying in the Holy Spirit.”
(5) 1 Thes 5:8, “But since we are of the day let us attain spiritual self-esteem after we have put on the breastplate of doctrine and virtue-love and the helmet of confidence of salvation.” This is the present action subjunctive of the verb NEPHO, which means to be free from drunkenness, to be self-controlled, to be well balanced, to be in the status of spiritual self-esteem, to attain spiritual self-esteem.
(6) 1 Pet 5:5-9, “You younger men [congregation], likewise, be subordinate to the authority of your pastor-elder; and clothe yourselves with humility toward each other, because, `God makes war against the arrogant, but gives grace to the humble.’ Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may promote you at the proper time, casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you. Attain spiritual self-esteem, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. But stand your ground [resist] him, strong in doctrine, because you know that your fellow believers throughout the world are experiencing the same categories of suffering.”
(a) The younger men are the congregation in contrast to the pastor (elder) mentioned in verses 1-4.
(b) You subordinate yourself to the authority of the pastor by listening to the doctrine taught by your pastor and, after accepting or rejecting that doctrine, living by the metabolized doctrine in your soul.
© By clothing yourself with humility toward others, you give them a chance to learn doctrine without any spiritual bullying from you. Spiritual self-esteem demands harmony among believers. You cannot continue your spiritual advance without humility.
i. Spiritual self-esteem is not self-centeredness nor self-absorption, but taking responsibility for one’s own decisions without blaming others for the consequences.
ii. Spiritual self-esteem does not fantasize greatness or success, but centers on the reality of Bible doctrine and gives number one priority to the perception, metabolization and application of doctrine. Since spiritual self-esteem is highly vulnerable to failure, it can be the best or the worst time in your life.
iii. As a system of thinking, humility is freedom from both subjective and objective arrogance. Prov 15:33, “Respect for the Lord is the instruction for wisdom, and before honor comes humility.” Prov 11:12, “When arrogance comes, then comes dishonor; but with the humble is wisdom.” Prov 29:23, “A person’s arrogance will bring him low, but a spirit of humility will attain honor.” Ps 25:9, “In justice God guides the humble; consequentially He teaches the humble His way.”
iv. Humility orients everything in life to God’s grace. Arrogance orients everything in life to self-absorption. All promotion in the spiritual life of the Church Age is accomplished in the sphere of humility. Jam 4:10, “Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will promote you.” 1 Pet 5:6, “Humble yourselves under the powerful hand of God that He may promote you at the proper time.”
v. Jam 4:5-6, “Do you presume that the Scripture speaks in vain against jealousy? The Spirit that dwells in us pursues us with virtue-love. He gives greater grace. Therefore it says, `God makes war against the arrogant believer, but He gives grace to the humble believer.’”
vi. The precedence is found in Phil 2:5-8, “Keep on having this mental attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus. Who though He existed in the essence of God, He did not think equality with God a gain to be seized and held. Therefore He deprived Himself of the proper function of deity when He received the form of a servant, when He had been born in the likeness of mankind. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even the death on a cross.”
vii. If God does not promote you, you are not promoted. God promotes the adult believer in the sphere of humility, the mental attitude of grace orientation. Cognitive self-confidence in spiritual self-esteem has one big problem—there is enough doctrine in the believer’s soul to be a spiritual adult, but there are not enough problem solving devices deployed on the FLOT line of the soul to use that doctrine. You cannot go any further in the application of doctrine until you get rid of arrogance and get rid of emotion as having any function in the spiritual life. Cognitive self-confidence is parlayed into combining emotion and arrogance to distort rebound.
viii. When the sins of emotion and arrogance are combined to form an irrational dilemma of trying to solve a problem with a problem, rebound by works emerges to create a perpetual carnality resulting in a rapid spiritual decline.
(d) The anxieties which you cast on the Lord are a part of providential preventative suffering. If you do not cast all your anxieties on God, you will retrogress in the spiritual life and enter into the five categories of emotional sinning.
(e) The aorist active imperative of the verb NEPHO again means to attain spiritual self-esteem. You have to be alert in spiritual self-esteem because this is the greatest area of vulnerability in the spiritual life.
(7) The focus of spiritual self-esteem is mentioned in Phil 4:11-13, “Not that I speak from want. For I have learned to be self- sufficient [content] in whatever circumstances I am. In fact, I have come to know how to be in need [suffering for blessing], also I have come to know how to live in prosperity. In every circumstance, I have learned the secret of being filled [prosperous] and of being hungry [failure]. I have the endowed power [computer assets] to attain all things [escrow blessings] through Him who makes me strong [giving suffering for blessing].”
(a) Spiritual self-esteem never begs, but functions under the true motivation of personal love for God.
(b) The Greek noun AUTARKES means to be self- sufficient, contentment in terms of being self-sufficient. Self-sufficient meaning spiritual self-esteem here.
(8) The mental attitude of spiritual self-esteem is mentioned in 1 Tim 6:7-8, “For we have brought nothing into this world with the result that we cannot take anything out of it either. Therefore, if we have food and clothing, with these, we shall be content.” The other side of spiritual self-esteem is contentment.
(9) Heb 13:5, “Let your lifestyle be free from the love for money and be content with what you have; for He Himself has said, `I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.”
(10) Eph 6:23, “Harmony among believers and virtue-love with doctrine from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.”
(a) Harmony is the relaxed mental attitude related to the thinking function of the spiritual life. Harmony among believers demands humility, grace orientation, and virtue-love.
(b) Believers with spiritual self-esteem do not feel threatened by enmity, antagonism, vilification, ostracism, rejection, or any form of hostility. Therefore, believers with spiritual self-esteem are in a position to fulfill this mandate to have harmony among the believers.
© Virtue-love is associated with metabolized doctrine circulating in the soul’s right lobe, and this same virtue-love association with doctrine is the basis for attainment of spiritual self-esteem.
6. Spiritual self-esteem is that virtue of the protocol plan of God whereby the believer’s confidence is based on Bible doctrine which he has learned through perception, metabolization and application. The believer’s respect for self is linked to grace-orientation. The secret to spiritual self-esteem is respect for God.
a. Spiritual self-esteem is never a system of self-improvement based on advice, counseling, or dependence on others.
b. The only dependence for the attainment of spiritual self- esteem is dependence on faithful Bible teaching from your right pastor- teacher. Malfunction of postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation means failure to attain spiritual self-esteem.
c. Under spiritual self-esteem, you are free from anthropocentric thinking, legalistic bullying, people dependence distractions, flattery, counseling, and dependence.
d. Spiritual self-esteem is the declaration of independence of your royal priesthood.
e. Spiritual self-esteem solves the problems of inadequacy, peer pressure, role model arrogance, all the subtleties of arrogance, and fear.
7. Spiritual self-esteem is the foundation for stability in the Christian way of life.
a. Spiritual self-esteem eliminates emotion as a criterion for life; for emotion cannot think, reason, apply doctrine, or estimate a situation from the doctrinal viewpoint. Under the protocol plan of God, emotions are never adequate guides for your motives, thoughts, decisions, or actions. Emotions are not tools of cognition nor criteria for the Christian life. No believer can attain spiritual self-esteem until he distinguishes between doctrinal epistemology and emotional experience.
b. Spiritual self-esteem subordinates emotion to the intellect so that objectivity and doctrinal perspective rule the believer’s soul; for thinking is a cause and emotion is an effect in spiritual self-esteem.
c. Spiritual self-esteem never feels threatened by slander, maligning, judging, gossip, the public lie, just or unjust criticism.
d. Spiritual self-esteem avoids denial and dissociation—stuffing your problems and failures into your subconscious where they remain as garbage.
e. Spiritual self-esteem addresses one’s problems and failures and avoids the arrogance of always being right.
f. Spiritual self-esteem uses problem solving devices to make corrections and to keep moving with the function of virtue-love.
g. Spiritual self-esteem is the status of solving the unsolvable problems and dealing effectively with the pressures and adversities of your own life.
h. Spiritual self-esteem functions inside the integrity envelop. There are five things in the integrity envelop.
(1) Self-confidence based on metabolized doctrine.
(2) Self-realization based on metabolized doctrine.
(3) Self-direction based on metabolized doctrine.
(4) Self-identity based on metabolized doctrine.
(5) Self-motivation based on metabolized doctrine.
i. Spiritual self-esteem is the place of humility, the status of poise in dealing with life’s focuses:
(1) Eyes on self is replaced with occupation with Christ.
(2) Eyes on people is replaced with impersonal love and grace orientation.
(3) Eyes on things is replaced with tranquility and contentment.
8. Spiritual self-esteem is the believer’s dependence on God’s grace provision for the stabilization of self and integrating self into the protocol plan of God. Spiritual self-esteem is the base of operations for effective application of Bible doctrine to your experience.
9. Spiritual self-esteem, the first stage of spiritual adulthood, is characterized by cognitive self-confidence which means no dependence on self but dependence on the phenomenal grace provision God has made for every believer. Spiritual autonomy, the second stage of spiritual adulthood, is characterized by cognitive independence. Spiritual maturity, the third stage, is characterized by cognitive invincibility.
10. Spiritual self-esteem is the subjective virtue of the Christian way of life. Spiritual self-esteem is mandated for the husband in marriage.
11. Lack of spiritual self-esteem contradicts the protocol plan of God for the Church Age. Spiritual self-esteem is the solution to the problems related to self, the I to me relationship, the ego to self relationship.
12. Spiritual self-esteem originates from momentum of metabolized doctrine inside the divine dynasphere. The believer must persist in the protocol plan of God to reach the motivational virtue of personal love for God. Spiritual self-esteem is the first stage of spiritual adulthood.
13. Spiritual self-esteem plus providential preventative suffering results in spiritual autonomy where we have impersonal love toward all.
14. Etymology. There are three words for confidence in the New Testament.
a. The Greek word ELPIS means confidence with regard to the future, never the present. This means absolute confidence that you will have eternal life if you believe in Christ; that you will have escrow blessings for time when you reach spiritual maturity; that you will receive escrow blessings for eternity when you stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ.
b. The Greek word PARRESIA means courage and confidence.
c. The Greek word PEPOITHESIS means self-confidence or spiritual self-esteem.
(1) 2 Cor 1:13,15, “In this confidence [spiritual self- esteem] I intend to come, so that you might benefit twice.”
(2) 2 Cor 3:4, “And such confidence [spiritual self-esteem] we have through Christ toward God.”
(3) 2 Cor 10:2, “I ask that when I am present I may not be bold with the spiritual self-esteem with which I propose to be courageous against some.”
(4) Eph 3:12, “In whom we have boldness and access in confidence [spiritual self-esteem].”
15. There are two categories of self-esteem in life.
a. Human self-esteem, which is generally derived from the laws of divine establishment or from instinctive personal integrity. Instinctive personal integrity often comes from some system of honor that is taught in the home. Human self-esteem is for both believers and unbelievers, but is never a substitute for spiritual self-esteem.
b. Spiritual self-esteem, which is attained by spiritual momentum through the filling of the Spirit and doctrinal inculcation.
(1) Human self-esteem has no spiritual connotation or relationship to the protocol plan of God for the Church.
(2) Spiritual self-esteem is not only the first stage of spiritual adulthood, but the status where the function of all of the problem solving devices finally become effective.
(3) Spiritual self-esteem does not require as a prerequisite any form of psychological buffering or any form of human self-esteem.
(4) The assets of any unbeliever, including human self- esteem, have absolutely no bearing on the fulfillment of God’s plan, purpose, or will for your life. Human self-esteem is not a prerequisite for spiritual self-esteem. In fact, human self-esteem can even be a distraction to the spiritual life. Believers change overnight at the moment of spiritual self-esteem, not at salvation.
16. Spiritual self-esteem solves the problems related to dependency: chemical dependence, peer pressure dependence, resentment of success in others resulting in the dependency of inordinate ambition and competition, dependency on others for guidance and counselling.
17. Significant changes in life occur at the point of spiritual self- esteem.
a. The development of the spiritual skills, which must precede the function of production skills for the performance of divine good in Christian service.
b. The effective use of the problem solving devices as well as the doctrinal rationales.
c. The accurate function of the conscience in the sphere of thinking, motivation, decision, and action.
18. The believer in spiritual self-esteem has learned from his own right pastor to use his own doctrine in his own stream of consciousness to solve his own problems. This is accomplished totally apart from counseling, controlling, bullying, manipulation, creating role models, or anything else.
a. Spiritual self-esteem does not live under the slavery of dependency on others, except for the spiritual gift of pastor-teacher.
b. Spiritual self-esteem does not feel threatened by the strongest views of the Christian life, or the pressures of legalism, or the things people do to associate the Christian life with Christian service or some experience, or the snide remarks and criticism for sitting under Bible teaching while others are working.
c. Spiritual self-esteem establishes a discipline of consistent exposure to and cognition of Bible teaching. God promotes you when you are sitting still learning doctrine.
d. Spiritual self-esteem implies that no believer can think metabolized doctrine or apply doctrine or solve problems through the mind or personality of another person.
e. Spiritual self-esteem is the point of doctrinal conceptualism, which means that thoughts, motives, decisions and actions, which were formerly undefinable, have now become lucid, perspicuous, capable of being applied, relevant to God’s will, plan and purpose for our lives.
f. Spiritual self-esteem is the status of production of divine good in contrast to dead works and human good. Spiritual self-esteem has an infinitely greater quality of fruit bearing and production of Christian service than the legalistic hustlers.
g. Spiritual self-esteem is never a system of self-improvement based on counseling, advice, or psychological manipulation, but based entirely on the spiritual mechanics located in the word of God.
19. Spiritual self-esteem is associated with two general categories of failure.
a. Failure to attain spiritual self-esteem means failure to execute the protocol plan of God for the Church.
b. Failure at the point of spiritual self-esteem results in rapid decline from adult believer to loser believer.
c. Therefore, spiritual self-esteem is the declaration of independence of the believer’s royal priesthood. Under spiritual self- esteem plus cognitive self-confidence plus the first two adult problem solving devices the believer becomes free from anthropocentric thinking, wrong motivation, counseling, flattery, patronizing, legalistic bullying, and other distractions to advancing to maximum glorification of God.
C. Characteristics of Spiritual Self-Esteem.
1. Spiritual self-esteem subordinates emotion to intellect, so that objectivity and doctrinal perspective rule the believer’s soul. Spiritual self-esteem does not feel threatened by gossip, slander, maligning, and all forms of human antagonism: vituperation, vilification, jealousy, bitterness, implacability, anger, hatred, malice, revenge, etc.
2. Spiritual self-esteem functions inside the integrity envelope in five ways.
a. Self-confidence based on Bible doctrine only. This is the inevitable result of consistent postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation. Your confidence in doctrine is your self-confidence. This is not confidence in your ability or personality.
b. Self-realization based on Bible doctrine only. This results from the attainment of wisdom, and is tantamount to the application of doctrine to experience. Self-realization is the process of learning, thinking, and solving. Self-realization has no meaning until it is related to God. There is no self-realization apart from God, apart from being born- again.
c. Self-direction based on Bible doctrine only. This is spiritual momentum from residence and function inside the divine dynasphere under the enabling power of the Holy Spirit and momentum from metabolized doctrine.
d. Self-identification based on Bible doctrine only. This is grace orientation combined with doctrinal orientation to produce a personal sense of destiny. There is no self-identity until there is self-confidence, self-realization, and self-direction. You identify yourself in terms of grace.
e. Self-motivation based on Bible doctrine only. This combines personal love for God the Father and occupation with Christ with cognition and inculcation of the problem solving devices.
3. Spiritual self-esteem makes full use of the problem solving devices to break up the function of the three arrogance skills (self-justification, self-deception, and self-justification), crusader arrogance, Christian activism, the arrogance of always being right.
4. Spiritual self-esteem is the status of solving the unsolvable problems through the problem solving devices.
5. Spiritual self-esteem is the status of humility and teachability to learn and understand the spiritual mechanics of the spiritual life, and therefore, to advance in ranks to the strategic objectives of the spiritual life—occupation with Christ and maximum glorification of God.
D. Mechanics of Spiritual Self-Esteem.
1. Spiritual self-esteem is the effective function of virtue-love in two directions.
a. The subjective function is directed toward self.
b. The objective function is directed toward the entire human race.
2. Spiritual self-esteem is impersonal love directed toward the virtues or characteristics of spiritual self-esteem. The six characteristics of spiritual self-esteem are located in the integrity envelope of impersonal love. Therefore, impersonal love is directed towards its own characteristics.
3. Any one of the six characteristics of spiritual self-esteem outside of the integrity envelope of impersonal love produce the following:
a. Self-confidence becomes arrogance.
b. Self-realization becomes illusion.
c. Self-direction becomes failure.
d. Self-identity becomes psychosis.
e. Self-motivation becomes lust.
f. Self-vindication becomes legalism.
4. There is a pseudo self-esteem, which is tantamount to legalism and moral degeneracy. This self-esteem is outside the integrity envelope of impersonal love and is directed toward the believer’s self-righteousness. Pseudo self-esteem follows the pattern of Christian degeneracy - implode, explode, and revert.
5. Genuine spiritual self-esteem is always inside the integrity envelope of impersonal love, and is always directed toward virtue. Impersonal love loves its own virtue as well as loving the entire human race. Impersonal love is an inevitable result of spiritual self-esteem.
6. Subjective virtue-love is the function of impersonal love toward the characteristics of spiritual self-esteem. Objective virtue-love is the function of personal love inside the integrity envelope of impersonal love directed towards the wife. Virtue-love and spiritual self-esteem always go together.
E. Spiritual self-esteem is a part of marriage.
1. Eph 5:28, “So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”
a. The husband is mandated to love his wife with virtue-love.
b. This virtue-love is described by the phrase “as Christ loved the Church” in Eph 5:25.
c. Virtue-love is personal love inside the integrity envelope of impersonal love. Virtue-love is not effective without spiritual self- esteem. Virtue-love is necessary for the function of the husband’s authority in marriage.
d. The husband cannot execute the mandate to love his wife without spiritual self-esteem. This is why most Christian husbands fail in marriage.
e. This verse is an analogy to responsibility. You must have a sense of responsibility regarding those over whom you have authority, just as Christ takes responsibility over the Church.
f. The second half of this verse is a definition of spiritual self-esteem. Notice that virtue-love precedes spiritual self-esteem.
2. There is a relationship between spiritual self-esteem and the function of virtue-love.
a. Spiritual self-esteem is the effective function of virtue- love in two directions.
(1) The subjective function of spiritual self-esteem is directed toward virtue in self; the appreciation of one’s own virtue.
(2) The objective function of spiritual self-esteem is directed toward others.
b. Therefore, spiritual self-esteem has both subjective and objective virtue. There are two categories of subjective virtue: genuine humility; and spiritual self-esteem
. 3. Spiritual self-esteem gives stability to personal love inside the integrity envelope of impersonal love. Therefore, spiritual self-esteem of the husband never feels threatened by the failures of his wife. The husband is commanded to have spiritual self-esteem, and not the wife, because the husband has the authority.
4. Spiritual self-esteem is the effective function of the husband’s impersonal love toward self and toward his wife. Spiritual self-esteem is the basis for the husband’s effective exercise of his authority in marriage; for spiritual self-esteem and virtue-love add leadership to the function of authority.
5. Spiritual self-esteem is the basis for the effective function of the problem solving devices of the protocol plan of God.
6. The husband cannot love his wife or exercise authority and have a sense of responsibility without spiritual self-esteem. Personal love on the part of the husband always turns sour without spiritual self-esteem.
F. Spiritual self-esteem is the effective function of virtue-love.
1. For example, spiritual self-esteem is the effective function of virtue-love in marriage. “Effective” means producing the intended result. Spiritual autonomy is the optimum function of virtue-love in marriage. “Optimum” means the most favorable condition for obtaining a given result. Spiritual maturity is the maximum function of virtue-love in marriage. “Maximum” means the greatest value attainable.
2. The husband cannot execute the divine rule to love his wife without virtue-love in the three stages of spiritual adulthood.
3. Virtue-love only becomes effective on the attainment of spiritual self-esteem. If the Christian husband lacks spiritual self-esteem, there is no way he can execute the command to love his wife. And it is inevitable that the wife will react to this failure.
4. The husband cannot exercise his authority in marriage without virtue-love in one of the three stages of spiritual adulthood.
5. Without virtue-love in marriage, the husband becomes arrogant, a bully, and a tyrant in the exercise of his authority.
6. Virtue-love has effective function in spiritual self-esteem, optimum function in spiritual autonomy, and maximum function in spiritual maturity.
7. Virtue-love is defined as personal love operational inside the integrity envelope of impersonal love.
8. Spiritual self-esteem recognizes virtue-love as a part of logistical grace.
G. The Evidences of Spiritual Self-Esteem.
1. Tranquility of soul. You begin to relax in your soul.
2. Stability of mental attitude, including never feeling threatened by others and avoiding inordinate ambition and competition.
3. Composure marked by self-assurance, which is the correct and accurate application of doctrine to life.
4. Grace-orientation to life which includes giving others the benefit of the doubt.
5. Doctrinal-orientation to reality, which is based upon genuine humility, objectivity, teachability, spiritual common sense, and the avoidance of inordinate ambition and competition or inordinate self-esteem.
6. Good decisions from a position of strength, which includes motivation from personal love for God the Father plus divine viewpoint thinking.
7. Personal control of your life through doctrinal conceptualism.
8. A personal sense of destiny, which includes solving the problems related to God, self, others, and things.
9. Self-confidence from wisdom, which means the function of doctrinal conceptualism or the application of metabolized doctrine to experience.
10. Poise. This is the believer under spiritual self-command. You cannot communicate, relate to, or command others unless you have command of self, 1 Cor 14:22. He is a winner who overcomes self.
H. Spiritual self-esteem begins the qualification for momentum through suffering for blessing.
1. Spiritual self-esteem is when we begin to have momentum in the spiritual life. That is the point when God provides suffering for blessing, by which we can advance spiritually. The advance through each stage of spiritual adulthood including suffering for blessing. A major part of each spiritual advance is overcoming obstacles under suffering and disaster. Each stage of spiritual advance has the capacity for greater suffering for blessing.
2. Spiritual self-esteem plus providential preventative suffering equals spiritual autonomy. Before one can reach spiritual autonomy, he must pass providential preventative suffering. There are prototype testing categories of providential preventative suffering: people, thought, system, and disaster testing.
3. Spiritual autonomy plus momentum testing equals spiritual maturity. Again there are the same four tests, but they are intensified.
4. Spiritual maturity plus evidence testing equals glorification of God to the maximum.
I. Spiritual Self-Esteem Related to God’s Plan.
1. God is perfect; therefore, His plan is perfect. It is impossible for perfect God to create an imperfect plan. However, the perfect plan of God for us, the protocol plan, is created for imperfect persons.
2. Because God is the author of the protocol plan, contradictions cannot exist in that plan. The existence of contradictions implies our failure as believers to execute God’s plan.
3. When a believer is a loser, his thoughts, motives, decisions, and actions contradict the protocol plan of God. This contradiction is marked by ignorance of Bible doctrine and resultant lack of spiritual self-esteem.
4. Lack of spiritual self-esteem destroys all interpersonal relationships in life. Above all, this includes marriage.
5. Spiritual self-esteem implies that no believer can think, apply doctrine, or solve problems through the mind or personality of another individual.
6. The believer cannot account for his motives, thoughts, decisions and actions in undefinable terms; therefore, these undefinable terms must become lucid through the inculcation of doctrine and resultant doctrinal conceptualism, through thinking based on the absolute truth of the Word of God.
7. Spiritual self-esteem is the point of doctrinal conceptualism, which means that thoughts, motives, decisions, and actions which were formerly undefinable now become lucid, perspicuous, capable of being applied revellent to God’s plan, purpose, and will for our lives. 8. Spiritual self-esteem is not a system of self-improvement based on the advice and counseling from others. You are not to be dependent on others for counseling. Spiritual self-esteem does not and must not walk on crutches.
a. This is why God has provided every believer with his own royal priesthood, logistical grace from election, and his own palace from predestination so that each one of us, under the power of doctrine and the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, can execute the Christian way of life and/or the protocol plan of God.
b. The privacy of your priesthood is in focus here. For it permits the right to positive volition, plus the right to metabolize and apply doctrine with your own intellect in your own divine dynasphere. Under privacy, we are free to make mistakes, free to succeed.
c. The believer who depends on others for counseling, guidance, inspiration, sharing, and motivation, becomes weak, because he uses other people as a substitute for learning doctrine. The believer cannot become strong without his own epistemological rehabilitation from the function of doctrinal teaching from his own right pastor-teacher provided in logistical grace. Failure to learn doctrine is failure to attain spiritual self- esteem.
d. The only human dependence of the believer is selection and perseverance under his right pastor. Faithful Bible teaching from your pastor demands your faithfulness in the perception of doctrine.
e. Under spiritual self-esteem you are free from anthropocentric thinking, motivation derived from counseling, sharing, flattery, patronizing, or spiritual bullying. All of these together are called the people dependence distraction.
f. Spiritual self-esteem is the declaration of independence of your royal priesthood.
9. Spiritual self-esteem is the base of operations for the most effective application of Bible doctrine in Christian experience.
10. Spiritual self-esteem is the replacement for those who came into Christianity with human self-esteem. Human self-esteem must give way completely to spiritual self-esteem.
J. Spiritual Self-Esteem and Problem Solving.
1. Spiritual self-esteem solves the problems of inadequacy, especially inadequacy in marriage. (See also the Doctrine of Flaws.)
a. Handicaps of genetics and environment generally lead to built-in inadequate feelings in life.
b. At one time or another, people are made to feel inadequate; maybe in competition, or in frustration in love life or social life. Such feelings of inadequacy can be very detrimental to the function of the spiritual life and spiritual self-esteem.
c. All genetic handicaps are set aside at the moment of salvation, and every believer has equal opportunity and equal privilege under election and predestination. Since God provided your escrow blessings for you in eternity past, no genetic handicap can keep you from receiving your escrow blessings. Only your negative volition can do so, which has nothing to do with your genetics or environment.
d. Only you make an issue out of your handicaps; God does not. You’re never to think of yourself in any other way except as a person, a member of the royal family of God. Therefore, you have no right to penalize yourself through feelings of inadequacy, nor do you have the right to make anyone else feel inadequate.
e. While genetics and environment can provide incentive for good or evil, failure or success, weakness or strength, they are not the cause of any of these things. We must learn to distinguish between incentive and cause. You are a member of the royal family. You have no right to penalize yourself through feelings of inadequacy, nor do you have the right to make anyone else feel inadequate.
f. Now that we are in union with Christ there is no such thing as an inferior or superior race, culture, or mentality. The important thing is that God has provided for each of us the same portfolio of invisible assets.
g. To the weak, genetics and environment handicaps may be an excuse or an incentive, but they never cause the failure. Always the cause is your own volition. h. Temptation may be an incentive in life, but volition is always the cause of sin.
i. The portfolio of invisible assets replaces any genetic, environmental, or even volitional handicaps of the past. This is first realized when the believer attains spiritual self-esteem and acquires a personal sense of destiny which overrides all past failures and feelings of inadequacy. People with feelings of inadequacy inevitably make wrong applications of right doctrines.
j. By the time the believer attains spiritual self-esteem, all the hovering shadows of genetic, environmental and volitional handicaps have been dispelled by the ten characteristics of spiritual self-esteem.
k. Therefore, no believer can advance to maturity while whining about genetics, environment, or any function of self-pity related to the function of his bad decisions in the past. The believer with spiritual self-esteem no longer blames God, other people, or environment for his past failures. He assumes his own responsibilities in the light of the Word of God. Therefore, “forgetting those things which are behind,” he moves toward the “mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
l. Since past failure is no longer an issue, the believer under spiritual self-esteem advances to spiritual maturity. Handicaps of genetics and environment are no longer an issue in your life. So spiritual self- esteem is the point where you no longer have any feelings of inadequacy, nor any feelings of human self-confidence. Your confidence is based entirely upon the Word of God.
2. Spiritual self-esteem solves the problems related to fear. 2 Tim 1:7, “For God has not given us a lifestyle of fear, but of power [divine dynasphere] and of love [virtue-love], and of sound judgment [spiritual self-esteem].”
a. People are always afraid. If they have something, they’re afraid they’ll lose it. If they don’t have something, they’re afraid they’ll never get it. This is how people live. No matter what our circumstances, we live in insecurity. Wealthy people are as afraid as poor people. You must finally learn that security in life is not related to the things of this life. Security comes only from the Bible doctrine in your soul, for the Lord is your security.
b. The more you surrender to fear, the more things you fear. To the extent you surrender to fear, you increase the power of fear in your life. The more things that acquire the power to cause you fear, the greater your retreat from spiritual self-esteem.
c. Fear is both a sin and an emotion. Cowardice and fear is lack of thinking under pressure. Fear means you cannot think, reason, rationalize.
d. Fear is lack of spiritual self-esteem. To the extent that you have fear, you can be sure you have not attained spiritual self-esteem.
e. 1 Jn 4:18a, “Fear does not exist in virtue-love, but virtue-love expels [drives out] that fear, for fear causes self-induced misery.”
f. Fear as both a sin and an emotion originates from the volition of the soul; therefore, becomes self-torture, self-punishment, self-misery, and all too often, self-destruction. If you are frightened, afraid, or disturbed, it comes from you; not from anyone else. This reminds you that you must do your own living and dying.
g. 1 Jn 4:18b, “In fact, the person who is afraid has not been matured by means of virtue-love.”
h. Courage is thinking doctrine under pressure as a function of spiritual self-esteem, while fear is an emotion, a lack of cognition under pressure. Prov 29:25, “The fear of man provides a snare, but he who trusts in the Lord will be promoted.”
3. Spiritual self-esteem solves the problem of emotion.
a. When spiritual self-esteem puts emotion in its proper place, this brings tremendous happiness into your life. For emotion only contributes to happiness when it is subordinate to doctrine in the mentality.
b. Spiritual self-esteem follows the policy of conceptualism, thinking in terms of metabolized doctrine, categories, principles and rationales, and having the ability to make the right application from the right doctrine.
c. Therefore, spiritual self-esteem eliminates emotion as the criterion for disaster. Emotion cannot think, rationalize, reason, or estimate any situation from the doctrinal viewpoint.
d. Under the protocol plan of God, emotions are never adequate guides for your motives, thoughts, decisions, or actions. Emotions add to hypersensitivity, which is one of the great manifestations of arrogance. When people feel inadequate, they are hypersensitive. They take everything you say the wrong way. They lose their sense of humor and try to emphasize their physical appearance. They want you to admire them and speak only flattery to them. If you say anything else, immediately their arrogance shows through hypersensitivity.
e. Emotions are not tools for cognition, nor are they criteria in life. We must learn to distinguish between doctrinal epistemology and emotional experience which results in subordinating emotion to intellect.
f. Thinking is always a cause and emotion is always an effect. Spiritual self-esteem requires cognitive self-assertiveness, perception and application of doctrine. Until we reach spiritual self-esteem, most of our applications are wrong. Even mature believers, like Job and Eliphaz, make wrong applications.
g. The believer who is a loser is emotional and frightened because he has no spiritual self-esteem, no epistemological rehabilitation, no conceptualism, no cognitive self-confidence. He wanders around in his soul in a maze of fear and feelings of inadequacy.
h. The cosmic believer acts on impulse without thinking; he has no spiritual self-esteem to back him up; he is constantly subverted by fear, worry and anxiety.
4. Spiritual self-esteem never feels threatened in life.
a. Many persons feel threatened, so they disagree with everyone and everything. These people disagree with others because they feel threatened by their beauty, or by their relationship to someone they love, or by their personality. They are insecure.
b. This feeling of insecurity comes from lack of spiritual self- esteem. There is no excuse in the Christian life for inordinate ambition, inordinate competition, or trying to control others. This is the basis for so many Christian organizations today. The very fact that they feel others are superior and so feel threatened means they have not yet metabolized all the wonderful things in their portfolio.
c. Obnoxious people often get attention in a group by focusing attention on themselves in a negative way. They disagree with everything that is said, and they reject or distort any compliment or kindness.
d. Weak people always feel threatened and become obnoxious as a system for the weak controlling the strong. Seeking to control and gain power over a group or an individual always signifies insecurity, lack of spiritual self-esteem and sometimes a psychotic personality. Social life is a challenge. Insecure people have no social life. Or people become real sweet and friendly as a system for the strong controlling the weak. This is how many a strong personality controls people, putting on the front of sweetness.
e. Weak believers are subject to the problems of personal love such as jealousy. Arrogance plus jealousy equals insecurity. They tend to be possessive in any group and in any social situation. They feel inadequate and threatened by any form of attractiveness or scintillating personality that challenges them, or by the fact that everyone is paying attention to someone else.
f. Consequently, in their subjective arrogance they call attention to themselves in a negative way as an expression of possessiveness and control.
5. Spiritual self-esteem solves the problem of relationships in life.
a. Relationship with God, resolved by the motivational virtue of personal love for God and occupation with Christ as the true self-motivation in life.
b. Relationship with self includes three factors.
(1) Spiritual self-esteem parlayed into spiritual autonomy through providential preventative suffering.
(2) Spiritual autonomy parlayed into spiritual maturity through momentum testing.
(3) Spiritual maturity parlayed into glorification of God through evidence testing.
c. Relationship with others, resolved by the functional virtue of impersonal love for all mankind.
6. Spiritual self-esteem solves the problem of emphasis and perspective in the protocol plan of God, 1 Cor 13:1-3,8. Wrong emphasis and perspective usually has to do with works and emotion. True emphasis and perspective has to do with reality related to grace and with our scale of values. If doctrine is not your number one priority, you will not survive suffering.
7. Spiritual self-esteem solves the problem of personality identification and niche orientation, addressed in Phil 4:11-13; 1 Tim 6:6-8; and Heb 13:5-6.
8. Spiritual self-esteem solves the problem of the avoidance of arrogance, 1 Cor 13:4-8. The danger is to convert spiritual self-esteem into human self-confidence. Spiritual self-esteem must have virtue and integrity to avoid arrogance. Since the environment of spiritual self- esteem is virtue-love, virtue-love produces the integrity for the function of spiritual self-esteem.
9. Spiritual self-esteem solves the problem of avoidance of arrogance through combining spiritual self-esteem with providential preventative suffering, 2 Cor 12:7-10. Failure to pass providential preventative suffering is the great vulnerability area in the spiritual life. Phil 3:15; 1 Cor 10:12; Gal 6:3; Rom 12:2-3; Prov 16:18; Prov 11:2; Phil 2:15.
10. Spiritual self-esteem solves other problems in life.
a. The problems of being the victim of incest and child abuse by parents.
b. The problem related to self-pity. Arrogance and emotion meet at the point of self-pity. This includes the problem of complaining, which is a result of self-pity.
c. The problem of unrealistic expectation.
d. The problem of role-model arrogance.
e. The problems related to rejection by others.
f. The problems related to finding your niche in life.
g. The problems related to marriage.
11. The Recovery Mechanics of Spiritual Self-Esteem.
a. Recognize the problem.
(1) This means identifying any sins in your own life immediately.
(2) Use the rebound technique in the privacy of your priesthood. Having recovered the filling of the Spirit, deal with your problems on the basis of metabolized doctrine which you have circulating in your stream of consciousness plus the function of any of the problem solving devices that you understand and can use.
b. Make good decisions from a position of strength. Collect all the facts dealing with your problem. Focus your thinking on pertinent doctrines which apply to your problem. Select the problem solving devices which are pertinent to your problem. Then make good decisions from a position of strength and keep on making those decisions until the problem is solved or the Lord has removed the circumstances that caused the problem.
c. Keep moving forward in your spiritual life. Never allow your past failures to hinder your present spiritual advance. On the basis of humility, take the mechanics of the problem solving devices and use your spiritual strength from doctrine to execute the solution. If you do not have the spiritual strength, it should be an additional challenge to keep on taking in Bible doctrine. Avoid distractions which keep you from consistent postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation.
d. Learn to distinguish between suffering caused by divine discipline and suffering caused for blessing. Always take the responsibility for your own sins and failures. Spiritual self-esteem demands that you recognize the use of your own volition related to sins, flaws, and failures; then identify your sins so you can keep moving under the filling of the Spirit. Learn to identify testing and suffering for blessing, and always relate it to pertinent problem solving devices.
e. There is a three part principle you must always remember.
(1) Spiritual self-esteem plus providential preventative suffering equals advance to spiritual autonomy.
(2) Spiritual autonomy plus momentum testing equals the advance to spiritual maturity.
(3) Spiritual maturity plus evidence testing equals glorification of God to the maximum.
f. Identify the four categories of providential preventative suffering and momentum testing: people testing, system testing, thought testing, and disaster testing. Never resent suffering in any category; there is always a reason for suffering. If you resent suffering, you have failed miserably in your spiritual life. Any kind of suffering is designed for your alertness and advance in the spiritual life. If you resent suffering, you have already lost the benefit from it.
g. Identify the categories of evidence testing. Evidence testing is Satan’s cross examination of the mature believer. There are two categories of evidence testing.
(1) The relationship with God test.
(a) Relationship with the Holy Spirit, Mt 4:1-4.
(b) Relationship with the Word of God, Mt 4:5-7.
© Relationship with the Plan of God, Mt 4:8-10.
(2) The relationship with life test.
(1) Loss of prosperity, Job 1.
(2) Loss of health, Job 2:1-10.
(3) Loss of friends, Job 2:11ff.
h. Concluding Principles.
(1) Suffering for blessing begins when spiritual self- esteem, continues with spiritual autonomy, and reaches its peak in spiritual maturity.
(2) God never puts on the believer more suffering than he can endure. If you find yourself in a situation where you cannot endure the suffering, that is an indication that your spiritual life is messed up in every way.
(3) If you cannot endure the suffering, it is generally related to punitive discipline from God.
K. The Pattern of Spiritual Self-Esteem and Spiritual Autonomy.
1. Personal love for God the Father and impersonal love for all mankind are patterned after God’s virtue-love as a problem solving device.
2. God loves His own perfect righteousness and always has. This is His divine self-esteem. God’s love is always directed only toward that which is perfect. God cannot love imperfect man except impersonally. But once man believes in Christ and receives the imputation of perfect righteousness, then God is free to love us personally.
3. The love each member of the Trinity has toward Himself is spiritual self-esteem. The love He has for the other members of the Godhead is personal love.
4. Personal love is always based on the object. Each member of the Trinity is a perfect object with perfect integrity. The basis for God’s love is His perfect spiritual self-esteem which gives maximum capacity for loving the other members of the Trinity.
5. The test of God’s perfect spiritual self-esteem is the invention of creatures, which required another category of love exercised toward creatures, both angels and mankind. This third category of love is completely unnecessary in the eternal relationship of the members of the Trinity.
6. This third category became a problem solving device. Spiritual self-esteem was never a problem solving device among the Trinity, but merely a capacity device for the expression of personal love. No one truly loves until he has spiritual self-esteem.
7. This third category is impersonal love, which is only designed to express the perfect integrity of God. Impersonal love emphasizes the merit of the subject, but that merit does not have to function as such in the relationship of the members of the Trinity.
8. With man’s fall and spiritual death, there was a gap between man and God that God’s personal love could not breach. God’s perfect personal love cannot love man’s relative righteousness. This is a problem.
9. So here God’s spiritual self-esteem plus its production of impersonal love (analogous to our spiritual autonomy) comes into play to become a problem solving device. Spiritual autonomy emphasizes the integrity of the subject, so that it makes no difference what the object is. Spiritual autonomy loves, regardless of how obnoxious, pernicious, or unattractive the object may be.
10. So the pattern of spiritual self-esteem and spiritual autonomy with impersonal love comes from what God has. Spiritual self-esteem is God’s eternal and perfect love for His own eternal and perfect righteousness. Because of His perfect righteousness and spiritual self-esteem, “God so loved the world [man in spiritual death with relative righteousness] that He gave His uniquely-born Son,” Jn 3:16.
11. God the Father could not have judged His own perfect Son with the sins of the world apart from impersonal love! The basis of His impersonal love is His spiritual autonomy. So God the Father’s spiritual self-esteem plus His impersonal love is the basis for our salvation.
12. So the pattern for spiritual self-esteem is the ministry of God the Father, whereby His spiritual self-esteem produces the impersonal love (spiritual autonomy) by which we are able to respond to the Gospel through faith in Christ. God’s virtue-love as a problem solving device is the pattern for spiritual self-esteem as our problem solving device in the protocol plan of God.
13. The environment for spiritual self-esteem is found in our very own palace, the operational divine dynasphere modeled after our Lord’s prototype divine dynasphere. At gate 5 we have personal love for God. Then comes spiritual self-esteem as the overlap between gates 5 and 6, and after passing providential preventative suffering, we reach spiritual autonomy at gate 6. So the environment for spiritual self-esteem is virtue-love, as both motivational and functional virtue.
L. Spiritual self-esteem results in spiritual autonomy of the royal priesthood.
1. Spiritual self-esteem provides the power and the ability to complete the execution of the protocol plan of God.
2. Reaching spiritual maturity is self-actualization, or the use of spiritual self-esteem to fulfill the protocol plan of God. On the other hand, cosmic living is classified as self-alienation; as alienation from God and from people. Lack of spiritual self-esteem is self-disowning, while life in the cosmic system is self-alienation.
3. Spiritual self-esteem is the assertion of metabolized doctrine in the right lobe and the use of it by living in your own mind. For you cannot reach the point of consistent suffering for blessing until you reach the point where you live by your own mind from your metabolized doctrine, making application of that doctrine under three categories of suffering for blessing: providential preventative suffering, momentum testing, and evidence testing as an extension of the angelic conflict in history.
4. Spiritual self-esteem leads to spiritual autonomy. Spiritual autonomy must be tested through suffering for blessing. Suffering for blessing is designed by God under three categories.
a. Suffering for blessing which gives power and strength to spiritual self-esteem.
Spiritual self-esteem without this power is vulnerable to arrogant self-confidence. This is where many believers lose out. This is called providential preventative suffering.
b. Suffering for blessing which provides momentum testing for spiritual autonomy under the privacy of the believer’s royal priesthood. No one can handle momentum testing without spiritual autonomy. Therefore, God does not give us the four momentum tests until we’ve attained it.
c. Suffering for blessing which provides evidence testing for spiritual maturity. Once we reach spiritual maturity, we’ll receive unexplained suffering in our lives. This third category is suffering for blessing which only comes to mature believers as the extension of the angelic conflict. Here is where we are entered as evidence for the Prosecution in the rebuttal phase of Satan’s appeal trial. So this category is called evidence testing. The cause of the suffering is unknown, as in the case of Job, but the power to deal with the suffering has been provided through preventative suffering plus momentum testing. This is suffering for mature believers only.
4. Suffering for blessing does not occur on a regular basis until the believer has attained spiritual self-esteem.
M. Spiritual self-esteem is a divider.
1. Spiritual self-esteem separates spiritual childhood from adulthood.
2. Spiritual self-esteem separates lack of capacity from capacity for life, love, and happiness.
3. Spiritual self-esteem separates spiritual dependence from spiritual independence in spiritual autonomy.
4. Spiritual self-esteem separates punitive suffering from suffering for blessing.
N. Spiritual Self-Esteem and Personality Identity.
1. Competition for affection is often a sign of insecurity and of ingrained weakness. These people are arrogant and without spiritual self- esteem. When you start to compete with others, you have built in a manufacturing device that means unhappiness for life.
2. Too many people become possessive of someone or something and they seek to isolate the object of their affection through some form of strange behavior, through nagging, complaining, or through trying to instill in their opposite number a guilt complex.
3. Disagreement can be normal or abnormal in life. It becomes abnormal as a technique related to an insecure person who seeks to control those in their periphery. People who are power hungry with power lust are always trying to control their periphery. In doing so, they develop a fantastic system of arrogance, a guarantee that they will be miserable all their lives.
4. Under spiritual self-esteem you are never insecure in your love and affection, and you never feel threatened by arrogance and jealousy, and you never have the problems related to self-pity.
5. Spiritual self-esteem combines with impersonal love to destroy inordinate ambition and competition for someone’s love, affection, or for some greatness in life.
6. Spiritual self-esteem is motivated by personal love for God, which eliminates both inordinate ambition and competition.
7. Spiritual self-esteem has capacity for love for God and for a few people. This eliminates personality flaws. You cannot find self and personality identity until you find God as a believer (reach gate 5 of the divine dynasphere). You cannot find yourself until you find God. You will never discover the real you until you first discover God. This is so important, for it sets up the right priorities for life.
8. Examples would be: the mother who competes with the wife for the affection of her son; a divorced couple who competes for the affection of their children.
9. Lack of spiritual self-esteem means personality flaws, abnormalities, and sometimes borderline schizoid personality.
10. Therefore, spiritual self-esteem means personality identification and living a normal happy life.
11. The other personality distraction is admiration resulting in personality imitation. The believer must learn to admire people without trying to imitate or mimic their personality. This will keep you from finding the real you, which is usually far better than what you want to imitate.
12. Spiritual self-esteem provides the capacity to admire and appreciate people without trying to imitate their personality. Many believers have destroyed their potential in life by trying to imitate others. The only legitimate imitation is the lifestyle of wisdom. Many a believer has destroyed his capacity for life, love, happiness, or his potential in the Christian life by trying to imitate someone he admires.
13. Finding self is based on normal advance to spiritual self-esteem based on personal love for God from maximum metabolized doctrine. Your personality must relate to your own portfolio of invisible assets and the protocol plan of God. You will never discover yourself until you discover the One who gave you life at birth and the One who gave you salvation at the point of faith in Christ.
14. There is no such thing as a standardized personality for spirituality. Spirituality manifests itself in multifarious personalities. God uses and blesses all types of personalities. God did not intend to put us all through cookie cutters. There’s no such thing as a standardized personality for the function of the ministry.
15. All personality flaws are resolved by the attainment of spiritual self-esteem, in which the utilization of your portfolio of invisible assets results in contentment and personality identification.
16. Therefore, spiritual self-esteem overcomes the various personality flaws to which we are subject and replaces them with contentment and a personal sense of destiny, personality identification and niche attainment.
O. Spiritual Self-Esteem and Niche Orientation.
1. We live in a time when young people do not know what they want to do in life. It all stems from the fact that people are not aware of themselves and their limitations, and what is the secret to true success in life. As a result, they spend their lives in misery and frustration, committing suicide from simply giving up.
2. So spiritual self-esteem will cause you to attain this one important achievement in life. First, you’ll learn to know who God is and to love Him, and then you’ll discover your own personality. With spiritual self-esteem, you take your own personality through every circumstance of prosperity, pressure, adversity, and do it all to the glory of God. So personality identification relates to niche orientation.
3. Niche is from the Latin word meaning nest. It is defined here as a place, condition or a status suitable to the capabilities, happiness and merits of an individual believer.
4. It is not a slot in life, but a nest, which is built from many materials (doctrines). The believer’s niche is composed of many strands from his portfolio prepared in eternity past. 5. When the nest is finished it includes spiritual self-esteem, capacity for life, and contentment in every circumstance in life.
6. Niche orientation is not finding your right job nor your right church. It’s a combination of finding a series of right things consisting of at least seven things:
a. Right social life. So many people are ruined by the wrong social life, where their friends are a bad influence on them, or where they change their standards to conform to some social experience. Finding the right social life is extremely important. The best way is to start out with no social life at all, because what you really are is what you are when alone. Being alone for a while will help you to understand what your needs are and in what areas your capacity is missing.
b. Marital experience. It’s very difficult for anyone to find their real
personality and niche orientation in marital status. It’s better to discover this first when single.
c. Business and professional life. What are you going to do in life? How will you make a living? Where do your interests lie? What are you best fitted for? What are your limitations? If you start by recognizing your limitations, you generally have a better chance because you’re approaching the problem from humility rather than from arrogance.
d. Academic life as a student or as a teacher.
e. Job or position in life. There is a job or position that goes with your personality which means tranquility in your life. Your success is not measured by what you do for a living, but in God’s eyes your success is measured by your advance to maturity. We live in the dispensation of invisible impact.
f. Spiritual life and eventually Christian service.
g. Doctrinal teaching from your right pastor. So actually, this list should be reversed, because you must start with doctrine. You must be faithful under your right pastor who communicates doctrine so that you can understand the issues in privacy.
7. Niche conceptualism. While everyone is seeking his niche, very few seem to find it. Basic niche conceptualism requires two categories of decisions: the one-time decision of faith in Christ, and the many decisions related to the fulfillment of the protocol plan of God. We must make daily decisions after salvation and be consistent. Inconsistency comes because our priorities are constantly in flux. This is because people are so emotional.
a. 1 Tim 2:3-4 distinguishes between the one decision we make for salvation, and the many decisions we make thereafter. “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved, and to come to an epignosis knowledge of doctrine.”
b. 1 Jn 3:23, “And this is His mandate that we believe in the person of His Son, and love one another.”
8. Doctrine gives you the opportunity of seeing what God provided for you in four niche categories.
a. Niche orientation.
(1) Niche orientation looks back to your portfolio in eternity past. Niche orientation must relate to grace provision and the work of God the Father in eternity past. So you realize your personality has significance in the eyes of God, because knowing all about you in eternity past as a believer, God provided you with a portfolio of success. Since you are still alive, God’s purpose for you on earth still exists. So you cannot dwell on your failures or be disturbed by the difficulties in your life.
(2) Niche orientation also looks forward to the protocol plan of God. The very fact that you’re alive after some colossal failure means you must pick yourself up and move on to even greater blessing than you ever had before. You must look forward and move to spiritual self- esteem.
(3) Niche orientation relates to your own palace, the divine dynasphere. Niche orientation means you must be filled with the Spirit and rebound when necessary. We cannot be niche oriented while we are having an authority problem. Niche orientation demands daily perception of doctrine. It provides the motivation for spiritual self-esteem.
b. Niche Identification.
(1) A personal sense of destiny from spiritual self-esteem results in knowing the will of God for your life and your personality identity. Niche identification means each strand of the nest you build from Bible doctrine will result in a permanent contentment in every category of your life. Happiness is not an overt experience or stimulation, but is a state of mind in the soul best described by contentment or tranquility.
(2) Niche identification in social life means picking the right friends; in married life it means the selection of the right mate from spiritual self-esteem; in business it means being led to choose the right profession, recognizing your limitations, and finding something compatible with your tranquility gained from doctrine; in academic life it means the selection of the right school, the right major; in labor it means learning the right trade. Many times, ambition has distracted people from the protocol plan of God simply because they spent so much time in self- improvement that they lost track of who and what they really were. Then when disaster comes, they fall apart.
(3) Niche identification means understanding your portfolio of invisible assets and executing the protocol plan of God. Niche identification demands that you live constantly in the divine dynasphere. You live within your limitations, but under the principle of godliness or great happiness. So find out who and what you are before you go off on the many tangents offered today.
c. The real key is niche capacity which is contentment, translated “godliness” in the New Testament.
(1) Godliness means reaching spiritual self-esteem through daily residence, function, and momentum inside your palace, the operational divine dynasphere. The key to your life is not your great resume, but godliness, which is momentum in the protocol plan of God. Godliness is the filling of the Spirit, the daily perception of doctrine, and advancing to gates 5 and 6 of the divine dynasphere.
(2) 1 Tim 3:6-8, “Godliness is a means of great profit when accompanied by contentment; consequently, if we have food and clothing [minimum logistical grace], with these we shall be content.”
(3) Note what is real profit in this passage: godliness. Because godliness gives you the ability and capacity to love God, and at the same time the ability to know yourself, your own personality, your limitations, and to understand yourself in the light of enforced and genuine humility rather than to overestimate yourself in the light of arrogance. Before you die, be sure your life has been profitable, as defined by this verse. The greatest thing you can do for yourself, your country, your God, is godliness.
(4) “Contentment” is spiritual self-esteem, personality identification, knowing your limitations, your abilities, and relating them all to the Word of God; advancing under the protocol plan of God as a member of the royal family of God rather than as someone under inordinate ambition.
(5) Heb 13:5, “Let your lifestyle be free from monetary priority. Be content with what you have. For He Himself has said, `I will never leave you; I will never forsake you.’”
(6) If you are only living to make money, and you measure success in terms of making money, then you are a slave to money. Anything to which you make a priority above doctrine you are a slave. Here’s the key to our happiness: our relationship with the Lord, with eternal and temporal security.
(7) Phil 4:11-13, “I am not saying these things because I am in need.” Spiritual self-esteem never begs, but functions under the true motivation of personal love for God. “For I have learned to be content in whatever the circumstances. In fact, I have come to know how to be in need [suffering for blessing], also I have come to know how to live in prosperity. In every circumstance, I have learned the secret of being filled [prosperous] and of being hungry [failure]. I have the endowed power [computer assets] to attain all things [escrow blessings] through Him who makes me strong [giving suffering for blessing].”
d. Niche Attainment. Niche capacity occurs when the believer reaches spiritual self-esteem. Niche attainment occurs when the believer reaches spiritual maturity. Spiritual self-esteem must precede the attainment of maturity.
P. The cosmic system offers pseudo-spiritual self-esteem as an arrogant pretext of self-value.
1. The believer in the cosmic system evades, represses, rationalizes, and even fantasizes the objective reality of the protocol plan of God.
2. Arrogance produces irrational self-deception, which spawns fear, worry and anxiety.
3. Conceptualism has no meaning, no importance to the mind of the cosmic believer, whose negative volition subverts spiritual self-esteem, and therefore, he never receives the escrow blessing deposited to his account in eternity past.
4. The cosmic believer is overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy, and therefore feelings of competition. Without spiritual self-esteem he thinks of himself in terms of crusader arrogance. He comes to assume that if he didn’t think of it, it is wrong. Therefore, God’s plan is wrong.
5. Pseudo self-esteem and human self-esteem are self-conscious of success in self, but this is not spiritual self-esteem.
Q. Spiritual Adulthood and Advance in God’s Protocol Plan.
1. Consistent perception and metabolization of doctrine inside the divine dynasphere results in that momentum which produces spiritual self- esteem. Until we reach spiritual self-esteem, we are not really advancing significantly in the protocol plan of God and/or the Christian life.
2. Spiritual self-esteem is then combined with providential preventative suffering to form spiritual autonomy. Spiritual self-esteem is vulnerable. Therefore, God in His grace always gives the believer who has just reached spiritual self-esteem providential preventative suffering.
3. Spiritual autonomy is spiritual self-esteem with muscle. Spiritual autonomy is then combined with momentum testing to form spiritual maturity. Here is the first point of glorifying God when we receive our escrow blessings.
4. Spiritual maturity is combined with evidence testing to glorify God in the appeal trial of the historical extension of the angelic conflict. This is the most unusual of all categories of suffering. It always comes suddenly, is always unexpected, is always short, is always a result of a convocation in heaven (Job 1-2), and there is no reasonable or unreasonable explanation as to why it’s happening. Only the mature believer can handle it. Even if he fails, as Job did, if he recovers he is still spiritually mature.
5. Every category of suffering for blessing means an advance in your spiritual life, and means you are one step nearer to fulfilling the protocol plan of God for the Church Age. Each category of suffering for blessing is provided by the sovereignty of God under His grace policy so that the Church Age believer, as royal family, can fulfill the protocol plan of God.
6. With the exception of suffering left over after rebound, there is no suffering for blessing until the believer attains spiritual self-esteem through residence, function, and momentum inside the divine dynasphere. There is a limited suffering for blessing in whatever is left over for you to bear after rebound. But this is of short duration and has no great significance.
7. Therefore, spiritual self-esteem is the dividing line between punitive suffering and suffering for blessing.
8. No believer should ever pray for the removal of any suffering for blessing which is the means of fulfilling the protocol plan of God.
S. Concluding Principles of Spiritual Self-Esteem.
1. Nathaniel Brandon’s view on self-esteem is stated in his book, Honoring Self, “The two most striking characteristics of men and women who seek psychotherapy are deficiency of self-esteem and a resulting condition of self-alienation. In some crucial way, they do not feel appropriate to life and its requirements and they lack adequate contact with the world within, with their needs, wants, feelings, thoughts, values, and potentialities. Thus diminished in consciousness, they are estranged from their proper human estate. Large areas of self lie undiscovered, unexpressed, unlived. They are sleep-walkers through their own existence.”
2. Spiritual self-esteem chooses to think and apply metabolized doctrine to life. First, spiritual self-esteem is acquired by choosing daily for the perception and metabolization of doctrine. Then spiritual self-esteem chooses to think and to apply that metabolized doctrine to life.
3. Spiritual self-esteem chooses to think and apply metabolized doctrine toward God. This is how we come to know God and therefore to love Him. There is no shortcut to loving God. It is impossible to love invisible God until one has accumulated a certain amount of metabolized doctrine and is well on his way to spiritual self-esteem.
4. Spiritual self-esteem makes the decision to think independently of other Christians, to live by the doctrine resident in your own soul, to have the courage of your own perceptions and the accuracy of your own applications. This is spiritual autonomy.
5. Spiritual self-esteem orients to the reality of what we are and accepts our human limitations, while emphasizing the equal privileges and the equal opportunities under the computer assets of our portfolio.
6. Spiritual self-esteem refuses to accept unearned guilt which results in a guilt complex, a destructive sin. Spiritual self-esteem refuses to accept that guilt which people try to impose upon you to manipulate you. But spiritual self-esteem does accept the responsibility for your own decisions, good and bad. Accepting unearned guilt destroys spiritual lives every day. This is a system of evil, and is often a misapplication of the true doctrine of Christian service. Christian service should not be mandated by other people, but by the progress of your own spiritual life. The average fundamentalist today is motivated by unearned guilt.
7. Spiritual self-esteem accepts our right as royal family to live our own life under the privacy of our own priesthood. Therefore, our life does not belong to others but to God. We are not sustained by logistical grace to live up to the expectations of others, but to live up to the divine mandates of the protocol plan of God.
8. Spiritual self-esteem gives maximum opportunity for the believer to exploit the full realm of virtue-love as a problem solving device, and to have perfect tranquility and happiness in every category of suffering for blessing.
9. Self-control through divine establishment results in human self- esteem. But human self-esteem is not adequate in God’s plan or purpose for the believer. Self-control through postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation, or the inculcation of Bible doctrine, is the basis for attaining spiritual self-esteem.
10. Spiritual self-esteem under pressure is the dynamic poise of the problem solving devices of the protocol plan of God.
T. Applications of Spiritual Self-Esteem.
1. Spiritual self-esteem combines with impersonal love to produce a remarkable thoughtfulness of others; hence, the virtue of being considerate, looking out for the comfort and welfare of others is the first major product of spiritual self-esteem. This virtue consideration means sparing others from annoyance and irrationality or discomfort; hence, being careful not to hurt the feelings of others.
a. At certain times most believers have mental or emotional sensibility which leads to irritation or some form of reaction. While sensitivity connotes being impressionable, susceptible, receptive, or responsive, in usage, it has come to imply, in cases of virtue, a certain thoughtfulness for others, consideration for the feelings of others.
b. In this sense, sensitivity uses the status of spiritual self- esteem as the base for the impact of impersonal love for all mankind as the functional virtue of consideration for others no matter how antagonistic others might be.
c. In this sense, sensitivity manifests itself in good manners, the willingness to accommodate oneself to an individual or to a group in the spiritual, social, professional, business, or academic realm.
d. On the foundation of humility plus the spiritual strength of integrity, spiritual self-esteem produces a positive sensitivity or thoughtfulness of others. Hence, this good sensitivity represents the function of spiritual self-esteem in the life of the believer. This is the exercise of impersonal love for all mankind.
e. In this case, hypersensitivity represents the function of arrogance, the extreme negative sensitivity, the subjectivity which combines the sins of arrogance with the sins of the emotional complex. Hypersensitivity in this application becomes arrogant preoccupation with self, resulting in using every circumstance or occasion to make an issue of disoriented self.
f. Self-righteous arrogance of legalism combines with jealousy, bitterness, vindictiveness, implacability, anger, hatred, self-pity, inordinate ambition and competition, revenge modus operandi and motivation, to react to some real or imagined wrongs. Hypersensitivity functions under subjective arrogance and self-centeredness, and seeks to control its environment to get its own way through the demand syndrome and to control all personal relationships.
g. Hypersensitivity is a combination of total sensitivity regarding self and at the same time a total insensitivity to the feelings, opinions, and desires of others.
h. Impersonal love and hypersensitivity cannot coexist any more than humility and arrogance can coexist. The solution to the problem comes with the attainment of spiritual self-esteem.
i. Hypersensitivity is the believer’s malfunction with relationship to himself and the manifestation of subjective arrogance—total preoccupation with self resulting from scar tissue of the soul, garbage in the subconscious, the life controlled by the lust pattern of the sin nature as well as the arrogant and emotional complexes of sin. Hypersensitivity results in self being divorced from reality.
j. Good sensitivity is virtuous, objective, compassionate, consideration, thoughtfulness of others, the function of impersonal love for all mankind.
k. Self-disorientation has many problems.
(1) Vulnerability to the arrogant complex of sins.
(2) Vulnerability to the emotional complex of sins.
(3) Dissociation resulting in garbage in the subconscious.
(4) Negative volition to doctrine resulting in blackout of the soul and scar tissue in the stream of consciousness.
l. Hypersensitive believers are unteachable.
(1) Because they make an issue out of self rather than the content of Bible doctrine.
(2) Because they make an issue out of the personality of the pastor-teacher through either idolization or irritation.
(3) Because of operation over-think from a life of subjective arrogance.
(4) Because of frustration from the fact that every Bible class does not deal with their personal problems. This ignores the principle of integrity or spiritual strength which can only be developed from the whole realm of doctrine.
(5) Because of the emotional revolt of the soul.
(a) Hysterical emotion—fear, worry, anxiety, panic, irrationality, dissociation.
(b) Antagonistic emotion—uncontrollable anger, implacable hatred, bitter resentment, vindictive animosity, loathing, tantrums, violence, murder.
© Reaction emotion—a combination of emotional and arrogant sins in which bitterness, jealousy, vindictiveness, and implacability enter into hysteria of one sort or another. For example, revenge hysteria, or vilification.
(d) Self-centered category—the person is egotistical and irrational; all expressions of dissatisfaction and maladjustment to life combine into one concept, such as, complaining, sniveling, unreasonable irritability, annoyance from hypersensitivity, hallucination, self-pity, sulking.
(e) Guilt category—the failure to rebound, rejection of rebound, the persistent feeling of remorse after rebound, failure to keep moving.
m. Your happiness must not depend on others or you will be unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be unhappy unless you have the benefits which come from spiritual self-esteem and the function of impersonal love for all mankind.
2. Spiritual self-esteem inevitably causes blessings and happiness from all three categories of relationship in the life of the believer: the relationship with God which is paramount, the relationship with people which demands humility, the relationship with self which demands professionalism and integrity.
3. You cannot build spiritual self-esteem on what others think of you; for spiritual self-esteem is related to what God thinks of you. It is your rapport with God. You have a personal sense of destiny because of what God thinks of you and you are straight with God.
4. Therefore, you can only build your spiritual self-esteem in the soul’s stream of consciousness and what you think from the standpoint of that metabolized doctrine.
5. Any attempt to build spiritual self-esteem on the approbation of others results in confusion, frustration, emotion, and arrogance. Confusion means you are overrun by the four horsemen of apostasy (emotional revolt of the soul, negative volition of the soul, blackout of the soul, and scar tissue of the soul). Frustration results in loss of metabolized doctrine in the seven compartments of the stream of consciousness from being overrun by the four horsemen of apostasy. Emotional revolt of the soul is what happens when you pick up your own agenda in the adult spiritual life. Arrogance results in the function of the three arrogance skills (self-justification, self-deception, and self-absorption).
6. The inevitable result is the status quo of loser believer, who is divorced from reality and functions under denial and projection.
7. Spiritual self-esteem is related to leadership.
a. There is no true leadership apart from the attainment of spiritual self-esteem. You have to be on God’s agenda.
b. Leadership in spiritual self-esteem starts with self and not those with whom you are associated or those who are under your authority. Leadership is in the soul. Your soul establishes leadership, not your relationship with other people. You do not have leadership until you have it in your soul.
c. This implies that virtue and integrity from Bible doctrine is the first concern of leadership.
d. Therefore, leadership must live and think under doctrinal principles, not emotion, not arrogance, not confusion, not frustration, nor reaction. You cannot lead and lose control of your soul through emotional revolt or emotion or confusion or frustration.
e. If leadership does not start in your own soul, you will never have the respect of others.
f. Leadership is a principle that can only thrive in the soul before it becomes an action which inspires and guides others. In the function of authority both spiritual self-esteem and virtue love lead the way. Often the reality and evaluation of failure must precede the volition and perseverance of success in leadership. You must be able to realize when you fail and evaluate that failure to be a success as a leader. The supreme court of heaven brings the believer to failure and subsequent humility before God can give success on the basis of His agenda. _____________________________________________________________________________
© 1989, by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved.
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