Life Boat

Lifeboat
What happens in the lifeboat is that we are comparing ourselves to others based on what the majority of people feel. Does this feel at all familiar in your own lives?
In school, and in all of life, we all try to have as many people as we can approve of us, agree with us, respect us, and love us. And this makes us feel like we have value and worth.
I don’t know about you but I find myself comparing myself to other people all the time whether I want to or not; it is almost like we are born into it. Like I need to look to something outside myself to validate my worth.
And it becomes even more difficult because the standard of what is important is constantly changing. What was cool to wear when I was in middle school is definitely not cool to wear now. Can you remember jams?
Is the standard we use to compare ourselves to others fair or accurate?
Lots of people who were considered the least valuable or geeks in school grow up to be some of the most important people when they are adults. They can be intelligent or nice or funny or a good listener or loving and be completely overlooked by almost everyone.
And it doesn’t get any better when we grow up. This doesn’t end in College. We just use different standards to judge with and are a little bit more subtle about it when we are adults. People still want to make the most money, have the biggest homes, the prettiest families, or the nicest cars. And we are still in the lifeboat fighting over position and for other people to love and respect us.
But God didn’t intend for us to live this way. His boat is big enough for everyone. And in God’s system you don’t loose value by being nice to people that are considered not valuable in society. In fact He says that whatever you do for the lowest people, you do for Him.
God says this because God created those people in His own image. And to God they have just as much value as our presidents, and celebrities, and all the “important people” in the world. You have just as much value as the “important people” to God.
One of the things I love most about Jesus is that he never puts limits on who we should love. He makes it very simple and clear. Love everyone and love God. Love the popular people, love the nerds, geeks and weird people, love the quiet people, love the annoying people. And the amazing thing about it is when we give people a chance, and get past all the hurt and rejection that is stored up in unpopular people;( because unpopular people are used to and probably expect to be hurt and rejected) we usually find out that that person has some great qualities to them and that they also are real people with a real need to be loved, listened to, to have someone “for” them, and to be paid attention to. (ß a review of our last four talks) And sometimes we are the annoying person or the weird person and that we need someone to love us despite all of our shortcomings.


Questions
1)How do you feel after you win a sports game or board game?
And after you lose?

2)What do we actually win when we beat our friends at monopoly or basketball or soccer?

3) Why does it affect us so much?

4) Do you feel more valuable when you are right about something or when someone else agrees with you or approves of what you are doing?

5) How do you react when you are disrespected in some way (someone cuts in front of you in line, tells you you are bad at something, or insults you)?
Why does it hurt or get us mad? What do we really lose?

6) Do you often measure yourself by the same standard other people measure you by? (Wonder what other people think about your nose or hair or build, how many laughs you get at a joke, or smiles in the hallway, or how many compliments we get on a new outfit)

7) Do we validate/ give worth mostly to people who give worth to us?

8) Why would it hurt us to be nice to someone who doesn’t like us? Or is socially awkward?

9) Do we have more to gain when someone loves us or when they don’t love us?