What does First B Jackson teach about self-worth?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First Baptist Jackson, the teaching on self-worth starts not with how a person feels about themselves but with what God has already declared true. In the Living As a New Creation series, Amy worked through the difference between the old identity a person carries and the new one God is actively forming. She pointed to Isaiah 43:1, where God addresses someone by their old name and immediately speaks a new one over them, as a picture of what God does with every believer: He holds both realities at once and patiently draws a person into the new one. The repeated question she pressed on was whether we actually believe what God says about us, or whether we keep speaking the old nature back over ourselves.
Amy was direct about the way false humility can masquerade as honest self-assessment. Saying "I cannot" when God has already chosen and equipped a person is not modesty, she taught. Drawing on the Amplified Bible's footnote under Moses' own protest in Exodus, she named it self-depreciation that is inconsistent with true faith, because to keep insisting you are not enough is to claim you know something God does not. The invitation throughout the series was to agree with what God says, not because everything has already been perfected in a person, but because what God declares is more true than what a person feels on any given day.
Pastor David covered connected ground in his message on acceptance, coming at self-worth from the angle of value and rejection. He walked through what the human body is worth in raw materials and set that against the price God actually paid, the precious blood of Christ described in 1 Peter 1:19, to make the point that value is determined by who made something and what someone will pay for it. Rejection, he said, is the deepest wound people carry, and we spend enormous energy chasing acceptance in the wrong places. The anchor the teaching kept returning to was this: God made us and paid the highest price imaginable, so the case that any person is worthless simply cannot stand.
Taught from Isaiah 43:1 · Romans 8:1-6 · 2 Corinthians 5:17 · 1 Peter 1:19 · Ephesians 1:18
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 13
1 If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I have become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but don’t have love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don’t have love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love is patient and is kind; love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud,
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- February 24, 2015 Living As a New Creation - Who do You say that I am (Wk. 3) (2) A Wyoming pastor teaches on embracing your God-given identity in Christ, renewing your mind, and letting the Spirit transform how you see yourself and live.
- February 10, 2015 Living As a New Creation - Who do You say that I am (Wk. 1) (3) A sermon on discovering your true identity in Christ, exploring what God says about who you are and how believing it changes the way you live.
- October 9, 2011 He Accepts Me A Wyoming pastor explores what it means to love others the way Jesus loves us, covering acceptance, value, and forgiveness in week two of Forty Days of Love.