_______Book Review: The Search for Significance

I've made reference to The Search for Significance by Robert S McGee several times already in my blog but this is my official review.  I am going to summarize it here, but simply hearing a summary by no means will take you on the same spiritual journey you would get from reading the book and going through the workbook yourself.

As far as Christian books and workbooks go, this was a superb study.  Robert McGee is a counselor and brings an understanding of human psychology to Christian faith.  In this book, he sheds light on how it is that Christ-followers, like everyone else in the world, can have deep insecurities and feelings of low self-worth.  He describes how we were created to be in constant and real fellowship with God and how the fall in the Garden of Eden removed us from that close relationship. Ever since that point, we have been seeking to fill the gap left by the physical absence of God in our lives and to have the self-image that God intends us to have.  As we struggle to find our worth in God, Satan tricks us into believing some universal lies:

1. Those who fail are unworthy of love and deserve to be blamed and condemned (including myself).  This leads to the fear of punishment and the propensity to punish others.
2. I must meet certain standards to feel good about myself.  This leads to the fear of failure.
3. I must be approved (accepted) by certain others to feel good about myself.  This leads to the fear of rejection.
4. I am what I am.  I cannot change.  I am hopeless.  This leads to shame.

Following a chapter on each of these lies, helping the reader to examine how each lie plays out in his or her life, McGee provides a chapter with God's response to each lie:

1. God's response to the lie that those who fail are unworthy of love and deserve to be blamed and condemned: I am deeply loved by God.  "This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."  1 John 4:9-10.
2.  God's response to the lie that I am I must meet certain standards: I am completely forgiven and fully pleasing to God.  "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."  Romans 5:1.
3. God's response to the lie that I must be approved by certain others: I am totally accepted by God.  "Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.  But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation."  Colossians 1:21-22.
4. God's response to the lie that I am what I am, I cannot change, and I am hopeless:  I am a new creation, complete in Christ.  "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"  2 Corinthians 5:17.

Having been raised in the church, nothing I read was completely new to me.  However, the intentional process of introspection that this book encourages helped me to see my patterns of believing certain lies about my self-worth and gave me some very practical tools for confronting those patterns when I sense them occurring.  In fact, the last few chapters of the book helps to walk readers through how to, over time, change their beliefs in certain situations from Satan's lies to God's truths.  McGee argues that changing our beliefs is the key to changing our responses to those situations from ungodly actions into godly acts.

My biggest ah-ha! moment when reading this book: If Christ and I were sitting side by side and someone asked God which of us was more acceptable and pleasing to Him, God would say that we are equally accepted, loved, and pleasing!  It is because Jesus took my shortcomings and sins upon Himself and placed upon me His inheritance and glory, that God can accept me as he does His own Son!  So, the next time I feel a twinge of self-doubt because of someone said this or that (or neglected to say this or that), I just have to remind myself that I'm in tight with God.  There's really nothing that can bring a girl down when she focuses on that!