Bishop T.D.Jakes sermons on depression, self pity and anxiety

Levities 19:18

When a woman is abused as a child, she grows up with more problems than the pain of that abuse. She also lives with the anger that nobody helped her, nobody intervened on her behalf, and nobody stepped in and rescued her. People may have seen, but nobody helped. God said something like this,” you were cast out into the open field, and everybody loathed you (see Ezekiel 16:5). That’s the way a woman feels if she was abused as a child like a throw- away baby.

But abused woman aren’t the only ones who fells this way., divorced women, rejected women, and abandoned women feel this way too. In fact, virtually everywoman goes through this experience at some time. When people reject you, it’s very difficult for you to feel good about yourself. You start thinking,” Well, if they don’t think I’m worth anything, maybe I’m not. If they are willing to throw me aside, I must be of no value.”

I beg you not ever to allow another person’s view of you to control the way you see yourself. That’s too much power to give to another human being. If people don’t have the ability to discern the riches of the treasure inside you, that’s their problem. But if you sit at home and wallow in self-pity because they have no discernment, then it becomes your problem.

Recognize that those who reject you have no ability to see inside you, to hear the meaning behind your words, to feel the quality of your touch. They have bought a lie- either consciously or unconsciously _ that the devil has told them about you. They may believe that lie, but don’t you believe it!

If you buy that deception and come to the conclusion that you don’t like yourself, you can’t like anybody else. In dealing with other people, we reach into the well of our own self-esteem and treat them out of the supply that is in us. If your well is dry, you don’t have anything to give anyone else. In Mathew 22: 39, Jesus says we are to love other people to the degree that we love ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves, then we don’t have any love to give to our neighbors.

People who have been treated hatefully become full of hate and can only give hate. People who have been criticized become filled with a critical spirit and can only give criticism. People who have been abused become bitter and angry and can only give abuse.

Refuse to accept the loathing of other people. Don’t allow their opinion to creep into your inner person. Refuse to loathe yourself. If no one else has compassion on you. Remember that God does and that’s reason enough to be good to yourself!

Source T.D. Jakes