Receiving Versus Achieving Significance

Asian American Christian Counseling Ministry

Jon Ido Warden, M.Div, M.A.

Experiencing Significance

BEING DOING

BELONGING

• I work.

• I play.

• I find joy in accepting challenges.

• I am.

• I exist.

• It’s good to be alive.

• I connect.

• I join.

• I have a place.

Dilemma of Sin

BEING DOING

BELONGING

Defectiveness

Dilemma of Sin: BEING

Ephesians 2:1

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world…

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the craving of our sinful nature and following its desire and thoughts like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

Dilemma of Sin

BEING DOING

BELONGING

Inability

Dilemma of Sin: DOING

Romans 7:15-19

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing.

Dilemma of Sin

BEING DOING

BELONGING

Alienation

Dilemma of Sin: BELONGING

Ephesians 4:18

They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of their ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.

Consequence of Insignificance

BEING DOING

BELONGING

Hiding Self

Hurting Self

Excessive need for attention & affirmation

Consequence of Insignificance

BEING DOING

BELONGING

Underdoing

Overdoing

Consequence of Insignificance

BEING

BELONGING

DOING

Fear of abandonment & rejection

Feeling unloved & unwanted

Getting stuck in independence & isolation

God’s Redemptive Work

BEING DOING

BELONGING

The Son recreates us by His death.

God’s Redemptive Work: BEING

2 Corinthians 5:17

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come.

God’s Redemptive Work

BEING DOING

BELONGING

The Spirit empowers us by His indwelling.

God’s Redemptive Work: DOING

Acts 1:8You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes to you.

II Timothy 1:7

For God did not give you a spirit of timidity but of power...

God’s Redemptive Work

BEING DOING

BELONGING

The Father receives us by His adoption.

God’s Redemptive Work: BELONGING

Galatians 4:3

So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son…to redeem those under the law, that we might receive full rights as sons.

Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave but a son, and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.

Philippians 3

For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh --though I myself have reason for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:

Philippians 3

Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrew; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; As for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

Philippians 3

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I might gain Christ

Philippians 3

And be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

Finding Eternal Significance Today

Recognize need for significance Confess consequences of insignificance Receive God’s gift of significance Surrender own means of seeking significance Cultivate relationship with the significance Giver Create significance in your being, belonging

and doing (out of the significance given)