Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works….  Ephesians 2:10

Few ideas in the scientific realm have ever been introduced without ridicule and unbelief.  When men first suggested that the world was not flat and man could not sail off the end of the world, they were laughed to scorn.  When Nicolaus Copernicus first suggested his theory of a sun-centered universe, he was so persecuted that he was forced to withdraw his hypothesis.  When Henry Ford put his first automobile on the road, he was thought of as a fool who wasted his time on foolish inventions.

Most inventions and ideas have been scoffed at when they were first introduced, but when psychiatrists came out with the theory of “inferiority complexes,” it was immediately embraced and accepted.  Strange, isn’t it?  Perhaps not.  Whether a person is an executive with thousands working under him, or a six-year-old schoolboy who is just venturing into the hard, cold world, all of us have had feelings of inferiority.

Some time or another, everyone feels that he just does not have it.  He is just as good as the other person, yet he suffers from that shop-worn phrase, “an inferiority complex.”  Actually, this concept of inferiority is less than a century old in the scientific realm; but as far as life goes, it is as old as the human race itself.

The complexes we face come from three main sources: worry, guilt and anger.  A person who constantly worries begins to wonder if he is inadequate and inferior to his colleagues.  Eventually he is paralyzed by his own fears, and, for practical purposes, his performance becomes inferior.  Second, guilt creates feelings of inferiority.  By feeling guilty for actions or attitudes, a person begins to wonder if something is wrong with him.  Being unable to express oneself may also create feelings of inferiority.  Third, a burst of anger makes a person feel inadequate and inferior to his contemporaries who can better control their emotions.

God is concerned with your life, your frustrations and feelings of being unable to cope.  May I ask you first of all, who told you that you were inferior?  God certainly did not!  His Word tells us that there is no respecting of persons with Him.  You then, as an individual, are as important to God as anyone else, and what God has done for others He will do for you.  As long as you feel that you are inferior, you defeat yourself.  When you are plagued by “inferiority,” measure your life against what God–not the world–expects.  Ask Him for His strength, and then roll up your sleeves and focus on His expectations, His purpose for you. You soon understand that it is His expectations, not yours, nor the expectations of man, that counts. Remember the words of Scripture, “As he thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7NKJV).  About 95 percent of your feelings of inferiority come from trying to be someone else, someone you are not.

Again, let me remind you that if you have trusted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, life does not happen by chance.  The Bible is insistent that God allowed you to be in the very situation where you feel so inferior.  The Apostle Paul wrote, “Let everyone lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him, and in which God has called him” (1 Corinthians 7:7).  Have you forgotten the words of Ephesians 2:10, “For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”?

Our life situations, then, are those into which God Himself has directed us in order that together with Him we may accomplish His work.  God has a work for you to do.  Who said you were inferior?  Forget it and do the job God has for you to do today.

Resource reading:  Ephesians 2:1-10