NATIONAL ESTEEM IV
This country can’t change unless the individuals change. If we say a whole nation has low self-esteem, we are not talking about an institution; we are talking about the combination of people inside the nation. There is low self-esteem, low self-image, low sense of dignity, low sense of respect, low sense of worthiness.

These are the things we
need to address. We have already discovered that God does not discriminate against black, brown, white, or yellow. It has also been established that freedom is not what you get from someone. God has never designed it that way. There is the theory called the Dependency Theory. The theory suggests that the developed world is forcing the under-
developed world to depend on it.

So it asserts the blame of under-developed nations on the developed world. This is very easy and cheap. It says in essence, somebody else is responsible for my predicament. What a fantastic excuse for failure. But the truth is freedom is not what somebody else is supposed to give you. It is when you make somebody responsible to give you the freedom, it is then you give the person the power to manipulate you.

Anybody you put the blame for your situation from whom you expected permission to succeed, he or she is the person you have empowered to dominate you. There are loads of people who are putting the blame on their parents or on their bosses in the office like that. Even though God gave man dominion over everything He created; He did not put any man under the dominion of another man.

Therefore, it just won’t work for you to expect freedom from another man. True freedom is not external, it is internal. This was why we fought for independence, but we are not yet independent. The paper for external independence was signed and delivered to us. But true freedom is internal. What brings this true freedom to us is the truth. That is discovering the truth about yourself.

It is the truth that actually gives you true freedom. At this point in time, it becomes very critical for us to discover who we are as a nation and as individuals. If you don’t know who you are, you will not know what you have. You will be a prince behaving like a peasant. If you don’t know who you are, you will not know what you can do. And you won’t even bother to attempt it.

Foolishness has reigned long enough in Africa. The true inheritors of God’s blessings have arrived. We have discovered who we are. Our destiny is not in any other person’s hands. I will never forget the statement I read in a book long ago: YOU ARE NOT A FAILURE UNTIL YOU BLAME SOMEONE ELSE. We have to stop the “blame game” if we succeed, it is our fault. If we fail, it is our fault. Responsibility is the price for greatness.

Nobody will think for you, for as long as you think you are inferior, you are inferior. If you think you are outclassed, you are outclassed. If you can believe, all things are possible to him that believes. And now, we know the truth.
Self-esteem rests on three legs – Being Loved, Being Accepted, and Being Competent Your self-esteem to a large extent depends on your being loved because being love is the strongest communicator of how much you are worth to somebody else.

The two characteristics of love are giving and forgiving. What you are willing to give is what defines to the other person how much you think they are worth. Have you noticed that you will not forgo the same thing for everybody? Your sense of people’s values differs from one person to the other. There are some people you think are worth your whole salary and there are others you think don’t worth a kobo of your money.

When you love a person, the person is valuable to you. And your love is expressed in the amount of value you are willing to sacrifice on the behalf of the person. When people love you, you feel valuable to them. In fact, you feel valuable to yourself. When you are unloved, you feel worthless.

When nobody loves you, when nobody is willing to part with their time or their money, their shoe, or clothes for your sake, it sends a strong message across to you. You are not even worth their time. You are not even worth 10 minutes of their time. This is the reason all of us feel bad when we are not loved. One of the greatest problems that can devastate a person and make a person psychologically maladjusted is rejection.

When somebody you expected a demonstration of value from rejects you, especially when the person is an authority figure over you, it sends a message deep down into your heart that you will struggle with all the rest of your life, especially when there is no correction. Loads of people are emotionally crippled because they have experienced rejection from their parents.

God puts us in the family to grow expecting that through such family, he will be able to express His love, through the parents; we will find a sense of value. But many times, it just doesn’t work out that way. When you begin to relate with people outside, it takes a different dimension altogether. We are in a world where most people are emotionally crippled, looking for others to love them.

And we can’t look for love from people who are also looking for love. At the end of the day, we end up hurting and running ourselves down with no love to give. For what you have is what you give. What we have to give is rejection. We are busy distributing rejections all over the place. Have you noticed, you will naturally move towards people who love you. Sometimes, we don’t understand why people take to crimes.

We don’t understand why some people fall into acts that are socially unacceptable despite their origin. For instance, if somebody around them rejects them, and the person who accepts them is a drug addict, they will naturally feel a pull towards the drug addict who is accepting them more than the people around them. This is the reason why some young people can easily be lured into armed robbery; if the person around is anybody who shows concern about their life is an armed robber.

After investing in their life, investing in their self-esteem, pouring love in their life, once when that person makes a demand on him or her to participate in the robbery, it becomes difficult to say no. As an African, who has grown up in an environment like this, sometimes I have had to wonder if God loves the people in the developed world more than He loves us.

It seems we offended God in a special way. Why is this part of the world like this? But I thank God, now we can look at the Bible and realize that God loves everybody in the same way. Anybody who makes the mistake of rejecting you is rejecting you because of their ignorance. If they know who you were, they would have tried to commit suicide on your behalf a long time ago.

Jesus, in the Bible, met a woman by the well of Samaria and requested for water to drink and she started an argument. This is a woman who had suffered so much rejection all her life. If we had suffered rejection, we have the problem of projection. What we have experienced in the past we will project on everybody we meet after we have been hurt.

When this woman met Jesus, she thought Jesus was like every other man who had been sleeping with her. Then Jesus said to her; if you know him who is talking to you, “If you know the gift of God and who is talking to you”. If you devalue yourself, nobody will raise your value for you. The question is, “What do you say about yourself?”.

Nigeria will Succeed!