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Key Bible Verse: I am quite content with my weaknesses … For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:10). Bonus Reading: 1 Cor. 15: 8-10

I've been afraid of my father's traits all of my life. Mother married him against the will of her parents. My father was an itinerant worker. He rode railroad freight cars to the Midwest, where he worked as a harvest laborer. Then he'd return to his home in St. Paul and live on his wages. He was kind, soft-spoken, gentle, and handsome, but Mother soon discovered that he was completely irresponsible. He never did support the family. Mother's father set him up in business twice, but my father never made it go.

My parents divorced when I was ten—in a little North Dakota town where nobody got divorced—and we moved into a flat where we shared a bathroom with 20 families. I can still hear the cockroaches crush in the doorjamb when I closed the door.

For years I struggled with an awful fear of inadequacy and an impulse to run away from responsibility. After I became a Christian, a pastor helped me see there was no substance to these. He showed me how to study the Scriptures. [Today's Key Bible Verse] helped me turn the corner. I grabbed that truth with both hands as my valid place of self-acceptance; by the grace of God, I am what I am.

—Richard Halverson in Leadership Journal

My Response: How can I turn my insecurity into trusting acceptance?

Thought to Apply: Who am I? The mirror says, "The George you was always meant to be." Wasn't always like that. Used to look in the mirror and cry. —George Foreman

Adapted from our sister publication Leadership Journal (Fall/80).

Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Lord, help me derive my sense of worth from Your love for me and not from what the world considers important.

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