One of the greatest assets you can have in life is to know yourself–to know who you are. If you don’t know yourself, you’ll believe whatever people are telling you about who you are. If you’re a Christian your identity is found in Christ, not in what people say about you whether they try to flatter you or belittle you. If you know who you are, you don’t pay too much attention to people’s flattery. You should always remind yourself that you’re a sinner who did nothing to save youself, so when the flattery comes, it won’t get to your head. Otherwise your head will swell up like a balloon that can be popped at any moment by the reality of your own sinful nature. So by the same token, if you know who you are, you won’t be devastated by criticism. It’s good to accept honest criticism when you know it’s coming from a good place but if it comes from a constant critic, make an honest assessment of yourself and discard whatever doesn’t like up with who you are in Christ and what you know isn’t true. I tend to overreact to criticism initially especially when I know it’s coming from someone with a critical spirit, but I usually get over it pretty quickly. I know all the things people say about me, and some of it is true, but some of it isn’t worthy of my attention. So if I listened to everyone who criticizesd me, I would be paralyzing myself. On the other hand, if I accepted everyone’s flattery I’d have a puffed up view of myself. I know when people are trying to manipulate me with flattery. Some people even try to deceive me by saying things that they think will puff me up while they try to convince me that I ‘m something I’m not so that I’ll look stupid later when I’m confronted by the reality of my own shortcomings. The movie Van Wilder 3 was even made with this intent. I know this game and I refuse to entertain those thoughts of self-deception and self-aggrandizement. I like to be praised and encouraged like everyone else, but I just try to take if for what it is and nothing more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself\u00a0more<\/strong>\u00a0highly<\/strong>\u00a0than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.” Romans 12:3<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the greatest assets you can have in life is to know yourself–to know who you are. If you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5956,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/watermarked_img_2447714416577713591.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5954"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5965,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5954\/revisions\/5965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}