by Scotty Smith
I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.
Revelation 2:17

At the age of eleven I knew I needed salvation, but it wasn’t a relationship with God that I was thinking about. I began a journey of self-salvation, looking for deliverance, safety, and security, trying to make sense of life on my own. I tried to become my own savior. I was a young boy, and I had a deep longing for comfort. Can the quest for comfort be an idol? Of course! It was something in my heart, a screaming emptiness, a sense of utter loneliness. I would go to bed at night and hear my father wail at the far end of the house, and I’d put a pillow over my head because it sounded like a banshee cry. I desperately wanted comfort, but there was none to be had.
So here’s where I went to begin worshipping the god of comfort: I came home from school one day and stared at the cookie jar. With no premeditation, I simply pulled out the front of my T-shirt, poured in a whole jarful of chocolate chip cookies, and sat down in front of The Flintstones. As I started eating those cookies, there was a sense in that moment that life might be okay. Food became something that offered me a payoff. It gave me comfort. I didn’t know where else to go, but I felt comforted for the moment.
Fast-forward to the ninth grade, and I was portly and I’d earned the nickname “Meatball.” In the first week of high school, with a few of my posse hanging with me, I was petrified when the head football coach came toward me. I hoped this would be a good thing. He was a neighbor, I cut his grass, and my dad worked with his brother. I thought, If the head coach knows my name, my friends will see and be impressed.
Coach walked up to me, and I was expecting, “Scotty, how are you doing?” Instead he looked me right in the eyes and said, “I would be so ashamed if I had a body like yours.” Then he walked right on by. It was as if the man had taken a chainsaw to my soul.
I was shamed. It was bad enough that this man would say those words to me, but I had already been shamed by the abuse I suffered as a young boy. As these shames piled up, I began to question myself, even wondering things like, “Am I a man?” I wondered what these things done and said to me might mean for my very identity and worth. And even as I’m tempted to seek significance and comfort in all sorts of things, I have realized the only real comfort from and silencer of shame is what the King of Creation says about me.

Thought to Remember for Today

As you read over the description of some of the idols that grew out of my woundedness, are you able to see the wounds and idols you struggle with? The good news of the gospel is that no one has the right to name you or to force you into some identity from the past. Jesus has given you a new name, and He has written it forever on His hands. You are not your history. You are not what others have done to you or said about you. You are Christ’s.

Fitzpatrick, E. (2016). Grace untamed: a 60-day devotional. Colorado Springs, CO: David C Cook.