Vic Porter has ministered to people across the United States and overseas for more than five decades. In 2003 he founded The Institute of Self-Worth, a Bible School on DVD at Ozark Correctional Center in Fordland, MO.

Vic hoped to place 30-40 curriculum in prisons the first year, but the Lord had bigger plans. To date, ISW has been placed in over 5,000 locations in most state prisons in the US. In over 100 countries, thousands have been born again and set free from addictions. ISW teaches worth, value, and identity to inmates as well as congregations across the world. ISW was voted the most popular curriculum in Ozark Correctional Center.

Two of Vic’s deepest desires have been to go to the uttermost parts of the world and to have ISW taught by graduates of ISW. Both of these desires have happened.

At this year’s conference, Vic brought the same message he’s carried into cell blocks all over the world: you don’t have to perform to become who God already says you are.

“If thou be…”

Vic opened in Matthew 3, where Jesus comes up out of the water and the Father says, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Then, as he likes to do, Vic gave the room “Vic’s translation”: This is my beloved Son, in whom I believe. This is my beloved Son, in whom I have confidence. And Jesus believed what His Father said.

That, Vic said, is his whole message in a thumbnail sketch. “Do we really believe the Word over what we see on the outside? We say we do. And yet there’s times whenever we think, well, it don’t look like it.”

In Matthew 4, after forty days of fasting (Vic admitted most of us would never make it, so he figures Jesus did that one for him), the tempter shows up at Jesus’ most vulnerable moment: “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” Vic’s translation: If you are who you say you are, do something to prove it.

Why was Satan so interested in performance? Because if Jesus had turned those stones into bread to prove what God had already said, then you and I would have to go do something to become what God already says we are. Jesus said no, and in saying no, He set the standard for our identity.

Approval, worth, and confidence

Vic laid out a simple pattern he’s taught for years. Approval is a person’s greatest need, and we’ll do almost anything to prove our worth. Approval comes in from the outside, settles on the inside as our worth, and out of that worth we give out confidence.

The question is where the approval comes from: what you do, or who you are. Plenty of born-again believers build their confidence on performance, and it carries them for a while, until it doesn’t. That’s when people go back to the old ways.

Vic has watched it in prisons around the world: men saying “I got to do right, I got to do right,” and still doing wrong. It isn’t a lack of effort, he said. It’s what they believe or don’t believe. “Believing is your identity.”

He was quick to say he’s not against hard work. Do a good job and earn your paycheck. But if you’re performing to become the righteousness of God in Christ, “you’re wasting your time.”

A truth versus the truth

Pointing to John 1:17, Vic said Jesus doesn’t just bring grace and truth; He is grace and truth. Then he drew a line between “the truth” and “a truth.” In the garden, Satan handed Adam and Eve a truth, something with an element of truth in it that wasn’t the truth. The giveaway, Vic said, is that a truth requires you to perform to be accepted. Grace is what’s been given to you freely.

How many people locked up in prison, or raised in religious homes, only ever wanted to be accepted? That hunger sits behind so much addiction, and it’s why inmates who’ve heard performance preached their whole lives want to hear how to be set free.

Things will find you

From Matthew 6:33, Vic shared how he quit worrying about ministry finances. He told the Lord he was done worrying, and if he went belly up, “that’s on you.” The answer changed his life: as long as he’s giving to people who can’t pay him back, he’ll never have to worry about a thing. He’s lived that way for 15 to 18 years.

He also told how the Holy Spirit spoke to him one morning on the way to his coffee: He was going to pay off Vic’s house. Vic told no one, not even his wife Robin. Months later, a couple of ministry partners took him to lunch and handed him a check for the exact amount. He’s not trying to be super spiritual, he said. He’s just telling you things are looking for you.

Windows of hope

Closing from Malachi 3:10, Vic described believers as windows people look through to see if we have what they need. When he sits in front of 200 inmates, they’re searching his eyes for one thing: can you help set me free? You can’t give out what you don’t have on the inside.

He led the room in a declaration, “I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus,” and reminded everyone there’s nothing you can do to earn that. The difference is in the heart.

Vic closed by speaking a blessing over the Heartland family: that each person would get hold of who they really are in Christ, and refuse anything else.

The full series from Addiction & The Church is available on our YouTube channel, or find the link to other resources here on our website. To learn more about Vic Porter Ministries, click here to visit their website.

The post Your Identity Shapes Unshakeable Self-Worth first appeared on Heartland Recovery.

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