I know somebody who is extremely gifted. He has a charismatic personality, is intelligent and is very competent. He has the capacity to excel at almost anything he tries to accomplish in life. Nobody, and I mean nobody, who knows him would ever wonder if he lacks the confidence to reach any goals he ever set for himself.
But the problem is that he doesn't see himself that way. Instead, he lives with a nagging sense of insecurity that he hides well from others. Although he could reach great heights in life, he lives at a low level of achievement because of those underlying feelings of inferiority and insecurity.
Is he gifted? Could he accomplish anything? Yes! That is an absolute truth. It is what would accurately be called the "objective reality" of the situation.
Is he living out of that reality? No. He believes all the negative things that the recriminating voices in his own head whisper to him. He thinks that the truth is that he is a loser and that if people knew the real him, that's what they'd see. That is his "subjective reality."
What needs to happen in his life is that he needs to come alive to the truth - to the objective reality of who he really is. If that were to happen, his subjective reality would be changed to reflect the truth. He would stop living subjectively under the lie that holds him back and he would then be able to live up to the objective reality that has been true of him all along.
Objective reality is real whether we believe it or not. Subjective reality is what we perceive reality to be at a personal level, whether it's actually true or not. In the case of what Jesus did for us at the cross, the objective reality is that His finished work applies to every person on the planet. But until they believe it, their subjective reality will never reflect the truth - neither in this life nor the next.
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