When you read this title, your mind goes one of two places. There’s the narcissistic love which our ‘selfie’ society seems to suffer from, yours truly included.
The love I want you to focus on, however, is the second kind of self-love, the self-love of the bible. In Matthew, Chapter 22, versus 37 thru 39, God’s word says:
Jesus said to him thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it. Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself.
We understand the ‘love God’ part. We understand the ‘love your neighbor’ part. But we seem to gloss over the ‘love your neighbor AS YOURSELF’ part. What if you don’t love yourself? What if you loathe yourself? What if you constantly talk badly about yourself to yourself? What if fear, guilt, anxiety are your overriding emotions? Well then certainly you should not love your neighbor as yourself, because that would be cruel.
So step one. Love yourself. Think of it like this. Think of someone your dearly love, like your children. Imagine walking into their bedroom and you catch them talking to themselves in the mirror. And you hear them say the most horrible things to that mirror, horrible, horrible, self-loathing comments. Wouldn’t you stop them right there? You’d say: ‘You are a child of God. You are beautiful. You were bought with the precious blood of Jesus. You are loved. You are invaluable.’ Well guess what? That’s exactly what God says to you when he catches you with your negative self-talk. You ARE a child of God. You ARE precious. You are beautiful. You WERE bought with the precious blood of Jesus. You ARE loved. You ARE invaluable.
No go out to the world and act like it.
Here’s this week’s video blog.
