Mark 12:31
Love your neighbor as yourself.
You are welcome to this post today, we will
be looking into a question: Do you really love your self?
The Lord has led us so far through the Holy Spirit
to help to understand the present truth He has preserved for this generation.
Relax, as we journey into the mind of God to discover the present truth (daily
bread) he has predestined for us to learn today.
Self love is the greatest of all and if you don’t
love yourself, it will be easy for other people to abuse you.
You need to know and understand that God loves you
so much, God has accepted you the way you are, God has forgiven you and God
values you so much – when this settled in your mind, it will be easy for you to
accept yourself, love yourself, forgive your self and value your self.
Its one thing for you to love, care and sacrifice
for other people BUT it’s another thing for you to feel loved and cared for. In
other words, you must constantly feed your mind on these two revelations; the
acknowledgement that God loves you so much and the consciousness that you need
to love yourself.
Love
is a beautiful being that exist on one single principle which is giving and receiving. You give to
receive and you receive to give.
If you are the only person that is investing into your
friendship, relationship or business, YOU ARE NOT WISE. If these happen
between you and the people around you, call them to order in love. Make them to
understand how important and how expectant you are in receiving from them too.
It might not be in the same quantity you gave to them or the same object or
item you gave to them but they must be ready to contribute back into your life-
no matter how small or big; you ought to receive some thing in return. It might
be their time, their attention, an SMS, a call, a gift, or advice or support in
any Godly form. If they deserve you being there for them, you too deserve to
enjoy them being there for you too.
Love, friendship, business or any teamwork is meant
to be a two sided. If you are the only person investing into the relationship,
friendship, business or any teamwork – YOU ARE NOT WISE. Even God gave
us His son to die for us in other for us to be reconciled back to Him. Our
reconciliation to God was what God gained from His Son that he gave to die for
our sake. The principle of giving and receiving is a must in the kingdom of
God.
The major question life, love, relationship,
friendship, marriage or business will have to ask you always is WHAT DO YOU
HAVE TO OFFER?
The only Pillar that sustain life, love,
relationship, friendship, marriage or business is GAIN (what do I stand to
gain? What about me?) You need other people and other person needs you.
This truth is what will make your wisdom to be balanced.
In life, friendship, marriage, relationship, and
business – the only principle that works is TEAMWORK.
WHAT
DOES IT MEAN TO LOVE YOUR SELF?
Loving yourself is all about you;
- Accepting your uniqueness.
- Feeling secure about who you are
and the difference between you and others.
- Respecting your priority in Christ
irrespective of what people say, think or do to you.
- Understanding your potential,
talent or gifting’s.
- The ability to defend your believe
in Christ.
- The ability to value your time (Wise usage of your time for the right
course)
- The ability to enforce your
decision through the instruction of God to you.
- The ability to stand for the truth
you have discovered through God’s word… irrespective of the risk involved.
- The ability of you respecting your
feelings (conquering the act of
impressing other people)
What
if the one thing that is keeping us from loving others, is our inability to
love ourselves?
We
can all agree that from the beginning of time, starting with the very first man
and lady (Adam and Eve), there has been a fracture in our human ability
to love; a shortage in how we loves God, a shortage in how we love one
another; and a shortage in how we love ourselves. And in the middle of this
obvious shortage, Jesus sweeps us away with these powerful words that start
first and foremost with loving our God, and then…
Mark 12:31
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Really?
You
want me to love myself?
Yes…
That is the will of God for your life.
We
often look at this verse as a call to love others, and it is. But deep inside
this verse is a call to something even deeper. The more I’ve learned about
myself through the word of God, the more I am completely in awe of how well God
knows me. These five words hold such powerful insight into the human world;
because they are words that speak love into a shortage that God knows exists: A
shortage in loving myself. But what if this shortage, was holding me back
from really, truly, genuinely, fully loving people?
You
cannot fully love others, until you have learned to love yourself, because
our ability to love others is dependent on how we love ourselves.
For
a perfectionist like me, that hits me square in the nose. It turns my stomach,
and makes me come clean with the struggles I have within myself. It opens
my eyes to the places and ways in which I’ve neglected to love myself, or even
worse, to the moments in which I dislike myself.
I
know so many Christians who also struggle deeply with this concept. There are Christians who have never been taught to
love themselves.
Christians
who mistakenly thought they had found some solace in the words of the Bible
that taught them to deny their self, to put others before them, and to consider
themselves as nothing. Masking self-loathing with self-denial.
Confusing humility with a lack of self worth. Considering “putting others
first” as a call to neglect and repress their needs and their health. Mistaking
self-hatred for selflessness.
But
there is disaster in this type of poverty, because it is a misinterpretation of
God’s precious word, and an injustice to the reflection of His heart.
We
are called to love ourselves! We are called to enjoy how God has made us, to
delight in our uniqueness, our value, and our worth. God delights in us,
and we also are to delight in who He has created us to be.
You
see, God is not calling us to deny who he has made us to be, but rather, who He
has not made us to be.
To deny our sinful nature with its temptations and its downfalls.
To deny our selfishness and our stubbornness. To deny our lust, our
pride, our idolatry. To deny the things that separates us from God.
And only those things.
But,
Christians, we are ultimately called to love ourselves - just as God loves us. We
are called to delight in ourselves as He delights in us. And when we do,
we will find that gates to loving others have never been so easy to walk
through. We will find that loving others becomes so real, so genuine, and
so complete. We will find that in that beautiful exchange of love between
our self and our God, we find the strength and motivation to exchange that same
love with our neighbors.
Prayer:
Lord,
give us the ability to love ourselves as you love us- in order that we may then
learn how to love other people in Jesus Name.
You
are Royal!!!
Jesus Loves you so much...
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