Loving yourself is not vanity or pride. It’s God’s plan and will for you. Do you love yourself? Do you even understand what it means to love yourself? Do you realize how important this is? Jesus considers it of the utmost importance. So much so that He commands us to do it.
![Songs of Faith & Devotion]()  Matt. 22:35-39 says, “Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’ Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it. ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Jesus put loving yourself into the same category as loving God. Can you now see how important this is?
Jesus told us to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. Your emotions are a part of your soul so get emotional in your love for God. Clap your hands, stomp your feet, jump in the air, and shout praises to your King. At the same time, get emotional and express yourself in your love for your neighbor and most importantly in your love for yourself. Be happy for who you are and for the person God made you to be. Don’t desire to be somebody else but joyfully be content and satisfied with how the Lord put you together.
How many times have we looked at our friends and relatives and loved them exactly as they are? We then turn and look at ourselves in the mirror and hate what we see. Friend, this is not right. This is not how God wants us to be. You are not supposed to have negative feelings about yourself and, the truth be told, people who do not love themselves are emotionally handicapped. If you don’t get along with yourself, you’re not going to get along with anybody else.
The greatest gift you can give to the world is a healthy you. You need to be spiritually healthy, physically healthy, and emotionally healthy. Many churches tell their congregations what wretched sinners they are. Religious spirits will always make you feel guilty and bad about yourself. When the people leave the church service they feel worse than before they went in. People shouldn’t leave the church feeling like a rat and a bum who won’t ever amount to anything.
No, God’s perfect will when people leave a church service is for them to know that their value and worth is rooted in Christ and Him alone. It is not based on what you know, who you know, or how many college degrees you have. Col. 2:9,10 says, “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him Who is the head of all principality and power.”
The Amplified Bible says, “You are made full in Him” and the word “complete” means ‘to be satisfied, finished, perfected, filled up, assured (confident, secure, knowing who you are).’ Is there a better description of the good life? Remember, there is a big difference between who we are in ourselves and who we are in Christ. In and of ourselves we are a nobody but in Christ we become a somebody. You cannot love yourself and live the good life until you know who you are in Christ.
Too often one’s self-worth is determined by how other people feel about them. They fall into the abyss of despair and condemnation if others have negative feelings about them. They become addicted to the approval of others and fall prey to their opinions, words, and actions. This has caused lives and relationships to be destroyed and have led many to commit the selfish, diabolical act of suicide. These people refuse to love themselves unless others love them first. They forget that God loved us while we were yet sinners, so much so that He sent His only Son to die for us. How much more love and approval do these people need?
The truth is, people who speak negatively of you only do so because they don’t love themselves. They reason in their subconscious that if you’re such a bad person then they themselves aren’t so bad after all. In other words, by making you look bad they in turn feel good about themselves. But if they would do what you do and love God and their neighbor as they love themselves, then all this friction would be avoided and a beautiful friendship would blossom in it’s place. It’s true, the best friendships are made up of people who love themselves in the proper way. You love God, you love yourself, and then you love your neighbor. That’s the good life.
Too many people are still seeking to be loved by others. If you know God loves you and you love yourself, you’ll have the freedom to step out of yourself and seek to love others. A good, healthy self-esteem will make you amazingly happy, well adjusted, and will give you the determination to go further in life than what others think possible. People who love themselves in the right way are in touch with their God-given dreams and aspirations. They believe they have something to offer the world and are more likely to make a positive difference in the lives of other people.
Still, some religious authors condemn the whole concept of loving yourself. They think it is being self-centered. They don’t seem to realize that there is a way to love yourself without worshipping yourself. See loving yourself as you recognizing and rejoicing in God’s view of your worth. If you love the person God made you to be, then you can value and respect other people. Look, therefore, into the mirror of God’s love and grace and see your reflection in Calvary’s price tag.
Let’s be honest here. Self-love is a horse that you can fall off either side of. There is such a twisted perception in the world regarding one’s self that most Christians don’t even know how to love themselves. They ask, “Can we love ourselves without being self-centered?” Still, loving yourself is important enough that Jesus included it in the two greatest commandments. It’s easy to see by the Lord’s command to “love your neighbor as you love yourself” that we must make loving ourselves an important priority. The truth of the matter is that if we can’t love ourselves, how can we love our neighbor? The answer is we can’t.
Loving yourself is one area where, if you’re not careful, you can really get out of balance on. Many people either go to one extreme or the other. In the self-centered society in which we now live many people have gone to the extreme by being concerned about their own personal well-being and their own agendas to the exclusion of every one else.
All some people think about is “me, myself, and I”. The world totally revolves around them and their own personal goals and desires. These people will do anything and everything to constantly get their own way. These types of people are incapable of bonding with or loving anyone but themselves. For sure, selfish, self-centered love is totally opposite from the sacrificial, self-giving love God wants all of us to have.
When we comprehend God’s love, when we become His friend and deeply know that He loves us, we don’t need to focus all our attention on loving ourselves. The more we experience God’s love for us, the more we’ll think of Him and our neighbor and the less we’ll think about ourselves. You can be sure you’re loving yourself in the right way when you start to love others more as a result of how you feel about yourself.
When you make loving others your goal, everything else will just automatically fall into place. Life and everything in it just makes sense. Confusion is thrown out the door. You can have the confidence that God will always be there to help keep you in balance with the way you are loving yourself. You will, however, have to stay on top of your game, always making sure that you don’t start getting too full of yourself and start sliding down to the extreme of becoming too self-centered. Don’t ever let your guard down.
The command to love your neighbor as you love yourself is essentially saying to treat other people as well as you treat yourself. The Bible presumes that people already love themselves too much and that is the problem. Jesus gave us this command so that we’ll take our eyes off of ourselves and start to care for others. Someone wrote, “Loving yourself makes you a vessel for the aroma of God’s grace. The fragrance of your self-worth perfumes many lives, including your own.”
Most relationship problems come as a result of not loving yourself. Remember, if you don’t love yourself, you won’t be able to properly love other people. We are commanded to love and have relationships with God and other people but at the same time we need to also have a positive relationship with ourselves. Let’s face it, you can never get away from yourself. Wherever you go, there you are. So if you don’t love yourself, you are going to have one miserable, wretched life.
Your attitude about yourself determines whether or not you will enjoy the good life. It’s easy in a success-driven world to come to a point where you believe you just don’t measure up. Don’t ever compare yourself to other people and stop trying to be like them. Instead, be who you are and the person God made you to be. Who knows? Maybe those other people are looking at you and wishing to become like you.
We all have strengths and weaknesses and the biggest mistake you can make is to focus on your weaknesses or to compare yourself with other people. John Ortberg writes, “As God helps you grow you will change, but you will always be you. An acorn can grow into an oak tree, but it cannot become a rose bush. It can be a healthy oak or a stunted oak - but it won’t be a shrub. You will always be you - a growing, healthy you or a languishing you - but God did not create you to be somebody else. Your uniqueness is God-designed. When you flourish, you become more you. You become more that person God had in mind when He thought you up.” To live the good life you must become God’s best version of who you are.
So, how does a person love themselves in a good, healthy way? First, stop criticizing yourself. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Prov. 18:21) and if you always belittle yourself then little is all you’ll ever be. People believe what they hear themselves say so put a guard over your mouth. To love ourselves as God loves us, we must see ourselves as Jesus does, and react to our faults the same way He would. When you fail, forgive yourself and go on. It’s that simple.
Ps. 103:11,12 says, “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” God loves you so much that He extends mercy and casts away your transgressions. If we could embrace His mercy and take our eyes off of our transgressions, just as He has, we would love ourselves far more than we ever thought possible. And don’t ever forget Rom. 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” Amen to that!
Be your own best friend. Love, trust, and respect yourself. See yourself through the eyes of compassion the way you would a friend. Accept yourself for who you are and don’t judge yourself so harshly. Understand that self-love must come from you. Others cannot affirm or love you the way you can so stop looking to others to do what only you can do yourself. Treat yourself well and find ways to prosper yourself and replenish your soul.
Start with your physical appearance. If you look good, you’ll feel good. Wear what you like and what you are comfortable in. It’s not necessary to blindly follow the latest trend even if it does not suit you just to keep yourself in tract with what others are wearing. No, wear what pleases you. Give attention to yourself and never neglect yourself. Take time to look after yourself and to groom yourself and to take care of your own well-being. Remember, love always starts from within.
You are a child of the King of kings and Lord of lords so start treating yourself like royalty. Get rid of those used dishes you use all the time and start using the best china that’s collecting dust in the cabinet. Buy yourself that new fishing pole or that fancy pair of shoes you’ve been looking at for the past few months. You are royalty so start speaking positive things about yourself. Say “I can” and “I will.” Talk to yourself and say there is nothing you can’t do. Say, “Greater is He Who is in me than he who is in the world. I’m the head and not the tail. I’m above and not beneath. I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.”
If you will focus on how much God loves you and the price He paid to redeem you, you’ll come to see yourself as God sees you. That will help you understand just how much you’re really worth as a child of the most high God. Too often self-worth is based on what other people tell us about ourselves. However, the one, true authority on our self-worth is Jesus and since He gave His own life up for you by dying on a cross then that should tell us how valuable we really are.
Start today. Make a quality decision to live the good life. And by all means, do yourself a favor and love yourself. Become your own best friend. God loves you so you can love yourself. God accepts you so you can accept yourself. God cherishes you so you can cherish yourself. Seeing yourself as God sees you is what it means to have a good self image. It also means that you will live a good life. So love yourself and become your own best friend. Do it today.
PRAISE GOD
BLESSED BE THE ONE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD
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The good life is to love yourself by seeing who you are through the eyes of God. Your self-image is a picture of yourself that you carry in your heart. You need to love yourself in a healthy way and see yourself the way God sees you. You are fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. 139:13,14) and God put you together precisely as He wanted. He perfectly, genetically, and distinctly formed you in your mother’s womb and caused you to become the person you are today.
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