Okay, so as usual I’m about three months behind on the pop-culture scene. My brother always gives me a hard time about this. However, just the other day I learned that Weird Al has a new song being released. It’s called “Perform This Way.” I heard a snippet and wanted to find out more about the original it is based on. After all, those songs are always funnier when you actually know who he’s lampooning. So I asked my daughter about Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.” Then she sang some of the lyrics to me and I said, “Wait! What?” “Oh, Dad, it’s not about that.” “Really, what’s it about then?” “It’s just about her tough childhood and her mom telling her she’s born to be a superstar.” “Oh, okay,” I said, somewhat relieved. Then, last night on the way home from Bible class the song came on the radio. I was stunned to say the least. Tessa said I was missing the point. So we looked up the lyrics when we got home. The disappointment simply continued.
Loving Ourselves
The 10 Ways Forgiving Yourself Impacts Your Life
I received a heart-rending letter this week from a brother who is suffering the earthly consequences of his heinous sins. He had heard a sermon I preached entitled “We are Allowed to Love Ourselves.” You may remember the series on this very topic that I wrote on this blog. The brother wanted to know how he could ever forgive himself. Having committed some heinous sins myself, I want to know the same thing. What does it mean to forgive ourselves? Should we forgive ourselves? How can we?
[Read more…] about The 10 Ways Forgiving Yourself Impacts Your Life
Believe and Hope All Things–Love Yourself
(If you’ve stumbled across this post, let me explain where you are. You have landed smack in the middle of one of my favorite series ever. We started some time ago by learning that God expects us to love ourselves. Now, we’re going through the definition of love in I Corinthians 13:4-7 to help us understand how we can love ourselves in a healthy way so can love others better. Go back to that first post to read the series from the beginning and to find an index of all the posts available. Enjoy today’s post as well.)
Believe and Hope All Things
When we live in fear and self-hatred, the future looks dim and dark. We look ahead and see nothing but dismal failure. Why would anything good happen to us? We are pathetic and pitiful. We don’t love ourselves, we can’t imagine that anyone else could, even God. So why would good things ever happen to us. We can begin to rewrite even the blessings of the past to imagine that God has completely abandoned us. How much worse will this be if, as happens in life, some bad things really have happened to us. I can’t help but think of Job here. In the midst of his suffering, he couldn’t imagine a bright future at all.
In this state, we are certain that we are worthy of nothing good. Why then would God allow something good to happen to us or for us?Why would anyone else bestow much good on us? Why should we even seek anything good? We begin to catastrophize and awfullize our future. We play a video tape in our head that says everything is going to be bad. The very sad part about this is when we believe this, we live like it, and most often we cause the very things we fear.
As we wrap up this look at healthy love, we need to understand that God does love us. We are allowed to love ourselves. We are allowed to believe all things and hope all things. We are allowed to believe in our own worth. After all, God believes we are valuable. He thinks we are so important He has numbered our hairs. Not a single hair falls out that God doesn’t notice (cf. Luke 12:6-7). If God thinks we are that valuable, we can rest our own sense of worth in our relationship with Him.
We can look to the future and see good things. Matthew 7:7-11 explains that God does in fact want to bless us with good gifts. He refuses to give us serpents and stones. He wants to give us fish and bread. He wants us to have His great blessings. No, this doesn’t mean nothing we deem bad will ever happen to us. But it does mean that we know God will carry us through it all and use it all to bring us out on the other side. We know that because we love God and He loves us, He will use all things to bring about our ultimate good (Romans 8:28-30). We don’t have to view the “bad” things that happen to us as our lot in life or the limit of our coming experiences. Rather, we can see them as stepping stones that God will use to accomplish our own glorification.
You are God’s beloved child. He loves you. Love yourself. Then love others. Believe that good is coming. Hope for the best. Then pursue it by the grace of God who loves you.
God loves you. I love you. Why not let you love you.
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I hope this series has been a blessing in your life. If so, please make sure to share it with others. Click one of the links in the “Share and Enjoy” section below to pass it on to your friends.
If you read this post and found it helpful, make sure to check out the whole series. You can start here.
Bear and Endure All Things–Love Yourself
(If you’ve stumbled across this post, let me explain where you are. You have landed smack in the middle of one of my favorite series ever. We started some time ago by learning that God expects us to love ourselves. Now, we’re going through the definition of love in I Corinthians 13:4-7 to help us understand how we can love ourselves in a healthy way so can love others better. Go back to that first post to read the series from the beginning and to find an index of all the posts available. Enjoy today’s post as well.)
Bear and Endure All Things
Life is tough. We go through hard times. Things don’t always go the way we want. We don’t always go the way we want. A healthy love of self understands that we aren’t the sum total of what happens to us. We understand that we aren’t our circumstances. We don’t rest our value on what happens to us or what hand of cards life seems to have dealt us. Rather, we understand that whatever is happening today is something that God has prepared us for and will graciously carry us through.
When we don’t love ourselves properly, we may get so discouraged by where we are or what we’ve done that we decide to give up. This might be simply an emotional decision that simply causes us to check out emotionally and mentally, giving up on life and simply drifting along in varying states of despair or elation depending on whatever is going on at the moment. However, this can also take a more horrific turn. Some have so finally given up that they even ended their own lives. This is definitely not loving ourselves healthfully and clearly isn’t loving anyone else properly either.
When we love ourselves in a godly way, we recognize that whatever is going on, we can bear and endure. We can live with the motto, this too shall pass. And we can keep resolutely walking with our hand in God’s.
Think about Peter as he was sinking beneath the waves. He could have given up in despair, looking at the hopelessness of his situation. Or he could put his faith in Jesus and cry out to Him. We know what Peter did. We can do the same no matter what happens to us or what mistakes we’ve made. We can bear up and endure crying out to God for the help we need to make it.
Always remember the words of Paul in Philippians 4:13. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. We can, therefore, bear and endure all things through Christ who strengthens us. We do need to give up. We don’t need to check out. We don’t need to end it all. We can love ourselves by putting one foot in front of the other and continuing to glorify God.
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Come back next week for our final installment in this series. When we love ourselves in a godly way, we will believe and hope for all things.
Rejoice in Truth, not Wrong-doing–Love Yourself
(If you’ve stumbled across this post, let me explain where you are. You have landed smack in the middle of one of my favorite series ever. We started some time ago by learning that God expects us to love ourselves. Now, we’re going through the definition of love in I Corinthians 13:4-7 to help us understand how we can love ourselves in a healthy way so can love others better. Go back to that first post to read the series from the beginning and to find an index of all the posts available. Enjoy today’s post as well.)
Rejoice in Truth, Not Wrong-doing
According to I Corinthians 13:6, love does not rejoice in wrong-doing, but in truth. But how does that apply to loving ourselves in a healthy way? I think Romans 1:18 and 2:8 help us understand.
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18).
“…but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury” (Romans 2:8).
These passages demonstrate two different standards by which we can live. We can either live by the truth or we can live in unrighteousness (the same word as is translated “wrong-doing” in I Corinthians 13:6). It seems odd to see truth contrasted with wrong-doing. We would expect truth to be contrasted with lies or wrong-doing contrasted with right-doing. The point is that following truth leads to doing what is right and wrong-doing comes from following lies.
Satan is a liar. He doesn’t get us to do wrong by telling us the truth about the wrong. He doesn’t get us to commit adultery by telling us how awful the consequences will be–destroyed marriages, destroyed families, lost jobs, loss of trust, guilt, shame. No. He tells us how fun it will be. He tries to convince us it will be fulfilling and meaningful. We’ll get from the adulterous relationship what we are not getting from the marriage relationship. Isn’t that exactly how Satan started the mess the world was in? He didn’t tell Eve about the pain in child-bearing. He didn’t tell her about the marital conflicts that would come from it. He didn’t tell her about getting kicked out of the garden. He told her about being like God. Perhaps there was a kernel of truth in the statement. Certainly, she would learn something that God knew and in that sense would be more like God. But that wasn’t what she was looking for.
Loving Ourselves not Seeking Self
So, how does all this fit in with loving ourselves in a healthy way? Romans 2:8 helps out. Following Satan’s lies that lead to wrong-doing all stem from loving ourselves in an unhealthy way. It stems from being self-seeking. But when we love ourselves in a healthy way, we ignore the lies of Satan. We think soberly about our lives and live them based on the truth God has revealed for us. We do not allow ourselves to get caught up in the fantasies of Satan’s promises. We recognize them for the lies they are and command Satan to get behind us.
When we rejoice in vengeance, slander, lying, stealing, hurting, outbursts of wrath, immorality, gossip, and other sinful behaviors, it is because we have succumbed to the lies of Satan. Instead of loving ourselves in a healthy way, we have decided to put ourselves above others. We have decided that others are here to be the sources of our pleasure. We can abuse and misuse them however we want as long as we get a moment’s pleasure out of it. This is certainly not loving others, but it is not actually love for ourselves either. Why not? Because in the end, we are the ones hurt by this kind of behavior. We must be careful; if we bite and devour one another, we will be consumed by one another. We are only hurting ourselves when we take these cheap and easy routes offered us by Satan. He parades them around as loving self, but instead they are destroying self and others.
Love yourself. Don’t succumb to Satan’s lies. Don’t fall prey to his deceit. Don’t dwell in his fantasies. The cheap and easy route of his errors will always come back to bite you. Instead, love yourself and rejoice in the truth God has revealed. Follow His way. It works.
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(Remember to come back for our next installment about loving ourselves in a healthy way. We’ll see that those who love themselves in a godly way bear and endure all things.)
Do Not Resent Yourself–Love Yourself
(If you’ve stumbled across this post, let me explain where you are. You have landed smack in the middle of one of my favorite series ever. We started some time ago by learning that God expects us to love ourselves. Now, we’re going through the definition of love in I Corinthians 13:4-7 to help us understand how we can love ourselves in a healthy way so can love others better. Go back to that first post to read the series from the beginning and to find an index of all the posts available. Enjoy today’s post as well.)
Do Not Resent Yourself
Resentment is carrying a grudge against past wrongs. In fact, the NASB translates this part of I Corinthians 13:5 as “does not take into account a wrong suffered.” We do not have to carry the grudge against ourselves. We do not have to hold on to all the shame and guilt from our past sins.
When something bad happens to you, do you often tell yourself how much you deserve it because of all the wrong things you’ve done? Some folks even seem to sabotage themselves over and again because they are convinced they are themselves such a problem that they don’t deserve anything good. They deserve bad because of all the bad they have done. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that goes something like this.
I know I shouldn’t eat this gallon of ice cream right now. It is so unhealthy and will probably give me a heart attack one day or lead me to diabetes. Not to mention, I know it won’t really help deal with the problems I’m facing right now; it will only make them worse. But what can I expect? I’m such a screw-up. I’m probably going to get those things anyway the way I mess my life up all the time. Who do I think I’m kidding. I might as well pigout now and enjoy it while I can.
No, it isn’t always bad to eat ice cream. But notice the process here that is almost never as conscious as this paragraph. When I’m carrying a grudge against myself, I end up submarining any hope of overcoming the things for which I carry the grudge. When I cave again, I simply have one more thing to carry a grudge about and the cycle continues down and down and down.
Sadly, many of us have an inbred mechanism to make sure we stay in this cycle. If we ever begin to think something positive about ourselves like we are good at something or deserve something, then we start berating ourselves for being arrogant and self-centered. After that tongue-lashing, we are ready to go back to carrying our grudge against ourselves.
We are Not the Sum Total of Our Sins
Have we done bad things? Sure. Have we sinned? Yes. Should that bother and concern us? Absolutely. Our sins separate us from God (Isaiah 59:1-2). They lead us to death (Romans 6:23). They will destroy us. They need to be dealt with. They need to be overcome. That is exactly why God sent Jesus. That is why God offers His grace. He wants us to overcome them. He doesn’t want us to linger in those sins, carrying out cycles that just dig us deeper and deeper and deeper.
We are not the sum total of our sins. We are people that God loved despite our sins (Romans 5:6-11). If God could love us instead of carrying a grudge against us despite our sins, why can’t we? According to Psalm 103:8-14, the Lord is merciful and gracious. “He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.” That is, He won’t carry the grudge. He doesn’t maintain resentment. Instead, because His love is “as high as the heavens are above the earth” He removes our sins from us “as far as the east is from the west.” “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.”
If God, through His love, is willing to view us separately from our sins, removing them from us, why can’t we?
Certainly, we need to remember our sins in order to learn from them, repenting and turning to God’s way. We need to remember our sins in order to see our constant and continued need for Jesus and salvation through Him. But we do not have to carry the baggage of our sins with us everywhere we go. We do not have to carry the resentment with us for the rest of our lives. Instead, we are allowed to love ourselves and set ourselves free from carrying the grudges.
Think about this. Isn’t this what God expects us to do with others who have also sinned and even sinned against us? How much more when we have surrendered ourselves to Christ are we allowed to let our grudges and resentment against ourselves go.
Don’t resent yourself. Love yourself.
And remember, God’s way works for your life.
(Come back next Monday as we learn that love rejoices at truth, not wrong-doing.)