(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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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

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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