26/09/2017
Loving Yourself.
Love lies at the very center of God’s design for all human relationships, whether natural or spiritual. Jesus told us that the two greatest commandments are, first, to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Mt. 22:37), and second, to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt. 22:39b). The two are inseparably linked. God created us not only to receive His love, but also to give love back to Him as well as extending it to others. By severing our relationship with God, sin broke the essential “connection” in our ability to give and receive love. Without a vital love relationship with God it is impossible for us to love either our neighbor or ourselves as we should. When we are confident of God’s love for us, however, we can return that love to Him, and that free interchange of love enables us to love ourselves and, in turn, to love others. Self-hatred is probably the greatest single problem in human society, regardless of culture. Decades of research, study, and experience in the fields of human psychology and behavior have revealed that self-hatred lies at the heart of the vast majority of mental, emotional, and psychological problems. Many people have trouble living with others because they have trouble living with themselves. They find it hard either to give love or to receive love from others because they cannot love themselves. Unfortunately, the problem of self-hatred is not limited to secular culture or the world of the mentally ill or emotionally unstable. The same plague afflicts many followers of Christ as well. Many of us who are believers have an inferiority complex under which we are constantly putting ourselves down, saying negative things about ourselves, and denying our gifts, talents, and abilities. This sense of inferiority is the product of centuries of teaching in the Church that says it is wrong for us to love ourselves. Such teaching equates self-deprecation with humility, when inreality the two are not the same at all. Self-deprecation says, “I am nothing. I am worthless, useless, with nothing of value to give to anyone.” Humility, on the other hand, is simply believing and accepting what God says about us, and God says that we are anything but worthless. When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” He meant that we are to love our neighbor as much as or to the same degree as we love ourselves. Stated another way, we can love our neighbor only to the same extent that we love ourselves. People who do not love themselves cannot truly love anybody else. Humility is simply believing and accepting what God says about us, and God says that we are anything but worthless. Please understand that I am not referring to a narcissistic and egotistical self-love that struts around with an inflated opinion of itself while looking down its nose at everybody else. By “loving ourselves” I mean having a positive self-image and a healthy sense of self-worth based on a proper understanding of our place in the love of God and in relationship to God and others. Why should we love ourselves? What reason do we have? The answer lies in the heart and purpose of God. God created us in His image and likeness, the greatest act and crowning glory of all His creative work, and He pronounced it “good.” Sin marred and distorted that image in us. Nevertheless, we were still so important to God and of such great worth to Him that He sent His Son to pay for our sin on the cross so we could be restored to Him. Through Christ, God recreated us in His image—He remade us, as it were—and again pronounced it “good.” We should love ourselves, not in a conceited manner, but simply by accepting for ourselves the value that God Himself places on us.
Apostle Alert c. Nyangu
"Born to make a change"
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