Loving One's Self

Okay, so last week we began looking at love--what it is, what it is not. Basically, love is not a feeling because it is something that God commands us to do, and we cannot completely control our feelings; therefore, love must be more than that. I read recently, and I've heard it said before, that love is a verb. I think that is very true because love flows from the heart into our actions, words and behaviors.

The second key part to Jesus' mention of the two greatest commandments (the first being to love God with all our heart, mind and strength) is to love ourselves. Now you might say where do you find this. It is simple. Jesus says we must love our neighbor as ourselves. There is a process here. First, we must learn how to love God. That means we focus our priorities around Him. We seek to know more about Him to get to know Him better (through prayer and reading the Bible). We place value of His opinions and desires for our life. We surrender our goals to become second place to His goals. Once we learn what it means to fully love God with all that we are, we can begin to put those same things into practice with others, beginning with who? Ourselves. We must love others as we love ourselves. Why must we understand loving ourselves first? Because we must understand what our love feels like. Let me give you an example. Most toddlers/babies go through a biting phase where they bite others. I know this because two of mine have done this as well as my nephew. When you have a child who is biting, you begin to get lots of advice on what to do to get him or her to stop. The one I've heard most often is to bite him or her back. Can you imagine an adult biting a 6-month-old or even a 2-year-old? It sounds mean, and I have to admit I've been very tempted to try it. The reasoning behind this theory is that little children don't really know what the biting feels like; they simply know the result works out in their favor. Big brother tries to take little brother's toy. Little brother bites big brother. Big brother drops the toy and runs away (usually crying to mom or dad). Little brother gets toy back. That's the desired outcome, and it usually works. Now, if someone were to bite the little one back, the idea is that they would see how painful biting is so they won't do it anymore.

Honestly, I have no idea of that works or not, but I think the same idea can be said of love. If we don't know how our attempts at loving feel, we may not fully understand whether we are showing love in the best ways. If I tell myself I hate me, I'm not going to be a happy person for long. So, it's easy to see that if I tell someone else that I hate them that they probably aren't going to feel love either. In order to show love most effectively, we need to experience both the giving of it and the receiving of it to understand the full effect of our actions. I once read a leadership book by John Maxwell that devoted a whole chapter to the idea that hurting people hurt people. The whole point of the chapter is that when we are hurting, we cannot encourage others because we all we can see is how much we are hurting. When we are hurting, we'd rather be around unhappy people because happy people make our stomachs' churn because we want to be happy but aren't. If love is seeking to encourage, get to know, honor, respect, and protect others, we must first practice those things to ounselves. When those things become habit, it is much easier to begin loving others, whom by the way, we cannot control. It truly is easier to love ourselves because if we don't like something about ourselves we can change it. But if we don't like something about someone else, we cannot change them. Plus, for love to be feel genuine to others it must be genuine. Love cannot be forced or fake so we must already know and understand genuine love.

Let me make it simple, we must know and understand how we want to communicate love and how that might received by others. What better person to practice on than yourself? That way, if you mess up, nobody has to know!!!!! Seriously, though, if you do not love yourself, you will not be able to really love others. Love requires the ability to put yourself aside and put another's well-being ahead. When we dislike ourselves, we become so focused on our own unhappiness that everything we do comes from that unhappiness. And remember, hurting people hurt others.

Put It Into Practice: How can you put this week's idea of love into practice? Figure out how you can genuinely love yourself. You may need to watch what things you say to yourself, what things you choose to believe that others are saying, how you let certain things affect your overall happiness, and what you are putting your hope and trust into. If you are struggling with finding the value in your life, then you need to seek out the One who defines value and created your very life. Of course, it all comes back to whether or not you have really accepted the first commandment anyway, to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. If you have any questions about how to begin either of these two steps, please let Ryan or I know and we'll be glad to share with you.

Nikki