Is it just me or does it seem that lately, instead of people attempting to improve themselves, the new fad is to simply accept yourself for who you are, even if who you are isn’t that great?
We talk about being easy on ourselves, being kind to ourselves, being our own best friend. This seems absurd to me. How can I be my own best friend? And why would I want to?
Here’s another one of my favorites: “You can’t love anyone else, until you love yourself.” Or the variation: “No one will love you, until you love yourself.” When did loving yourself become a prerequisite for loving others or being loved? I know a guy named Jesus, who would probably disagree with this sentiment.
Yet, we’ve heard this mantra time and time again. We tell people that they’ll never find love until they learn to love themselves. We’ve heard Oprah and Dr. Phil tell us that loving ourselves is necessary if we’re ever to find true happiness. But when I think about this, an image pops in my mind that actually causes me to laugh out loud:
I picture Jesus standing in front of His disciples, recalling to them that they are the vine and He is the vine dresser. They must abide in Him. He is the source of life…and oh yeah, they must love themselves before they can love others. He said to love others, as yourself, but never told us we need to love ourselves in order to love others. There’s a big difference.
Can you even imagine the hilarity and ridiculousness of such an idea? Can you imagine Jesus telling His disciples to love themselves? Or picture this: Mother Teresa implying that the reason she loved others so selflessly and freely was because she first learned to love herself.
When really, the opposite is true. We love others, not because we love ourselves or even like ourselves. We love others because He first loved us and His love does nothing less than compel us to love others in the same extravagant and radical way.
There is no message of radical self-love in the Bible and yet we hear it all the time. So, where did this message come from and do believers really fall for this line?
I suppose I could do what I always do and blame the self-esteem movement. It seems that the “love yourself” message has developed, in part, from the idea that children constantly need their self-esteems to be built up, again and again.
But more than that, our culture has convinced many of us that serving ourselves is the most important thing and that everything else flows from that. I once saw a fortune cookie that read “Our first and last love is self-love.” This flies in the face of the Gospel and distorts the truth about Christ’s selfless sacrifice.
Of course, this message is disguised as “loving yourself,” or “being your own best friend,” or “putting yourself first.” Moms especially hear this message, as we are told that in order to be better moms, we need to take time for ourselves.
I don’t completely disagree. I mean, I’m a mom of three and I’ll never turn down a pedicure followed by an hour of sipping coffee and reading, alone…all alone. But what I won’t buy into, is the lie that if I don’t get my toes painted and every one of my personal needs met, that I’m going to fail as a mom or my children will suffer, as a result.
What I won’t buy into is the lie that loving others requires my own self-confidence to be supremely boosted, to the point of self-indulgence.We all need rest. We all need reprieve. But, we don’t need an ego-boost to bless the Body.
Psalm 71:5 says “For You are my hope; O Lord GOD, You are my confidence from my youth.” He supplies our confidence. No one else.
Never mind the fact that Jesus loved others, in the most profound ways, while showing little, if any, concern for Himself. He never stopped to have His own needs met because He was too busy meeting the needs of others. Yes, He spent time alone seeking the Father’s face. He stole away from the crowds when He needed to be restored and refreshed.
But it seems that almost all of Jesus’ motivations to do those things, was so that He would be filled up, in order to once again pour Himself out. Jesus did not need to love Himself in order to love others. He chose to die on a cross to prove it.
Have you ever been guilty of thinking you need to love yourself first in order to love others? How do you balance taking time for yourself when needed with giving of yourself when called?
This was really interesting for me to read. I may respond more later, but just had some immediate thoughts. Although the idea of self-love and needing to have that in order to love others doesn’t really fit with the gospel, I DO think there is something to say about our ability (or inability) to truly grasp God’s love for us if we are living in self-contempt and have a low level of confidence. Maybe the issue is where this self-confidence should come from, but it SHOULD be there if we are truly believing that we are the objects of GOD’s love. And if we are not grasping God’s love and therefore have low self-confidence, I think our efforts to love others might come from wrong, selfish motives. I’ll be thinking on this today, but I GET what you’re saying. Thanks for giving me something to mull over!
Katy,
You’ve touched on something that I’ve spent the morning debating on Twitter. People were mentioning that we must be able to accept or receive God’s love for us in order to love others. I agree we need to accept God’s love, but I wouldn’t call receiving God’s love the same thing as loving myself.
I’ve never thought to myself “Man, I love you Nicole” or “Gosh, I love myself.” It sounds ridiculous to me, but I have thought about how grateful I am for God’s love, for the love of my husband, the love of the Body.
Now, self-confidence, or what I would rather refer to as our identity in Christ, is really critical. If we have a firm understanding of who God says we are, well then it becomes second nature to love others, I think.
More than that, I think the Bible is full of self-loathing people, but God still uses them—still uses us–because He doesn’t need us to love ourselves first, but simply to love and obey Him.
What do you think?
Thanks for sharing your thought here Katy!
“I agree we need to accept God’s love, but I wouldn’t call receiving God’s love the same thing as loving myself.”
Boom. And there it is. Why do so many people wish to emotionalize Salvation, making sure it is steeped in it so it seems more valid and believable?
I cry when The Spirit moves in me. Like, weeping and sobbing. It is simply how my flesh reacts to His Spirit. But the mantra and mindset that we need to ‘feel God’ for Him to be proven is dangerous and futile. I would call it religious, at best. A circus act, a performance, an expected reaction. Useless.
Donald,
Yes! So good and so true. You touched on an idea I’m currently writing about not listening to our hearts. Our hearts are useless….”deceptive” as the Bible calls them.
I think we completely agree, then. :) I absolutely mean that the confidence we have IS found in our identity in JESUS. I think I was just thinking about my life and how lately I’ve been struggling to love others because I’ve not felt “ok” with who I am. I’ve struggled to believe God’s promises about myself and that THOSE ARE ENOUGH, so I’ve felt super self-conscious, anxious around others, etc., which I believe is often the fruit of me elevating others above God…idolatry.
Anyways, I’m also encouraged that the God CAN indeed use self-loathing people, but I pray that we (myself included) would be able to see ourselves as God does…IN CHRIST.
Thanks for the reply…I appreciated the post!
“What I won’t buy into is the lie that loving others requires my own self-confidence to be supremely boosted, to the point of self-indulgence.We all need rest. We all need reprieve. But, we don’t need an ego-boost to bless the Body.”
Ouch. Were you listening in on the phone conversation I just had with your husband?
Loving others as you love yourself is a command, not a suggestion. There is no room for how a person ‘feeeeels’ about what Jesus has told us to do. It’s a command. Our feelings and sensitive emotions have no bearing. For indeed, when we do as Jesus says to do, despite ourselves, is this not the best way to slap the face of our flesh and tell it that it has no authority when it comes to our relationship with Christ?
On the one hand, we are the lowest of the low, to be sure. Yet our God and King has seen fit to call us worthy. The old is dead; the new is upon us. Let us walk in the image He has put on our shoulders and cast aside our feelings, emotions, self-centered vainglorious pinings which preach well from behind a pulpit of self-loathing but lack any spiritual significance.
The truth is, even if I don’t love myself, He does. I see no room for argument here, since what He thinks and decides is what really matters.
Nice post, Nicole.
Donald,
So much good stuff here, but I love you saying that is not our willingness to obey Christ, despite what we want to do, the best way to give our flesh a smack down. This seemingly small act is what constantly reminds me that Jesus is real, that the Holy Spirit is in me, and is empowering me to live this life in pursuit of Christ.
And amen to saying, who cares if I love myself, He does. Enough said.
” Yes, He spent time alone seeking the Father’s face. He stole away from the crowds when He needed to be restored and refreshed.” I LOVE that. So true. Matthew 14 is one of my favourite places to look to when I’m feeling broken. Jesus had just learnt of the loss of a dear friend in John. He heard the news and withdrew to mourn and rest. The crowds followed him so he healed them. It’s incredible. That’s love.
Nadine,
Yes, it is such a reminder of Christ’s own humanity and love for people. it also convicts me because if the Son of God needed time with the Father, well then you better believe so do I.
I love this! Though perhaps less eloquent, this could have been my post. I’ve thought this, discussed this and shared this with others. While reading through your post I kept thinking about Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.
My philosophy that I TRY to live by is to expect nothing from others and expect everything from myself. The standard that I live by is set is high and it’s the only standard I concern myself with.
Love this post! This is something I find myself constantly wrestling with — how to balance pouring myself out to my high school girls and still being filled up by my Lord. Somehow, though God always seems to provide. He gently reminds me how much I need Him and how little I can do on my own. For many years, I constantly struggled with insecurity about being a good enough small group leader to shepherd and love these girls. However, in the last couple of years, the Lord has totally changed my heart and shown me that those insecurities were really me placing confidence in myself, not in Him. For me, the truth that has changed me the most and helped me love others is that my confidence needs to be in Him. I trust that He is going to meet my girls’ needs–with or without me. And He’s not going to neglect me or forget about me either. (As He’s proved over and over again by always letting me come back to Him after spending way too much time relying on myself.)
Anyway, lots of thoughts there, but thank you for this post. We are about to leave this week for a summer mission trip with a bunch of high school kids, and the reminder of trusting God with my needs and theirs couldn’t come at a better time. :)
What I see at the core of this push for self-esteem is a lack of understanding about who we are as humans.
In the post-enlightmentment, post-modern world of today’s Western cultures, humans don’t have any grounding myths that tell us who we are, who God is, how we are to relate to the world, God and each other. The Scientific worldview stripped all that away from us.
But we have to define ourselves and find our self-worth in… something. So we choose something: physical appearance, performance (sports, zeroes in the paycheck, kids’ achievements, etc.), family, etc.
Some people in our culture have really great Self-esteem (b/c they’ve based it on something they excel in) and some have truly horrible Self-esteem (b/c we can never be as pretty as air-brushed models or as athletic as those who can afford full-time personal trainers).
But – as you note in your post – ALL of these are wrong. Because as the Christian framework teaches, we are not most fully ourselves until our Personhood, our Self, is grounded in the Person and Work of the Trinity.
In short, until I understand who I am in relationship to God, to Christ and what he’s done for me, then I do not actually and fully love myself or anyone else.
I can’t “love my neighbor as myself” until I am participating in the Divine Love of the Trinity.
Understanding the conversation like this avoids the pitfalls on both sides: either the Spiritually Spoiled mentality of “I’m so important and valuable because the God of the Universe thinks about me and wants my best all the time” OR the “I should be a human doormat because God tells us only to care about others.”
I don’t care anymore how I esteem myself. I’m much more concerned with how God esteems me. And the Scriptures – as you note – are clear about that.
This makes complete sense to me, and you nailed it. A few years ago, before being born again…accepting Christ’s love, I would have thought this post was absurd. This idea of putting “self” first and loving your “self” isn’t how God intended it to be. Putting him in the center of your universe and loving others brings the love back to your self. Kinda like a boomerang effect. And that is where we can find that self confidence and love, all thru God. Thanks. I’ll be thinking on this for quite some time.
Thank you for writing this Nicole. I’m sadden what I see today in social media, blogs and other mediums. We have turned the Gospel of God into a philosophy of self-love and idol worship. First, we are to take the words of our Bibles as God’s commands. If we don’t like them, we shouldn’t negotiate God’s word into human terms according to our “hearts” and philosophies. I’ve always said that I am my worst enemy. God says that there’s a constant battle of our flesh and our spirit.
The gospel of Jesus is not about me. In fact, Jesus called it a “dying of oneself”. Only when this dying begins to destroy our philosophy, passions and desires, can we see the Gospel for what it is: The sovereign king who’s word is of utmost importance over any puny thoughts of man. We become “channels” of God’s love towards others. But let us never forget that to truly grasp the love of God, we have to die to ourselves. I am almost offended by today’s definition of love.
Great post!
“I am almost offended by today’s definition of love.” (Uh-oh. Now you went and opened up a can o’ worms.)
Are you almost offended by today’s definition as championed by The World (lust, easy sex, emotional manipulation), or by the American Church (expected, manipulative, abused, without meaning)?
Of these two, which is more offensive?
“I love pizza.
I love this post.
I love my car.
I love my church.
I love your blog.”
These things are said loosely, casually, and flippantly, not really defining love as God sees it. Love, as a word, has lost its meaning thanks to our undisciplined tongues and bankrupt ability to give it its proper respect and honor. We use the word ‘love’ with good intentions, but…well…at what times have our good intentions produced any fruit for us as sons of God?
Love is God, God is Love. It belongs to Him and it IS Him. And He gives it to us to be stewarded properly, and used wisely. It is not to be thrown before swine. It is not to be spoken arrogantly.
Moe,
I’m just left feeling so inspired, pumped up, and encouraged by your comment.
This right here really does it for me: “we shouldn’t negotiate God’s word into human terms according to our “hearts” and philosophies.”
This is a caution and admonishment for our current generation. The concept of dying to one’s self sounds asinine to many, including Christians. They may know the verse, but the truth of it is never displayed in their life.
And Moe, I know I’ve told you this before, but you truly are a teacher of God’s Word and I am always impressed by your understanding and handling of it.
Nicole, in a word…thanks.
A-freaking-men, Nicole! Look at that, we found another way to worship and idolize ourselves, and in a way that seems perfectly innocent and “affirming.”
But I suppose, if I were to take all things to the point of hyperbole, what did Jesus say was the most important commandment? Love your neighbor as yourself. So the more I indulge in pedicures and lattes, the more I can love my neighbor…
…right?
Really? I thought this was the great and foremost commandment:
36“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
37And He said to him, “ ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’
38“This is the great and foremost commandment.”
Love is a command. Loving our neighbors as ourselves follows suit. Loving ourselves is eluded to, but not in the warped way it has been taught today.
Yes, as I delve deeper into the scriptures, the more I surmise that when Jesus said “take up your cross,” He really meant “take up your latte.”
Ha! Wouldn’t that awesome? And then sorta totally not awesome at all…
You know what I mean!
Thank you for this. It is so great to hear something like this from a person under 50. For some reason, maybe the big GenX and GenY self esteem push in public schools (everybody gets a trophy, no red ink for grading tests) everyone needs to feel GREAT about themselves in order to be a good person. We love and do good because of the love of God through Jesus Christ. Thank you for this. :)
I think we need to carefully negotiate between seeing ourselves as people of value, made in the image of God, and falling into rather self centered ways of thinking that focus on meeting our needs first.
A work related example came to mind: As a social worker I need to practice what we call “self care,” making sure that I am aware of my mental well being and getting enough rest, space away from work etc. But I do this so that my work with clients is enhanced, so that I am the best social worker I can be for clients, so that I don’t burn out and can be ready to offer support when needed.
I love what you wrote here; “Is it just me or does it seem that lately, instead of people attempting to improve themselves, the new fad is to simply accept yourself for who you are, even if who you are isn’t that great?”
Recently (after a lot of prayer and thought and advice from people more wise than me) I needed to gently challenge a Christian friend on an unhelpful way of relating to people. She responded by telling me that I should be more gracious and just accept her how she is.
I haven’t been able to reconcile that in my mind… how can we be growing to be more like Jesus, if there is no accountability for our choices?
Now you know from our past conversations that I have MAJOR self-esteem issues. I never really got the hang of the whole “take care of yourself’ thing. Even though I’m getting better at it, there’s still a lot of healing left.
Having said all that, though, I think you’re right on the money with this blog post.
It was God’s love that taught me to love others and to take better care of myself. I mean, yeah, I’ve accomplished a lot. I made the Dean’s List throughout my first round of college. I went back to college to further my professional career. I’m a pretty nice guy overall. But when you suffer from depression, you can’t see all that. All you see is your own failures. So when I finally realized that God actually LOVES me, then my outlook changed.
Travis,
I’m so glad that God’s love for you has brought about such change. It should. His love is immeasurable, unfathomable, and radical. If we grasp only a sliver of it, it cannot help but transform us!
Finally someone verbalized something that I’ve been trying to reconcile for years. When Christ said, Love your neighbor as yourself, it has always worried me that I just don’t always love myself. And then I think, oh gosh, the bar isn’t raised very high then for how much I love others. In reality, I admit that I love most others MORE than myself. Obviously I do lack in the “confidence” area and I’m sure that in reality, if I did see myself more the way God sees me, then how much more would I be able to see others the way God sees them!!
Years ago, actually the first time I did some summer work, that was when I started seeing people through God’s eyes. Let’s face it, for many folks, if we don’t see them thru God’s eyes, we’re not going to care much for them. But how much greater and more valuable and more gifted and amazing they are when you view them thru their Creator!
Great conversation! A couple of thoughts…
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”
I think often times we just skip the second part of love your neighbor as yourself. In other words, just love your neighbor.
Or remember that song from sunday school J – O – Y, J – O – Y this is what it means… Jesus First, Yourself Last, Others in between…
Growing up these were some of the messages sent to me.
Sounds great right?! Of course Jesus first, of course love your neighbor! This is what we are supposed to do right? This pleases God?
I have to say, I am not so sure that is right. I spent most of my life putting others ahead of me – serving, helping, volunteering, etc. (Was I actually loving these people? hmmm thats probably a different topic ;-) ).
What started to happen to me was that I was so concerned with putting others first that I forgot about myself.
Seriously, I thought that what I did or who I was didn’t really matter as long as I was “serving” people.
Now that I am 30 I have recoiled (am I using that word right?) and have started to learn what it looks like to actually love myself in a healthy way. I think its safe to say that when we talk about loving ourselves we don’t mean in a selfish, arrogant way.
I think that self-help was born out a desire to simply feel loved and valued. I would argue that many people have no idea how to love themselves or what that even would look like, myself included.
I grew up with parents who did their best with what they knew, but with a generation that was stuck on a legalistic, do what the church tells me to do mindset.
The constant barrage of messages from the church of SERVE, SERVE, SERVE is probably rooted in trying to spread the Gospel and follow Jesus commands, but I also think in some cases it has become abusive.
If the church (or a church) took time to figure out how to teach people how to love themselves the way Jesus loved himself I think most of us would be refreshed and energized ready to go serve the world.
At the end of the day God loves us, no matter what. Start with that. He loves us despite the mess we may have made of our lives. God also offers us hope in Jesus. Jesus fulfilled the law (aka all the rules God set up for his people), died, defeated evil and rose again so that we have an opportunity to change the world.
If you are like me and struggle with loving yourself AND even sometimes loving others start with the idea that God loves you. Sit in that for awhile and learn to be okay with it.
I really think that from there a HUGE amount of change will happen in our lives. We will begin to know what it means to love others as well as love ourselves.
“We love others, not because we love ourselves or even like ourselves. We love others because He first loved us and His love does nothing less than compel us to love others in the same extravagant and radical way”… I think that’s the very heart of the whole thing. I hated who I felt I was becoming during my senior year of college and post-graduation, so I submitted to the prodding God put on my heart to serve in a radical way (for me). And since doing so, I have come to love myself more. Not to say that I don’t struggle, fight, and seek self-affirmation on an annoyingly regular basis but because of my pursuit of things bigger and more beautiful than a pursuit of my own self-worth alone, I have FOUND more self-worth and so I love myself more. It’s a crazy cycle, isn’t it? And completely opposite of what we are told.
Thanks for sharing, Nicole, I love your no-nonsense, cut-to-the-truth thoughts! I’ve learned so much about love, relationships, and God’s place in them from you :)
Marie,
What a wonderful testimony you shared here. I was blessed by it and yes, it is not what we would expect, but God does not work in ways that are logical to man.
Our self-worth really does come from aligning ourselves with what He is doing. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it is by His grace that He allows us to be fulfilled in following His will.
Thank you for the kind words of encouragement too!
I grew up with the mantra, drilled into me by my parents, do unto others as you would like them to do to you. As I got older I realised that while this is true this is not exactly what the bible says, I use the Message, which I understand is a paraphrase of the Greek and Hebrew, but not far off from what the write meant, I am told, I don’t have Greek or Hebrew, so this is the best I can do.
In Matthew 22 Jesus is asked what is the Greatest Commandment, his response is obvious, He responds with the exhortation that the hearer should love God (Yahweh, the God of the Jews) with all that they have, this is obviously with reference to the commandment in the Hebrew Scriptures (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). Jesus Could have stopped there, but to this He also attaches an addendum, it’s almost like He’s saying, and this is one way to work out this love, Jesus says ‘Love others as well as you love yourself’ (Matt 22:29). This again is a pointer back to the Hebrew Scriptures (Leviticus 19:18). For me, it doesn’t say, forget about yourself and love others. It says, love others, as you love yourself. The more theologically astute among us will of course remember that the the Torah is speaking to a people, and not individuals, and it’s like the writer is exhorting them to love other people as much as they love each other, I think the same is true for us. But I do think that we should love one another in the church as well as we love those outside it, I think it’s an encouragement to love each other well. It is impossible to love those outside the church well if we cannot do that for each other, likewise, it is impossible for us to love the church well if we cannot love our families well. I also think there is something to be said for loving oneself, I’m not talking about in a I’m-the-queen-of-the-world kind of way, but in a if i know how to take care of myself, I’ll know how to take care of others kind of a way.
Thanks so much for this Nicole! I really enjoyed reading it! Grace and Peace to you.
Sarah,
Great thoughts you shared here. I appreciate your breakdown of the scripture.
I would add, also, that when Jesus said “love others as yourself,” I have always taken it to mean something more like “I know you naturally love yourself and want to protect yourself. Well, do that for others in the same way.” It’s a subtle suggestion, I believe, by Christ that we are really good at putting ourselves first, but we ought not to and that instead we should flip the order.
I agree with you on the point that we ought to love those outside of the church. Yes and yes! But I also think we sometimes become so focused on this that we fail to love one another with a radical love. Christ said we would be known by our love for one another. That “one another” is the body of saints.
People outside of the church are supposed to see us loving one another with such radical, extravagant, uncommon love that they are compelled to seek it out. It is then, I believe, out of our love for Christ and one another (the church) that we can begin to truly love those around us (outside of the church).
We have to paint the picture Jesus called us to represent because it is that picture of love that is most attractive.
This is not a new thing. I remember hearing that phrase about “you can’t love others unless you first love yourself” over 30 years ago regarding an aunt who had, slightly destructive tendencies, especially in the area of relationships. It was my mom’s favorite phrase to use when discussing her. A few years ago, as my aunt’s situation grew worse, my mom made that same comment and I turned to her and said, “What my aunt needs is to know the unconditional love of Jesus.”
I wonder how many times the search for self love fills a lifetime only to be elusive to the searcher in turn causing that person never to have loved others as Christ would have.
It reminds me of the OLD country tune “Looking for love in all the wrong places.”
Ken,
Ooh, that’s good. A great question, that sadly, I think is correct.
And I know that song. Guess that makes me old too… :(
Love this Nicole.
We need people like you that challenge these cultural norms. Loving ourselves ends up leading to self-serving behavior, which is most certainly not what God called us to do.
I read once (I think in a John Stott book) that God has a natural order for the universe:
1. God
2. Others
3. Self
When sin is in our lives (inevitable, of course), the order gets reversed:
1. Self
2. Others
3. God,
Leaving us for little time with our Creator. The way I see it, if we take care of God and others, the time left for ourselves will be sufficient.
Grayson,
That is such a great and simple formula. It really speaks to me and how I like to naturally order things.
Thank you for sharing!
Spoken by a fellow sister and encouragement in my life… “I believe all compassion comes from a place of self love. For how can one look into another with understanding and help him fulfill his unmet needs without first knowing, understanding, and accepting himself? Narcissism is not self love but the highest form of self hate. People who truly love themselves love others. So learn to love yourself…Even the broken parts. Mark 12:30, 31.”
not sure how I came across this again, but it still strikes me. What was the significance of one of the two greatest commandments being, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself?” Quite frankly, I used to hate myself (unknowingly for many years), and now that I look at the motives and heart behind my “loving” others, it was pretty fake. But that makes sense…because if the model and example for how to love others should come from the *gentle, kind, full-of-grace way we speak to and treat ourselves (because this is how Jesus speaks to us and treats us)* ….then a self-loathing person has a totally messed up model of “loving” to go off of.
I guess I’m commenting, because when I re-read what I’ve written here, I realized that God’s only continued to make it ever so clear to me that there is a type of self-love, self-care, and gentleness (rooted in HIS love and grace) that really is necessary to grasp to some degree so that my loving others can then be REAL. If I’m not living in love and grace, then when I give it to others, it’s empty and in vain. Of course it’s okay if you disagree, but I’m speaking what’s true for me from my own life experiences and walk with God. And I must speak it, because it’s brought incredible freedom into my life by the grace of God.
Enjoy the article, I believe when we love others more, we value Gods love for us. As it say in the bible ‘when there are two or more people in my name I am there’. When we love ourself especially in the extreme we miss out the importance of loving someone and the spiritual growth that comes in that manner. You profit more from giving then recieveing, if I love myself all the time how tired would my soul be, when I am loved by God already forever I would not need to focus on me I would just have to focus on giving out my love because I know I’m loved by God and if I get insecure he’s the one who I should lean on to remember your already loved.
After reading through all of these posts, I’m reaching out to see if anyone has insights into how to deal with a narcissist spouse that is in accordance with God’s great love toward us.