Loving Yourself the way God Intended

Psalm 139 vs 13 – 16
For you created my inmost being;
You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully
And wonderfully made;
Your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
When I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together
In the depths of the earth,
Your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
Were written in your book
Before one of them came to be.

One of the hardest things for us to accept is that God loves us just as we are – 100%. He does not attach conditions to his love. He does not say “if you were taller, shorter, cleverer, fatter, thinner, more talented etc., “ then He could love you more! So if God, our Creator, the one who made this beautiful planet and hung the stars in the sky, doesn’t do that, then why do we? Why do we criticize and condemn, judge and belittle ourselves. And if we are doing it to ourselves, we invariably are doing it to others. We may not be as harsh on others as we are on ourselves, but we still do it! If we are doing it to ourselves and others, are we not also doing it to God? Aren’t we, in effect telling God that He messed up! Aren’t we saying “Well God you did a great job on Table Mountain and the Kingfisher and Sandra Bullock, but You really messed up with me! God doesn’t mess up! He does everything perfectly and we, each and every one of us are His perfect creation. We all come with a designer label attached that says: Lovingly crafted by the hands of the Creator”.

We may mess up and ruin ourselves with bad habits and toxic behaviour, but not God. And although God may be unhappy with some of our choices, He still loves us 100%. If you are a parent, you know exactly what I mean! There are times when you could throttle your kids (especially when they are in their teens!) but you still love them.

Now God commands us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves! A very hard command, many of us just take note of the loving our neighbours part of the command and rush around being everyone’s best friend, helping the underprivileged, giving giving giving! But how many of those people pay any attention to themselves. In fact they use it as an excuse to ignore their own health and well being. And the problem is, that these dear people, who are so loving and generous with their time and efforts often become bitter and wonder why they never get any “loving” back! It is simply because they do not love themselves. They feel that if they give of themselves constantly some of that loving generosity will come back to them but they never quite understand the truth in the saying “You teach others to treat you the way you treat yourself.” Or, if these people with such low self esteem are loved and appreciated by others, they don’t see it, or accept it! They feel that people are just being ‘nice’ but are insincere. Because they don’t love themselves they are incapable of accepting love from others.
Please do not misunderstand me, I am not speaking about loving yourself in a narcissistic, self-centered way. That is destructive. What I am talking about is seeing yourself in a Godly way. Accepting yourself as “lovingly, individually crafted.” Taking care of yourself physically, spiritually and emotionally. It means not seeing yourself as insignificant compared to others because they have more talents or are better looking than you. God has created each one of us ON PURPOSE! Which means that, in your uniqueness, He has something for you to do!. As a follower of Christ we are all part of the “Body” of Christ – whether we are the vocal chords or the eardrum, the pinky finger or the foot we are all necessary.