Good morning.
How have we got you now, Henry? All the time you’re talking about focusing away from self and now... ‘You shall love yourself’?
Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was and He said that the first was to love the Lord your God with everything you have and then He said: “The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself (Mark 12:31).’” The standard for the love you’ll have for your neighbour is the love you have for yourself. If you don’t love yourself, how can you love your neighbour?
At this point each individual can go and look at their thoughts, feelings and internal conversations to themselves. How often do we hate what we look like, what we so stupidly do, the mistakes we make, the sins we can’t manage to overcome and our weaknesses and the thorn in our flesh that is so prevalent. The devil loves to use people and circumstances to fill our minds and memories with thoughts and feelings of inferiority and self-hatred and it is up to us whether we’re going to brood over it and allow it to affect our relationships. Some find it hard to live at peace with themselves and therefore find it difficult to tolerate and love their neighbour, whilst others just enjoy themselves, and that self-love simply flows over to their neighbour.
Self-love is not similar to self-centredness. When someone is self-centred, people often say she loves herself and is full of herself, but that is contrary to love, since such people are too focused on self to love others.
If you apply love, according to 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (please read it), to yourself, you would know that you love yourself and are therefore able to love your neighbour. Are we patient with our weaknesses and internal battles and kind in the way we deal with ourselves as a result? The Lord knows about these flaws and deals with it, so we may be patient with ourselves. Do we compare ourselves negatively with others’ good qualities and allow ourselves to feel inferior in response to their confident behaviour. We do have our own qualities and strengths on which we can focus that would make us love ourselves.
Do we resent ourselves when we act foolishly according to our judgement and are we then irritated with ourselves, treating ourselves harshly in our thoughts? If we do, we do not love ourselves. What is acceptable behaviour? Who sets the standard? If we accept our weaknesses, our level of knowledge and our standard of living and we live to please the Lord, everything we do would be acceptable and nothing would be foolish. But if we live to please people we’ll definitely feel inferior at some stage.
If we act righteously, doing all the right things, we have nothing to feel guilty and self-condemnatory about. If we love the truth and live and proclaim it, we’ll have peace in ourselves. Nobody is perfect and we will make mistakes, but if our attitude is one of righteousness and truth, the Lord will keep us at peace.
If we then cover our weaknesses, believe in ourselves, hope the best for ourselves and endure those attacks from our negative side and circumstances, we act in love to ourselves.
As we’ve said in our postings about love on 19th and 20th January, love needs to be actioned. If you find it difficult to love others, just apply 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 on yourself as we just did, then forget about yourself and love your neighbour.
Lord, help me to sort myself out in love so I could love my neighbour.
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