God wants you to have the best! This is not just pertaining to your spiritual life, but it pertains to every component of your existence. He desires us to have quality relationships, good health, a good job and prosperity; and should you desire it, He desires you to have a loving, trustworthy, and Godly spouse. An important piece to living the dream is being able to handle the dream. Anyone reading this has lived long enough to understand that just because we want something, it doesn’t mean the thing lands in our laps. We also understand that work and diligent effort are necessary to achieve just about everything. Jesus Christ makes this work ethic very plain for us in Luke 12:48, when he tells us that to whom much is given, much is required. So, to ‘go get it’ is no small feat, and we need to have a few things in place. One of the most important of those is a healthy dose of self-love.
Don’t regret your past
Romans 6:23(NLT) tells us, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” Because of the sacrifice of our precious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we are saved! When we accepted Christ as the Lord and Head of our lives, we received the gift of eternal life. We became God’s children, and He wants us around a really, really, really long time. It will take an eternity for Him to lavish His abundant love and grace on us.
Although it can be challenging to wrap our heads around it, we are eternal beings. We will never die, and our well of gratitude must swell to overflowing for this tremendously generous gift from God. Because of His great love, we will never see the horrors and torment of hell. This is enough to make us shout every morning. So when you look at your life and the reality that you are a forever spiritual being, you must also be thankful for the journey that landed you where you are today.
Did you make mistakes? YES! Are there some things you wish you could take back or do over? Absolutely! We all feel this way, but if those things had not taken place, we would not have learned the spiritual lessons we needed to learn. Your journey is YOUR journey. Love it! Because nothing in all of eternity will ever change it. You are who you are because of all you’ve been through. So, you can regret your mistakes, many of us do, but never regret the journey that has helped to bring you this far. You’re the person you are today because of every mistake, disappointment, and triumph. There doesn’t exist in all of eternity another person that is quite like you, and no one can be YOU better than you. Own this! And rejoice in the splendor of who YOU are!
Don’t get caught up in the world’s standard of self-love
Pampering ourselves is a necessary part of life, but society places far too much emphasis on it. We must be careful that it doesn’t turn into an attitude or habit of excessive self-indulgence, or worse, addiction. God wants us to love ourselves in a healthy way, but we have to use Godly judgment. He tells in Romans 12:1 not to be conformed to the world’s standards and culture, because doing so displeases Him. It’s important us to realize that some of the things that society views as loving one’s self isn’t loving at all. Much of it can promote unGodliness and motivate attitudes of entitlement and arrogance. It prompts people to walk around with inflated egos, and this isn’t self-love.
Ephesians 5:29(NLT) tells us, “No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church.” This is the portrait of self-love, it is loving ourselves the way Christ loved the church. It conveys a balance between self-care and caring for others.
In Matthew 22:39, Jesus Christ commands that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Therefore, we must get this balance between self-care and caring for others worked into our lives. It supports the very nature of our purpose within God’s Will and Plan, because your destiny is the most important objective of your eternal existence. So, it is very important that you understand that loving what you do for the Kingdom is the greatest way to love yourself.
Start with love
In 1Corinthians 3:10, the Apostle Paul referred to himself as a master builder. We are master builders as well. Whenever we attempt to reach out and grab what God has for us, His order dictates that our foundation is strong, that we’ve used all that God has provided through Jesus Christ to build a landing space of faith. This landing space of faith and spiritual strength that we’ve built within will give blessings room to grow, expand, and spill over into the lives of others. This is how we start with love and finish in faith.
Loving the skin you’re in doesn’t have anything to do with having a big ego. It is appreciating that God loves you and wanted you in the earth as a representation of His love. Pray that He will continue to teach you to love yourself in a way that pleases Him and satisfies your obligation to the faith. Lean on the Holy Spirit within as you seek to grow in spiritual strength, then the work that you do towards self-care and caring for others will endure, and God will reward it.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“Loving the Skin You’re In”, written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2019. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.