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In an earlier post, we talked about why it is good and right to love yourself. To recap: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Mark 12:31. You can’t love your neighbor properly if you don’t love yourself. It’s good to love yourself. To seek your own good is not sinful. By seeking your own good, you are able to seek good for others.

Many people don’t love themselves, or at least behave as if they don’t love themselves.

In Jordan Peterson’s book, “12 Rules for Life”, his second rule is “Treat yourself like you are someone you are responsible for helping.” The reason he says this is that many people do not treat themselves well. Peterson illustrates by comparing when someone takes a dog to a vet and gets the dog medicine, and when a person goes to a doctor and gets their own medicine. He says the data shows that a person is much more likely to make sure the dog is given it’s medicine than they are to make sure they take their own medicine. Could it be that deep down, they feel the dog is more deserving to be taken care of than they themselves are?

One reason may be that we know ourselves. Even the people closest to us might know some of our sins, weaknesses, and failures. But everyone knows all of his / her own sins, weaknesses, and failures. Every bad thing all of your live, from the time you were born until now. Every thought, every deed, every failure to act when you could have.

The scriptures remind us, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9

Why then should you love yourself?

Because Jesus Christ paid the price for sin. He is able to cleanse.

“The LORD is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.
He will not always chide:
neither will he keep his anger for ever.
He hath not dealth with us after our sins;
nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
For as the heaven is high above the earth,
so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.
As far as the east is from the west,
so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”
Psalms 103:8-12

God has created you in His own image, and has declared you worth loving. “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee” Jeremiah 31:3. “For God so loved the world” John 3:16.

Just as you know everything about yourself, God knows everything about you, from the beginning of your life until now. All the good and all the bad. He loves you.

God wants your good, and your happiness. He wants you to seek your own good and your own happiness. Your greatest good, your greatness happiness is found in your relationship to God, drawing close to God, seeking Him with all your heart.

If you treat yourself like someone you care about, how would that look? What would you be thinking? How would you be acting? What would you be doing / not doing?

Love yourself today.

“The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.” – Psalms 34:7

First, there are angels of the Lord. The scriptures are abundantly clear. They have many purposes. One of those purposes is to watch over you, to surround you. We are never to worship angels or to seek angels. We are to worship and seek God.

Second, the word fear as used in scripture may be misunderstood by some. It means simply to respect Him, to reverence Him, to honor Him.

Third, God is able to deliver. He is able to deliver no matter what the circumstances. He can deliver physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. That does not mean that you will not have troubles, failures, or that it will be easy. It does mean that God will somehow provide deliverance.

Yes! Even to you! Even in your circumstances!

“Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear” – Isaiah 59:1

“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” Proverbs 23:7

Once you identify with a characteristic you will take actions and implement practices to keep in line with that characteristic. We all have ideas in our heart of who we are – both big things and little things. Some examples might be, “I’m a faithful friend”; “I’m an athletic man”; “I’m funny”; “I’m a good cook”; “I have great hair”.

Let’s take one and see how that influences our actions. “I’m a athletic man.” If that’s who you believe you are, then you will take actions that confirm your identity. You’ll do things that an athletic man would do – maybe you’ll workout, lift weights, run, play a sport, eat healthy foods.

It’s great that when you identify with something good, your actions help you to more and more become that.

Each person has a strong desire to be right, and will prove that we right.

But wait! What if you think of yourself as something not so good? You’ll also (maybe subconsciously) work to prove you are right. If you think, “I’m a lazy slob”, you’ll want to show that your ideas are right. Maybe you’ll sit on the couch and watch tv or play video games, eat too much, not do any exercises.

Either way, congratulations! You were right about yourself.

The good news is that you can change who you believe you are! That is amazing and radical! Once you change your idea of who you are, you will want to prove that you are right, and you will start acting in ways in line with who you believe you are.

In his book, “Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones”, James Clear says that the most important process of changing our habits is to change who we believe we are.

What kind of person would you like to be? Identify yourself as that kind of person. What would a person like that do? What will you start doing as that kind of a person?

“And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled, in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight” Colossians 1:13

There are people who believe in God, and sincere Christians who have trusted Christ as their Savior – and yet have never really given their life to God.

What would it mean to give your life to God? It would mean to trust God’s sufficiency with every aspect of your life. Live your life as if you believe his Word and really do trust Him to be good and to do what is best for you.

“Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God” – 2 Corinthians 3:5

One of the great truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that we can be justified by faith. This is faith that Christ paid for all of our sins in His great redemption at Calvary.

This is a distinguishing mark of Christianity. It’s a stumbling block for many and keeps them from faith.

Some may think they are not that bad – they are good enough.

Some may think that if they do enough good things they will get to heaven. Maybe the good they can do will outweigh the bad.

Some may think if they do religious things they will get to heaven.

How good is good enough? How many good things will have to be done? How many religious things? How will you ever know? Whose standard of good will you use? Compared to other people, you may be looking pretty good. How do you look compared to God’s standard?

“There is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Psalms 14:3 and repeated in Romans 3:12.

The good news is you don’t have to be good enough. Good works will follow your faith in Christ, but the good works are not where your salvation is.

“But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” Romans 4:5.

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” Ephesians 2:8.

Stand free and confident in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

It’s not wrong to seek your own good. God created the first man and woman and gave them great things to enjoy. God wanted them to enjoy. That was before sin entered into human nature. So, to seek our own good is not sinful, we were created by God to seek our own good.

Seeking our own good can and does become bad when we hurt someone else when doing so, or hurt ourselves. Things for our own good may not be fun at the moment, may not be enjoyable in the short term. Things that are good for us might be difficult, might take a long time, might not see result quickly.

Let’s remember – our greatest pleasure is found in knowing God and in our relationship with Him. The more we please God, the greater good we will have. Our good will also benefit our neighbor, we will be better able to serve our neighbor, and we can provide great benefits to society in general.

What is in our hearts is most important to pleasing God. Sincerity in seeking Him and His will, not to please someone else, or to look good, or even to make ourselves feel justified. Seek to please God because we love him. When you truly love someone, you want to please them.

What’s in your heart today?

“for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” I Samuel 16:7, last part of the verse.

When David was in deep distress, he wrote these words in Psalms 3:2:

“Many there be which say of my soul,
There is no help for him in God.”

What sad words! Even sadder is that there are times in our lives when we believe those words. We may even tell ourselves those words.

Many may say it – but it’s not true.

There is help for you in God. As long as you have breath in your body – and long after you cease to have breath in your body.

Broken body, broken heart, broken dreams, – these do not stop God, these do not intimidate God, these do not shorten the hand of God.

The next verse of that chapter says:

“But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me;
my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.”

O yes. He is a shield for you this very day.

Oftentimes it is a temptation to want to judge the hearts of those who we disagree with, or who have opposed us in some way, or who have hurt us, or hurt our feelings, or who have diminished our pride.

Only God knows the secrets of the heart. You and I have no way to know, or to guess, or to imagine, or to assume, what is in the heart. Only God knows that.

We can only see people’s actions. God sees the heart. And remember to never judge other people’s actions more harshly than we would judge own actions if we were to do the same thing.

It may make us feel better to think that others have bad intent. It may be that if we think the hearts of others to be evil, to have ill intent, that we then are morally superior.

To think that we know the motives of our neighbor, and to tend to think those motives unjust, is not how we would want our neighbor to think of us. We would want our neighbor to give us the benefit of the doubt. To deal graciously with us.

Jonathan Edwards, put it clearly: “Another evil of the tongue that I would warn against is censoriousness, or a readiness to pass sentence upon other to the secrets of their hearts; a disposition to determine the worst of others from any outward appearances.”

To love our neighbor, we do not look for a reason to be provoked, and we do not assign evil intents to their heart’s motive.

Part of I Corinthians 13:5 says that charity (love) “is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil”.

Free yourself from thinking that you can know your neighbor’s heart.

If we love our neighbor as ourselves, we must let go of all envy of our neighbor, seek our neighbor’s good, and rejoice in our neighbor’s good. Seek their good sincerely and generously.

God gave His all for you by giving Jesus to redeem you. God in His great love and goodness seeks the best for you. And He seeks the best for your neighbor. We want to follow God, and therefore we want to learn to always seek the good of our neighbor.

Your neighbors good does not diminish your enjoyment whatsoever.

Let’s say that again. Nothing good that your neighbor has, or good that happens to your neighbor diminishes your enjoyment whatsoever. Your neighbor may have great wealth, prosperity, good luck, success, honor, talents, wisdom, skills, abilities, good looks, family, relationships. That does not diminish you whatsoever.

Do you tend to resent your neighbor’s good? Recognize it in your spirit and reject it. Ask God to help you to always seek the good of your neighbor.

Do good to all people.

“As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” – Galatians 6:10

Love and sincere acts of love are always good. Love can be shown through a single act, a series of acts, or over a life time. It seems that the human heart has a desire to love and to be good. Maybe to prove to ourselves and to others that we are good. Sometimes that might be the motive for love.

The highest motive for love flows from a sincere heart that loves God.

This love flows from an understanding of God. His excellence, His beauty, His goodness, His mercy, His purity, and His holiness.

Someone (maybe Jonathan Edwards) has said, the fear of God is not the fear of being punished by God, but the fear of being away from God. We run toward His beauty. His nature draws us like a magnet. We have an overwhelming desire to be near Him, to take on His nature as much as possible.

Because God’s nature is love, His love can then flow from our hearts. Not to prove anything to ourselves or others. As we seek God, love can flow openly, abundantly, liberally and generously. To God and to our neighbors.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” – John 3:16 – 17.