..And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31
The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There
is no other commandment greater than these.”
We are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves....but do you love yourself? The world has identified the issue of self acceptance to be a prevalent one and the attempted solutions to overcome it merely fan the flame of self absorption. We do have to master this as a societal downfall, but our plan of attack and the order we go about it is critical. To love
yourself you have to know yourself. To know yourself and understand
your identity you have to be in relationship with others because God
designed to live in community. The world says- to know and love
yourself, focus on you. Christ in us says- Get your focus outward and
your identity (christ in you) is revealed. We will find ourselves in a destructive maze when we confuse the starting point. Not only do we seek to understand and love ourselves first, but it's our image that we so foolishly work to present that can easily consume us from the outside in. Do you love yourself, defined by Christ in you, or do you love a self made version of God's intentional and original design? Begin with love- then identity, servant hood, and transformative relationships will follow as the fruit of His spirit working in you. When we reach out, He brings out what He designed within.
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