The journey of falling in love with yourself!

Disclaimer: In no way am I promoting narcissism or pride I’m even advocating for the exact opposite... here me out!

Day 3 we left of on a note that as children of God we’re actually placed in a unique position as we’re able to learn from the best example of love- which is God. Before we can think about extending this love to others, we need to first embark on this journey of learning to love ourselves. For me a paramount part of this is realising that we are a new creation in Christ!

2 Corinthians 5:17: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! "

Again, Paul completely deattaches the responsibility of us trying to make ourselves new, because we can only be made new in Christ. So, it’s Jesus that does this renewing.. he completely transforms us. Being “in Christ” means acknowledging that he died for us and putting faith in this resurrecting power. This in essence formulates step 1 of being a "new creation"

Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your mouth “ Jesus is Lord” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved”

Step 1: Realising you’re made new in Christ

• Have you ever thought about the term "born again", this literally means God forgetting past, essentially an amnesic something. He holds no grudges, no condemnation at your past, in fact he even makes what an absurd suggestion! This can be found in:

2 Corinthians 12:9: But he said to me,“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness". Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

• At first glance this can be deemed to be rather ironic and if I'm being honest quite contradictory as it's essentially saying that we should boast about our weaknesses?

• What's being said, is that our insecurities don't define us, in fact they refine us. For those that are unfamiliar with Corinthians, this was written by Paul. A bit of background context on Paul, he was a guy that made a LOT of mistakes. He was notorious for persecuting Christians. The moment he met grace, his life changed for the better not because he was extrinsically any different but for the mere fact he surrender his whole to God. To let him do the mending, he didn't try to hide his terrible worst parts from God, but he instead surrendered this and it was his exact weakness that God used.

• This is what Paul is trying to say here, yes we have weaknesses i.e. our hardships or just genuine insecurities but God sees beauty in this, he wants to reform and refine it! WHY???? because his grace is truly sufficent for us. God's grace is more than enough. The word sufficient can be translated to arkei this implies satisfaction. Meaning because he finds beauty in our baggage! He sees our weaknesses as something that can be used for his glory! This again links to a paramount part of us falling in love with ourselves - realising that we were made on purpose for a purpose and God uses ALL parts of us.

Step 2: Align your belief with action - act like you’re new in Christ

• This consists of daily dying to your flesh, daily surrendering your weaknesses and slowly remembering your past mistakes don't define you! If God can forget our past, we too can begin to slowly let go of the weight and the bondage of our self-condemnation.

• It’s a journey of epitomising Godfidence, not confidence in yourself or your ability but rather in God and his ability. You might not have it all together, but he sure does. He knows what's best. This sense of surrender i.e. dying to self is one of the steps of being made new in Christ.

• Okay, so now I should probably explain this whole thing of falling in love with yourself. If you've read Day 1-3 of the devotional, you hopefully should've grasped the importance of God's love and how it's a journey of falling in love with him. Equally, as children of God we need to fall in love with ourselves. This makes the commandment to love our neighbour as ourselves a lot easier (we'll speak about this later on). The journey of falling in love with yourself is essentially just accepting all parts of yourself and finding comfortability in even the worst bits. Having said this, we can't love ourselves TOO much.. else we'll now be consumed in self-love and pride which can equally bring us further away from God.

What am I trying to say?

What I am trying to say is, it's actually important for us to truly understand how intentional God was to call us his children, Children in the sense that we are able to mimic him and learn from him BUT also children in the fact that we can't elevate ourselves to his level. Subsequently meaning it puts us in a humble position!!

It's from this our confidence comes from, the moment we humble ourselves before the throne room of grace we begin to see the work that God has always been doing! The good news is he's only just begun! It only gets better from here, I'm not naively saying that we won't feel the same pain or that we won't be privy to the same negative thoughts because we will; even more so now because the moment the enemy realises that we're children of God by action and merely not name he'll be on his deceptive A game feeding us lies of our insecurities because now we're major threats to him!

This my friends, is where the beauty of being made new in Christ comes in.. we no longer have to endure these battles by ourselves we have God there picking us up, no matter how many mistakes we make we have the consolation that:

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning"

So yeah, we might keep making mistakes but this doesn't stop God loving us any less.. we can't afford to sit in our condemnation. Yes, this sounds VERY scary having to let go of everything we once were especially if we can still see these evident faults! But one thing we do have to help us, is the Holy Spirt who helps to renew us day by day. I pray that we all begin to see the transforming love of Jesus Christ renew us day in day out. IJN!

I know I haven't really touched on how to actually practically enhance our self-esteem and how to fully embark on this journey of self-love but DO NOT worry because I know two AMAZINGG blogs that specialise in this, so please go give them a read!

Number 1 Blog - Precious' Not So Secret Diary

Number 2 Blog - Faith and Mental Wealth

Love and kisses! Remain ever blessed xx