Just How Important is it to Love Yourself?

Here is a rather shocking statement: You are required to love God and love yourself whether or not another single soul on this earth loves you. I can do this by showing myself respect, honor, love and acceptance. Outside of God I am the only other guaranteed constant companion in my life. It’s He and I who will always be there, that’s inescapable. You have only one self and you’re required to love that self. However, this can be the most difficult thing to do because most of the human race tends toward self-criticism and self-hatred rather than self-acceptance and self-love.

Love Yourself

God has set it up so that we don’t need any other person to love us in order to be whole and complete. Though receiving love is amazing, it is not a requirement for me to be me and for me to love myself. My joy and happiness come from the Lord not from any man’s expressed love towards me. This is a contrary thought to much of what the world says. The masses continually seek to “BE LOVED.” And this is probably why many marriages simply fail. Seeking to get love rather than to express love is a recipe for destruction. And more, if we fail to love ourselves, scripture proves that we will fail to love others anyway.

‘You must love your neighbor in the same way you love yourself.’
Mark 12:31 TPT

We can even view this in the reverse, because I think it is true. If you don’t love yourself, you can’t love your neighbor. You simply can’t give what you don’t have. And if you have only hatred or disdain for yourself, how in the world could you possibly give love to another single soul?

Loving Yourself

The Lord challenged me the other day: “Be as loving to yourself as you are desiring to be towards others.” When I am not stressed, I am kind of a lover by nature. I express and exude love when the Lord moves on me. I don’t feel any qualms about expressing it, even when it is misunderstood. Maybe that makes me a glutton for punishment. But if I love, I am going to express it. I can’t help it! And I am not saying to express love in a creepy invasive way, but only as the Lord leads. Our love comes from Him and He wills to express it through us.

Scripture instructs us to be living vessels of love. We walk this earth to experience and express Love. And looking at the mess our world is in, we quickly see the problem is many of us have let our love run cold. And if the above is true this also means we have let our love for self grow cold, too. To compensate we care more about our rights and entitlements. Rather than loving, we squirrel away substitutes to pacify our cold hearts. This is a tragedy! We forgo the only meaningful course of life, which is to Love.