How to love yourself Bible Study

How to love yourself Bible Study

To start building self esteem, first listen to how you talk to yourself. You first have to be aware of a situation before you can change it. Do any of these thoughts sound familiar?

"There is something wrong with me. I’m really messed up."
"I’m bad."
"It’s all my fault."
"I’m incompetent. I don’t know what I’m doing."
"I’m not (good, smart, attractive, rich, etc.) enough."
"I should have (fill in the blank)."
"I’m not as (good, smart, attractive, successful, etc.) as that person."
"I’ll never get that job."
"I’ll never be able to do this. I don’t have what it takes."

At a deeper level, you might hear:

"I don’t deserve to be happy. I don’t deserve to be loved. I don’t deserve to have what I want."
"I deserve to be punished. I don’t deserve to be forgiven."

Lack of self love can also get projected out as:

"That person doesn’t like me. No one likes me."
“My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents and I lay them both at his feet.”

Until you learn how to love yourself, this is how you cripple yourself so that you can’t move forward or go after the things you want. Underlying this negative self talk can be long-held beliefs about yourself that aren’t even based on reality. They are hangovers from other people’s energy being projected onto you. This usually comes from your parents, siblings, and other people around you during your early years.

I have seen and talked with people who say that they care and love others, but they don’t care and love themselves.
This kind of falls in with temptations, like smoking, drinking, murder one self like suicide, pushing pills to get a high or a buzz, I am sure you can think of some other things on your own.
Those things are not love and taking care of yourselves or the people around you.
A person who may be a smoker and they may have that oder on them or in their breath, the non smokers around you may end up getting sick and catch second hand smoke, that is showing that you do not love and care about yourself or the other people around you.
Your body is the temple of God and if you are defiling that temple by such filth, then  you must not love God either.
How can a person who don’t care and love themselves, care and love someone else or even love God?
God is love, if you have love in your heart, then you should have God in your heart.
If you have earthly love in your heart, then you do not have God in your heart.
To love yourself, you have to love yourself by keeping it clean and eating right and staying away from things that will defile it. If you are doing things that is harming your body, it affects not just your life, but the lives of your family, friends and loved ones, not to mention your relationship and walk with God.
Romans 13:9-10, "The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet,’ and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law."

John 13:34-35, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

1 John 4:16-19, "And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us."

In order to love yourselves, you need to forgive yourselves and walk away from your sins and stop doing them, so you can forget your sins.
If you have repented to God for your sins and still doing them, then you have not truly repented and walked away from them.
It's vital to love yourself (who you are in Christ)
When I say that you need to love yourself, I'm not referring to the stuck-up, prideful, worldly type of loving oneself (also known as self-worship); I'm talking about a concept of being thankful, and appreciating the person who God has made in you. The worldly type of loving yourself is where you are stuck up, prideful and arrogant, whereas this type of loving yourself is based upon humility and thankfulness. The two could not be more different!

The amount of bondage that results from self-rejection, self-hatred, unwillingness to forgive oneself and so forth is shocking. Below are just a few of the symptoms:

- Self-rejection; not accepting yourself, always beating up on yourself, not happy with the person that God made you, etc.
- Self-hatred; hating the person who God made in you, considering yourself ugly, dumb, clumsy, etc.
- Unforgiveness or bitterness; when a person continues to hold things against themself, such as something in their past that was embarrassing, gross, or that they are still ashamed of (even after repentance).
- Being hard on oneself; always beating up on yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, etc. Always seeing yourself as worthless, or pushing to reach irrational goals just to feel good about yourself.
- Low self-esteem; always seeing yourself as a failure, or less than those around you.
- Ashamed of yourself; refusing to forgive yourself from something in your past.
- Feeling ugly or stupid; seeing yourself as ugly, worthless, stupid, no good for nothing, etc.

The list can go on and on, does this sound like you? Lets move on.

You need to be thankful

Many today consider themselves dumb, ugly, stupid, clumsy, worthless, etc. Did you know that you were created in God's own image, and whenever you consider yourself dumb, ugly, etc., you're actually considering something that God made as being ugly, dumb, etc.??

Genesis 1:26, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

Let me ask you a couple questions...

- Did God create your physical body? If so, would you dare make a statement that God made an ugly body?
- Did God create your mind and intellect? If so, would you dare make a statement that God created a dumb, stupid, or worthless brain?
- If God created you in His image, then are you saying that His image is dumb, stupid, worthless or ugly?

David was a humble man with a heart after God's own, yet he praised and thanked God for the marvelous work that God had made (referring to his physical body):

Psalms 139:14, "I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well."

David was not boasting in who he was, but rather being thankful and rejoicing over the beautiful creation that God made in him! How many who consider themselves ugly are looking at things the way David did? Probably not too many!

King David appreciated and thanked God for what God gave him. Instead of saying, "I'm ugly", David was saying, "Wow! Look at what God gave me! It's marvelous!!" It's vital that we develop this same attitude about what God's given each of us as well.

You need to forgive yourself!

Much is said on how we are to forgive others, but many of us seem to skip over the concept of forgiving ourselves. Believe it or not, it's equally important and vital to be sure we've forgiven ourselves, as it is that we've forgiven others! Unforgiveness brings much bondage into our lives, regardless if it's towards God, others or even ourselves. Bitterness (the fruit of unforgiveness) is a means by which many are defiled:

Hebrews 12:15, "Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled."

Regardless of what we've done in our pasts, whether it be an abortion, fornication, or some gross and embarrassing sin, it's vital that we forgive ourself from everything in our pasts that we are ashamed of. If God chose to forget our sins for His sake, then I think we ought to do the same:

Isaiah 43:25, "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins."

God's Word says that He has actually removed our sins from us! If we continually beat up on ourselves, it's known as false guilt, and is a tool of the enemy to pull us down. If we still associate ourselves with our sinful past, then we need to change the way we see things... why? Because the way we are thinking does not line up with what God's Word has to say.

Psalms 103:12, "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us."

When we associate ourselves with our past failures, after God's Word has assured us that they have been removed from us... then do you realize that you aren't really believing what God's Word is saying? It's time that we make that choice to forgive ourselves, and then align our thinking with what God's Word has to say. If God says it's removed from us, then we need to take Him for His Word, and believe what it has to say!

If this teaching has ministered to you, then I believe you'll also want to read and start studying God’s Word on your own time here on earth, through the rest of your lives, I want to encourage you to do so.
In order to love yourself, you need to see yourself the way God see’s you.
Love God, others, self

Matt 22:37-40 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

Deuteronomy 6:5  And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.

Leviticus 19:18 “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love .
1 Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Colossians 1:5 the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel.

1 Thessalonians 1:3 We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.

God expects us to live perfect, just as He is perfect.
People in this world say’s that we never can be perfect, but they are wrong. When you repent all of your sins to God, He buries it by His son’s Blood, God then remembers them no more, we are then maid perfect in His sight, until we sin again. If you are a Christian and you have taken the steps to get right with God, like hearing God’s Word, confessing to Jesus Christ, Accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, repenting your all, not some, but all of your sins to Him and following that faith through by getting Baptized in water immersion, so you can gain eternal salvation in heaven and to be baptized by the Holy Spirit at the completion of baptism, you then are maid perfect just as He is perfect. The Word perfection in the Bible means to live better. If you are not saved and wish to be, I pray that you will turn away from sin and start living right in the sight of God. He is watching, He see’s what you are doing, if your doing something wrong in secrete, its not, He see’s and knows it all. To get right in the sight of God and to gain eternal salvation, then I would like to encourage you to take these steps in your new faith in Jesus Christ; What does one have to do in order to be forgiven and saved of his sins?  He must
     (1) Hear the Gospel of Christ;
     (2) Believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God;
     (3) Repent of all his past sins;
     (4) Confess that Christ is God’s Son;
     (5) Be baptized for the remission of sins.
When he does this, he is added by the Lord to His church (Acts 2:41,47).  He is born again (John 3:3-5; 2 Corinthians 5:17).  He is in Christ where all spiritual blessings are to be found. (Ephesians 1:3; Galatians 3:26,27).  In short, he is a Christian (Acts 11:26; 26:28; 1 Peter 4:16). If you love and care about God, then you need to love and not just for others, but your self as well. If you just learned how to love and care for yourself and learned how to care for God? Then I want to encourage you to follow the steps that was mentioned,so you can be with God for all eternity in heaven Lets close in prayer.