Topic: Love
Focus: Getting rid of the cow in the road
1 John 4:7-8 (NKJV) Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
Self-hatred is one of the core reasons people become depressed and turn to substance abuse, eating disorders, isolation, and self-harm. Somewhere along the way you chose to believe things about yourself that were painful. These impressions made you feel abnormal, so you began compensating in abnormal ways. Through the spirit of deception that is attached to depression and all forms of self-abuse, you somehow believed that these methods would improve your ability to cope with your circumstances. Well, they didn’t, did they?
When you’ve been in a pattern of allowing your thoughts and emotions to rule the decisions you make—it’s hard to adapt to the concept of developing new and healthy habits.
Making a full recovery is real work and requires a lot of discipline. It’s important during this time that you keep reminding yourself of the steps you’ve made in the right direction. You are the one who will benefit most as you continue to move forward. So many of your wounds still need attention and healing.
There are two critical areas you may not have dealt with yet. One, is your need to be healed of the self-image that you are unlovable. The other, is your need to be loved—by yourself. These are two primary factors that have contributed to your condition.
In John 10:10, Jesus exposes the spirit of deception, who is satan. In this verse, Jesus refers to satan as ‘the thief’, when He says, “The thief comes to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” That’s the truth. The thief has already spent a lot of time trying to steal from you, kill you, and destroy you—or you wouldn’t be reading this. In the rest of the verse Jesus goes on to say, “I am come that you may have life, and have it more abundantly.” Abundant life is not depression, dependency, and self-abuse.
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If self-hatred is a core factor that caused you to take the path you took—then the only lasting way for you to go in the opposite direction—is through finding the ability to see yourself as lovable and learning to love yourself.
When your life has been unhappy and you haven’t been successful in relationships, it’s common to blame others—either as the cause—or for not being able to fix you. All the while, the real problem lies in your inability to love yourself—which is actually preventing you from being able to love others properly and have healthy, balanced relationships.
In Ephesians 5:28-29, Jesus described the fact that a husband should love his wife as he loves himself and takes care of himself. Jesus was stating a simple, but profound truth: The importance of a person being able to love their self—so that they can love others.
If you haven’t found the ability to love yourself—you won’t be very good at loving someone else. It’s also pretty likely when you aren’t able to love yourself, that you will attract people who have the same kind of problem…someone who probably never learned to love their self either. It’s not very easy for two people with self-hate to be good at loving each other.
So you’re stuck. There is a cow in the middle of the road. The cow is your hatred toward yourself. The cow needs to get out of the way before anyone is going to be able to move ahead.
If you aren’t able to see yourself as lovable by any other means, maybe you need to think of yourself as ‘someone else’. Literally imagine ‘you’ as another person. Picture a vulnerable child. Is that child lovable? Of course it is. Are you capable of loving that child? Yes, you are. Start there. Nurture that child. Find out who that child is. Get to know the good healthy things that child could enjoy. Start building a new interest in that child—who is you. Show that child some love. It’s time to let go of all the memories, accusations, and excuses.
Whatever reason you have claimed as your excuse for self-hatred is not justified. God commands us to love as He loves. God made you—God loves you. God is Love—and you are lovable. If God loves you, you can love yourself, too.
Declaration: I will find new strength by embracing the fact that God made me lovable. I will see myself as He sees me and will no longer hate what he made me to be.
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All NEW STRENGTH posts are Copyright by Christina Cook Lee 2012. Please request permission to re-post or re-blog.