Finally Loving Yourself. FLYing. Loving yourself. Loving myself. What is challenging about this concept? I’ve had some time to think about that lately.
Have you read Matthew 19:19, Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, Mark 12:33, Luke 10:27, Romans 13:9 and Galatians 5:14 recently? Here’s Mark 12:30-31 in the Amplified version:
30And you shall love the Lord your God out of and with your whole heart and out of and with all your soul (your life) and out of and with all your mind (with your faculty of thought and your moral understanding) and out of and with all your strength. This is the first and principal commandment.
31The second is like it and is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.
What Believer would hesitate to agree with Mark 12:30? I wholeheartedly love the Lord my God with all of my heart and with all of my soul (my life!) and with all of my mind and with all of my strength, by God’s grace. And what Believer would hesitate to agree with loving my neighbor? Not I. My daily desire is to love my neighbor with God’s love.
Yet, I seem to kind of mentally minimize the significance of Mark 12:31 that describes the command to love my neighbor AS MYSELF. I am to love my neighbor AS MYSELF. As I LOVE MYSELF. There is no greater commandment than these two commandments. No greater. I am to love my neighbor AS MYSELF. Doesn’t that pretty clearly indicate that I am to LOVE MYSELF?
Why, then, is it so challenging to wholeheartedly agree to love myself? Why does it feel selfish or self-focused? I know I’ve asked these very questions earlier in this blog. But, I think that today, the significance of the way that the command to love God and love my neighbor is directly tied to loving myself really hit home with me. Now, Lord, how do You want me to practically apply this revelation in my life?
And, thank You for leading me to Flylady who provokes my thinking and urges me to love myself.
Tags: FLYing
365 Days with Flylady 
June 5, 2011 at 8:07 pm |
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