Dying to Self (Self love part 2)

This is part two and the conclusion to Self-love. Really took a while to post this because not because I did not have content but I had to experience it for my self. When this first came to me I had no idea that dying to self will take so much from me. It is freeing yourself to make room for God. I had to start letting go of a lot of things was it painful? Very but this is the point where I had to start learning that true love is about letting go and if I want to love as the Father does, I have to let go be completely free of self to take on God's own life. Remember, we have to die to self to be born again, to be alive in Christ. For there is no life outside Him.

You may go on for a long time doing things outside God's way, but it will all come crashing down because what formed the foundation is not there. Guys I want you to refer back to part one (self-love) of this write up it will all make sense. Part one looked at loving one's self and is that really possible if we don't have the love of the Father.

The concept of love is from the Father because love is who He is (God is love 1Jonh 4:8). So, why are we looking for love outside God? The devil presents us with lies in the guise of love, false images of love and we take it because we all have this aching in us to love and be loved. At the end of the day, the issue of the world is love. Love is lacking that is why we are suffering all the problems we face today. True love is lacking. God saw the problem(s) the world is facing and He gave a solution. He loved and He gave us Jesus Christ so we don't have to wander aimlessly looking for the love we lost from the beginning. It is this searching that makes people take a semblance of love. Honestly, we are all searching for something, for purpose, for meaning to life, to know who we are........ Whatever it may be there is always this longing to know more, to want more out of life. So we keep searching, many don't know the way. The only time your life can make meaning is to go back to your creator and the way is through Jesus Christ for He is the way (John 14:6).

So, let's go back and rethink our decision to start loving ourselves. Instead, let us start learning to love God and He will teach us to love so we can die to self rather than love self. Self is flesh, it does not have good desires. Things we think are self-love is actually self-hurt and these desires will actually lead to us losing that self that we think we can love with our own strength. Which may eventually lead to an Identity crisis. Not knowing who you are, this can fill us with a lot of hate, bitterness and unforgiveness.......

Most times, we find it difficult to forgive ourselves for things we have done or things others have done to us. Some work hard not to be things they have seen or experiences that have caused hurts in their lives. It could be hurt by their parents, family, friends or even strangers. We carry all those negative energies and put it into working hard to be those things we hate and do not want to become. Anything done from a place of anger and bitterness is only setting you up for failure, more bitterness and rejection. This is quite different from using your experiences to build your self from a place of healing. There has to be healing and closure for bad experiences to birth something profitable I digress.......

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It is very important when I say it is better to die to self than to love self. We all need to learn what love is all over again because we have been fed with lies disguised as love. Sometimes, what we know might not even be harmful, they really help you to be a better person but why not add that with the love of God, they make a better formula, or yet still, why not choose God first and allow whatever vices you employ be under the standards of God. Anything outside God is a NO.

All the behaviour change you want, the habits you want to stop, the better 'you' you aim to be. Christ can give you that. God teaches us how to love and when I say love, I mean true love. and this love gives grows in us all the fruits we need to deal with all the issues self-love cannot bring us (Fruits of the Spirit; Galatians 5:22-23).

As humans, we want validation from others and whether we know or not, people's words affect us consciously or unconsciously. And how can we deal with seeds from people's words that is tearing down our image unconsciously? It is by taking God's word and allowing it to heal, teach and uproot bad seeds planted in us.

The main point of this series is to teach love from God's perspective. So remember; "I learn to love God, and He teaches me to love myself". I learn to love myself by knowing the love of God. True self-love is gotten by dying to self and to die to self is to be alive in Christ and in Him, we get the image of perfection we all are thriving for. Christ is our perfect example of what love is about.

So people, die to self and be alive in Christ. This is what real self-love is all about.

Love ya'll.

2 Corinthians 12:9