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Chapter 18
Love, An Essential Ingredient
Loving Yourself
Loving yourself is an essential part of your walk of sanctification. It is
how God intended for you to live your life. It is the only way that you
can live the victorious Christian life that both you and the Lord would
like you to live.
Through the previous chapters the act of loving yourself has been
woven into the principles and scriptures. In this chapter I will bring to
the forefront and summarize the concept of loving yourself.
I want to emphasize that it is of great importance that this chapter be
understood in context with the rest of this book and in conjunction
with everything I have said therein.
Otherwise you might misperceive what I am saying. For instance, if
you only read this chapter, you might conclude that I don't think that
we have a sin nature. But when you read the entire book you know
that is not my position.
At War With Yourself
When you are at war with yourself, you are crippled. This war is
destructive because it is not how God intended for you to live. Living
at war with yourself brings destruction.
A Truce
The war needs to come to an end. You need to make peace with
yourself. You need to stop judging yourself. You need to forgive
yourself and be forgiven for this. You need to begin to walk out a new
life of cleaning up the messes you make whenever you judge yourself.
Because you have been doing this for so long, walking in judgment of
yourself has been a well-worn path. It will take time for this habitual
way of living to recede. Because it is so automatic and prevalent, you
will need to be vigilant.
You need to listen to your Treasure Inside continually. You will feel
the Big Hurt whenever you judge yourself, because your Treasure
Inside will tell you about it. When you feel the Big Hurt, you will know
you need to forgive and be forgiven.
More Than A Truce
However, ending the war is not enough. In a truce the parties have
simply ceased to be actively at war. A truce does not mean the
parties are friendly, and it definitely does not mean they are so
positively disposed towards each other that they love each other.
So you must move beyond a truce (a lack of the bad) to loving and
blessing yourself (the presence of the good). You need to begin to
relate to yourself the way God relates towards you.
He loves you, and you are to do the same to your Treasure Inside. If
you either do not or cannot keep the second great commandment of
Jesus to love yourself, life will not go well for you.
Loving Yourself Is How God Intended
For You To Live
your neighbor in exactly the same way that you love yourself, and to
love yourself with the same kind of love that you love God (agape).
God didn't just say to love the Holy Spirit that is in you, although you
are to do that too. He also said to love yourself! You!
God Knows How Reality Works
Remember that God's commandments are simply descriptions of how
the spiritual world works. If we do things that are contrary to what
these commandments say, we will suffer.
With this in mind, it shouldn't be any surprise that life does not go well
for us when we break this commandment to love ourselves. This is
such a central commandment that it is one of the commandments
upon which hang all the Law and the Prophets!
Loving Yourself Makes Life Work!
God created you, and He knows your frame. You are made in His
image, and God is love. This is the reason why He commanded you
to love yourself.
Because these are so enormously important and so central to our
Christian walk, Satan has worked very diligently to cause each of us
to judge ourselves and to hate ourselves, and thus cause The Wall of
separation.
Giving Yourself The Blessing
Chapter 10, "Your Worst Trauma," discusses "The Blessing," which
is the "good" that we all need as children and we all continue to need
daily as adults, or we will be wounded.
Part of living in a loving relationship with yourself is to give yourself
"The Blessing"! Jesus will always do this, but you also need to. The
part of you that is your Treasure Inside wants and needs your love.
I encourage you to review that part of Chapter 9, "There Is Buried
Treasure." The genuine giving of The Blessing to another person
demonstrates that you care enough about them to spend time with
them and to be a student of who they are.
Doing this for another person says that you want to get to know them,
and that you are thrilled with who God made them to be. This also
needs to be your attitude towards yourself!
An Example From My Life
This idea of loving myself was absolutely foreign to me. For example,
I used to see my body as a problem whenever it got in the way of my
plans.
When my body became tired, I would whip it to get it to do what I
wanted it to do. Or if I got a side ache when I was running, I would
rebuke the pain. I didn't understand that my body was simply telling
me the status of what was going on inside. When there was pain,
there was a problem.
Now I find myself listening to my body. When it isn't feeling good, it is
not "bad." Rather, if my body is fussing, it is simply telling me that
there is a problem. Now I stop and listen to it. I am its friend, not its
foe, and vice versa. I sympathize with it, and seek to find out what is
wrong. Then I do what I can to fix the problem.
When the problem is fixed the pain stops. We (our Head and our
Treasure Inside) are in this thing (life) together.
Others Are Drawn To You When You
Love Yourself
I am sure that you have met people whom you immediately like. When
this happens, you have read their heart and like what you sense. In
the same way, others read your heart.
When you love yourself, you will want others to meet the real you. It
is as though you are saying, "Here I am. I love me. You will too." You
subconsciously broadcast this, and others sense this message.
Others Reject You When You Reject
Yourself
On the other hand, when you hate yourself, you try to hide who you
really are. You expect that if other people see who you really are, they
won't like you. After all, you don't like you. You subconsciously
broadcast a message that says, "Please don't get too close to me. I
hate me. If you find out who I really am, you will hate me too."
When other people sense these subliminal messages, they find
themselves feeling about you the same way you feel about yourself.
They like you, or they dislike you. They find themselves acting
towards you in accordance with your feelings about
yourself, even though they may not understand why they like you or
dislike you.
Inside-Out
Therefore we are to live life inside-out. Most of us have been living life
outside-in. We have only trusted our intellect and willpower, which
are those parts of us of which we are conscious and over which we
can exert control. We have distrusted what is below our level of
consciousness and not subject to our purposeful control. We have
tried to live as though those parts in our Treasure Inside do not exist.
This outside-in way of living has not worked very well, because God
did not design us to operate that way.
The truth is that the largest part of who we really are lies in our
Treasure Inside, including our ability to commune with Him. God
always intended for us to live inside-out.
Summary
Unfortunately, most of us have believed the lies spoken to us by the
World and Satan, and have therefore harshly judged ourselves.
Because we have believed these lies, we have been looking inside
ourselves for things to kill, instead of for things to love to life.
We need to be collaborative with our Treasure Inside, rather than
adversarial. We are in this together (us and our Treasure Inside), and
we need to be friends, not enemies.
Life will only go well for you if you align yourself with God's
description of spiritual reality. Loving yourself is one of the
fundamental pillars upon which all of spiritual reality rests (Matthew
22:39).
If you do not love yourself, destruction will be present in your life.
Loving yourself is part of God's plan for you, and it is the only way
that you can become all He has intended for you to be.
Note to Internet Readers:
Hopefully, by now you are coming to believe that you can
be set free, and that God knows that you are not rotten to
the core and beyond repair. Much more than that, He wants
to set free the image of God that resides within you. That
part of you is meant to be a gift to the world.
He didn't say to "make" light shine from you, or to fake it by
doing good works to look good. He was referring to good
fruit from a good root. That means there must exist a part of
you that is from God that will shine forth and glorify Him.
Most people who struggle in life see themselves as too bad
to possibly do this. This scripture is not a taunt or a tease.
It must be possible, or Matthew would not have written it.
Being set free to be the person who He has made you to be
is the goal.
The rest of this book will direct you in this quest.
An Aid to your New Life In Jesus
I have composed a 12 Step program that you can follow to walk out
you healing. I would recommend that you buy the book so that you
can always have it at your side as you pursue your new life in Jesus.
It truly is a new life, and these 12 steps will keep you on track. Click
here or on the left to see the 12 steps.
The Rest Of The Story
This has been the last book chapter posted on the web. Now that you
have read many key chapters, I hope that you have discovered some
valuable insights for yourself.
As I have said before, there is much more yet.
You have read less than one half of what the book contains. What
has not been included online are several additional very important
concepts that you need to understand, as well as detailed biblical
support for the whole book. I am adamant that anything I say needs
to be supported by the Bible.
It would be a huge benefit to you to buy the print version of the whole
book. That way you will have all the information, and you can have
the information readily accessible by your side.
You can buy the book by clicking here (or in the list on the top left
side of the page)
Unconditional Guarantee
If you buy the book, and the rest of it does not bless you; you can
return it for a full refund.
Putting This In Perspective
One alternative is to now do nothing, to simply go on living as
you have been, and to continue to struggle in the same ways you
have. Since you have been motivated to read these 6 chapters, I
suspect that doing nothing is not your top choice.
Psychotherapy is another option. However, it is expensive
(costs between $70 and $150 per hour, and it usually takes a large
number of sessions), and it does not come with a money back
guarantee. Besides, psychotherapy doesn't work. You may already
know that.
Your best choice is to learn how Jesus provided for your
healing, and then engage in His process. You can do this by buying
the book. At a one time cost of $21, it costs about the same as one 15
minute psychotherapy session. And if the book doesn't work, you
can get your money back!
Why The Book Isn't All Free
There are several reasons why we have not included the whole book
on our website.
Some reasons are technical. For example, the book itself has many
footnotes, which are supplied to support and enrich what is said in
the main body of text. Unfortunately, the footnote feature of Microsoft
Word is not supported by our website development software, and so
that rich additional information is missing from what you have read.
Another reason is financial. This is a ministry, and revenue from the
book helps support this website and our other outreaches.
Consider Making A Donation
We believe that all Christians desperately need the message of
Christ's healing.
Click here to make a donation.
Copyright 2004 Edward Kurath
Love, An Essential Ingredient
Loving Yourself
Loving yourself is an essential part of your walk of sanctification. It is
how God intended for you to live your life. It is the only way that you
can live the victorious Christian life that both you and the Lord would
like you to live.
Through the previous chapters the act of loving yourself has been
woven into the principles and scriptures. In this chapter I will bring to
the forefront and summarize the concept of loving yourself.
I want to emphasize that it is of great importance that this chapter be
understood in context with the rest of this book and in conjunction
with everything I have said therein.
Otherwise you might misperceive what I am saying. For instance, if
you only read this chapter, you might conclude that I don't think that
we have a sin nature. But when you read the entire book you know
that is not my position.
At War With Yourself
When you are at war with yourself, you are crippled. This war is
destructive because it is not how God intended for you to live. Living
at war with yourself brings destruction.
- You are a house divided against itself.
- You deny legitimate needs that you have, or you refuse to have
your legitimate needs met in legitimate ways because that would
be "selfish." - These unmet needs then drive you to fill them in illegitimate
ways. - You are denied the use of the gifts God has placed in you.
- You are empty inside.
- You judge yourself and reap the consequences of this sin.
- You feel the pain of the Big Hurt which results from this
alienation from yourself. - You live in fear of the Big Hurt and are driven to find ways to
avoid feeling it. - You are in bondage to these forces and cannot live the life that
God intended. - You are the "wretched man" in Romans 7:15-24.
A Truce
The war needs to come to an end. You need to make peace with
yourself. You need to stop judging yourself. You need to forgive
yourself and be forgiven for this. You need to begin to walk out a new
life of cleaning up the messes you make whenever you judge yourself.
Because you have been doing this for so long, walking in judgment of
yourself has been a well-worn path. It will take time for this habitual
way of living to recede. Because it is so automatic and prevalent, you
will need to be vigilant.
You need to listen to your Treasure Inside continually. You will feel
the Big Hurt whenever you judge yourself, because your Treasure
Inside will tell you about it. When you feel the Big Hurt, you will know
you need to forgive and be forgiven.
More Than A Truce
However, ending the war is not enough. In a truce the parties have
simply ceased to be actively at war. A truce does not mean the
parties are friendly, and it definitely does not mean they are so
positively disposed towards each other that they love each other.
So you must move beyond a truce (a lack of the bad) to loving and
blessing yourself (the presence of the good). You need to begin to
relate to yourself the way God relates towards you.
He loves you, and you are to do the same to your Treasure Inside. If
you either do not or cannot keep the second great commandment of
Jesus to love yourself, life will not go well for you.
Loving Yourself Is How God Intended
For You To Live
" 'You shall love the lord your God with all your heart, with all
your soul, and with all your mind." This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like it: "You shall love your
neighbor as yourself." On these two commandments hang all
the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:37-40, NKJV).
your neighbor in exactly the same way that you love yourself, and to
love yourself with the same kind of love that you love God (agape).
God didn't just say to love the Holy Spirit that is in you, although you
are to do that too. He also said to love yourself! You!
God Knows How Reality Works
Remember that God's commandments are simply descriptions of how
the spiritual world works. If we do things that are contrary to what
these commandments say, we will suffer.
With this in mind, it shouldn't be any surprise that life does not go well
for us when we break this commandment to love ourselves. This is
such a central commandment that it is one of the commandments
upon which hang all the Law and the Prophets!
Loving Yourself Makes Life Work!
God created you, and He knows your frame. You are made in His
image, and God is love. This is the reason why He commanded you
to love yourself.
- Only when you love yourself can you love others.
- Only when you love yourself can you truly love God.
- Only when your own cup is full can you freely give to others.
- Only when you love yourself can you fellowship with God.
- Only when you love yourself can you be sanctified.
- Only when you love yourself can you live the victorious
Christian life. - Only when you love yourself and the gifts God has placed in you
can you be all He intended for you to be. - Only when you love yourself does Satan lose.
Because these are so enormously important and so central to our
Christian walk, Satan has worked very diligently to cause each of us
to judge ourselves and to hate ourselves, and thus cause The Wall of
separation.
Giving Yourself The Blessing
Chapter 10, "Your Worst Trauma," discusses "The Blessing," which
is the "good" that we all need as children and we all continue to need
daily as adults, or we will be wounded.
Part of living in a loving relationship with yourself is to give yourself
"The Blessing"! Jesus will always do this, but you also need to. The
part of you that is your Treasure Inside wants and needs your love.
I encourage you to review that part of Chapter 9, "There Is Buried
Treasure." The genuine giving of The Blessing to another person
demonstrates that you care enough about them to spend time with
them and to be a student of who they are.
Doing this for another person says that you want to get to know them,
and that you are thrilled with who God made them to be. This also
needs to be your attitude towards yourself!
An Example From My Life
This idea of loving myself was absolutely foreign to me. For example,
I used to see my body as a problem whenever it got in the way of my
plans.
When my body became tired, I would whip it to get it to do what I
wanted it to do. Or if I got a side ache when I was running, I would
rebuke the pain. I didn't understand that my body was simply telling
me the status of what was going on inside. When there was pain,
there was a problem.
Now I find myself listening to my body. When it isn't feeling good, it is
not "bad." Rather, if my body is fussing, it is simply telling me that
there is a problem. Now I stop and listen to it. I am its friend, not its
foe, and vice versa. I sympathize with it, and seek to find out what is
wrong. Then I do what I can to fix the problem.
When the problem is fixed the pain stops. We (our Head and our
Treasure Inside) are in this thing (life) together.
Others Are Drawn To You When You
Love Yourself
I am sure that you have met people whom you immediately like. When
this happens, you have read their heart and like what you sense. In
the same way, others read your heart.
When you love yourself, you will want others to meet the real you. It
is as though you are saying, "Here I am. I love me. You will too." You
subconsciously broadcast this, and others sense this message.
Others Reject You When You Reject
Yourself
On the other hand, when you hate yourself, you try to hide who you
really are. You expect that if other people see who you really are, they
won't like you. After all, you don't like you. You subconsciously
broadcast a message that says, "Please don't get too close to me. I
hate me. If you find out who I really am, you will hate me too."
When other people sense these subliminal messages, they find
themselves feeling about you the same way you feel about yourself.
They like you, or they dislike you. They find themselves acting
towards you in accordance with your feelings about
yourself, even though they may not understand why they like you or
dislike you.
Inside-Out
Therefore we are to live life inside-out. Most of us have been living life
outside-in. We have only trusted our intellect and willpower, which
are those parts of us of which we are conscious and over which we
can exert control. We have distrusted what is below our level of
consciousness and not subject to our purposeful control. We have
tried to live as though those parts in our Treasure Inside do not exist.
This outside-in way of living has not worked very well, because God
did not design us to operate that way.
The truth is that the largest part of who we really are lies in our
Treasure Inside, including our ability to commune with Him. God
always intended for us to live inside-out.
Summary
Unfortunately, most of us have believed the lies spoken to us by the
World and Satan, and have therefore harshly judged ourselves.
Because we have believed these lies, we have been looking inside
ourselves for things to kill, instead of for things to love to life.
We need to be collaborative with our Treasure Inside, rather than
adversarial. We are in this together (us and our Treasure Inside), and
we need to be friends, not enemies.
Life will only go well for you if you align yourself with God's
description of spiritual reality. Loving yourself is one of the
fundamental pillars upon which all of spiritual reality rests (Matthew
22:39).
If you do not love yourself, destruction will be present in your life.
Loving yourself is part of God's plan for you, and it is the only way
that you can become all He has intended for you to be.
Note to Internet Readers:
Hopefully, by now you are coming to believe that you can
be set free, and that God knows that you are not rotten to
the core and beyond repair. Much more than that, He wants
to set free the image of God that resides within you. That
part of you is meant to be a gift to the world.
- "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see
your good works and glorify your Father in heaven"
(Matthew 5:16, NKJV).
He didn't say to "make" light shine from you, or to fake it by
doing good works to look good. He was referring to good
fruit from a good root. That means there must exist a part of
you that is from God that will shine forth and glorify Him.
Most people who struggle in life see themselves as too bad
to possibly do this. This scripture is not a taunt or a tease.
It must be possible, or Matthew would not have written it.
Being set free to be the person who He has made you to be
is the goal.
The rest of this book will direct you in this quest.
An Aid to your New Life In Jesus
I have composed a 12 Step program that you can follow to walk out
you healing. I would recommend that you buy the book so that you
can always have it at your side as you pursue your new life in Jesus.
It truly is a new life, and these 12 steps will keep you on track. Click
here or on the left to see the 12 steps.
The Rest Of The Story
This has been the last book chapter posted on the web. Now that you
have read many key chapters, I hope that you have discovered some
valuable insights for yourself.
As I have said before, there is much more yet.
You have read less than one half of what the book contains. What
has not been included online are several additional very important
concepts that you need to understand, as well as detailed biblical
support for the whole book. I am adamant that anything I say needs
to be supported by the Bible.
It would be a huge benefit to you to buy the print version of the whole
book. That way you will have all the information, and you can have
the information readily accessible by your side.
You can buy the book by clicking here (or in the list on the top left
side of the page)
Unconditional Guarantee
If you buy the book, and the rest of it does not bless you; you can
return it for a full refund.
Putting This In Perspective
One alternative is to now do nothing, to simply go on living as
you have been, and to continue to struggle in the same ways you
have. Since you have been motivated to read these 6 chapters, I
suspect that doing nothing is not your top choice.
Psychotherapy is another option. However, it is expensive
(costs between $70 and $150 per hour, and it usually takes a large
number of sessions), and it does not come with a money back
guarantee. Besides, psychotherapy doesn't work. You may already
know that.
Your best choice is to learn how Jesus provided for your
healing, and then engage in His process. You can do this by buying
the book. At a one time cost of $21, it costs about the same as one 15
minute psychotherapy session. And if the book doesn't work, you
can get your money back!
Why The Book Isn't All Free
There are several reasons why we have not included the whole book
on our website.
Some reasons are technical. For example, the book itself has many
footnotes, which are supplied to support and enrich what is said in
the main body of text. Unfortunately, the footnote feature of Microsoft
Word is not supported by our website development software, and so
that rich additional information is missing from what you have read.
Another reason is financial. This is a ministry, and revenue from the
book helps support this website and our other outreaches.
Consider Making A Donation
We believe that all Christians desperately need the message of
Christ's healing.
Click here to make a donation.
Copyright 2004 Edward Kurath
Divinely Designed
Being changed into the image of Jesus
Being changed into the image of Jesus
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