The Wellness Revelation 40-Day Journey 보기

Attend to Matters of the Heart

LOVING YOURSELF AND OTHERS

Loving yourself. One overlooked aspect of powerful Christian love, a pure God-love, is the realization that you are called to love yourself well. In God’s eyes, you are endlessly loved and relentlessly pursued. He won’t stop – can’t stop – loving you!

How good are you at loving yourself? I will challenge you with a tough question: If you love God and love yourself, why do you eat yourself into a state of physical weakness? Or malnourish yourself out of fear of getting fat? Why do you overwork yourself into a state of anxiety, stress, and high blood pressure? Or smoke cigarettes that you know are killing you?

When we lose sight of God’s love for us, the enemy will try to get us to sabotage ourselves by turning to idols for comfort. If that doesn’t work, he will tempt us to embrace ourselves as idols.

Thankfully, as Christ's followers, we have been given access to the Holy Spirit, who always stands ready to remind us of God’s love and to equip us to act from that pure love. We must choose to receive and rest in that love so that when the storms come, we will remember and declare who is fighting for us!

Loving others. We are healthy and whole when God’s love flows through our hearts. We can then produce good fruit that nourishes others. When we desire to reflect the beauty of Christ in our hearts and minds, we effectively bear fruit from our hearts first; then, our hands will give that fruit away.

God is calling us to be lavish givers.

Love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control do not start and stop with us. These character traits change us and compel us “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with [our] God” (Micah 6:8). When we see this fruit in our lives, we know that God’s love has indeed changed us from the inside out.

Reflect:

Can you see the fruit of the Spirit in your life? If not, ask a friend how they see the fruit of the Spirit in your life.