Like I mentioned in my last blog, something the Lord has been teaching me lately and something that I have been trying to press into is learning to love others and love them better. But what the Lord has revealed to me through that is that I cannot love others until I learn to truly love myself. This is something I’ve never really given much thought to. I figured I loved myself enough to get by and the phrase “self love” always made me cringe. It’s something that was not really touched on much in church growing up. The focus was always on loving and serving others, which is great, but the idea of loving myself was never really a focus. But the Bible says, “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39) This is the second greatest commandment in the Bible. To reiterate: we should love others the way we love ourselves. But what if we don’t really love ourselves. What then. Then we are missing the second half of the second greatest commandment that the Lord has given us and from that we cant obey the first half. We can only love others to the degree we love ourselves. And if I’m being honest, I feel like this might just be one of the greatest problems of our generation…loving ourselves. That’s why we are so bad at loving others. We haven’t started at the root. We can’t encourage others because we are feeling insecure ourselves, whether we can admit it or not.
And shout out to my single people. How do you expect to love someone in a relationship if you can’t love yourself in your singleness. The lack of love you have toward yourself that you think will be left behind when you enter into a relationship will only be brought into it and made manifest. This is something I had never even really thought about before. Instead I have allowed myself to get irritated at God or myself for not being in a relationship when in reality He has really placed me in the perfect season to learn the first step of love.
So to figure out how to start loving myself I have to first figure out what love is. In 1 John 4:8 it says, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
So step two, if God is love, then who is God. This is what I have been trying to dive deep into this week and I really challenge you to do the same. The Bible is a whole book FULL of who God is, what He’s done, what He’s like, etc. It reveals so much of His character. He is compassionate. He is overwhelmingly merciful. He is so just and fights for justice. He gives himself up for the people He loves. He loves and serves others RADICALLY. He delights in community and us pressing into the community He has placed around us. He is all knowing…like ALL knowing. We can’t even begin to know everything He knows. It’s crazy. And He’s oh so much more. We can just continue to learn more and more about Him everyday for the rest of our lives. What a beautiful relationship to be had.
Now as we begin to build this relationship, learn more about the Lords character, and fill ourselves up with love (because God is love), then we can begin to love ourselves from that and take the things the Father says about us and believe in them and walk in them confidently.
And from our full cup we can drench the people around us in the sweet sweet love of God.
And maybe from that they can begin to know what it’s like to love themselves too and we can break this cycle of self hate within our culture and begin to cultivate a new culture of love. Love, not as in being nice and respectful to others, but as in knowing the love of God and from that loving ourselves unashamedly, and then loving others as radically and sacrificially as the Lord does. That’s a kind of world I want to be apart of.
So thankful for all the Lord is teaching me and has taught me already this past month. Yes, its already been a month. Wild.
Thank you for keeping up with my journey. Y’all are all a blessing.
Also, I still have about $4,000 left to fundraise. Please be in prayer over that and if you feel lead to donate you can do that through this blog. Thank you!!
And some little updates for you:
My team found out that we get to stay at the same foster home we have been working at for the next month, so we are really excited about that.
Tomorrow (Wednesday), we will be headed to debrief for about 5 days at another hostel in town to have a little change of scenery, to discuss how the first month on the field has been, and to have some time to rest and recharge for our second month.
Fun fact- we’ve had a little bed bug outbreak in our hostel, so we’ve been washing clothes and putting things in bags this morning to get everything clean before we leave. Fun times lol.
Lastly, just thought I’d throw this in there…so so thankful for my team. They make the hard days so much easier and make being here feel more like home. God has been so faithful by placing them in my life.
all the love,
Kenni Grace
