I have been wrestling lately with this idea of self love. We live in a society that screams from every corner about having self love. Which I think is extremely important! However, all throughout the Gospels Jesus so clearly says to deny yourself. So, I have been wrestling with how do you love yourself and deny yourself at the same time. Go grab your Bible cause I have some thoughts about it that Holy Spirit has been showing me in Scripture.
So, I want to start with the concepts of confidence and humility. It seems that they are polar opposites. That confidence is loving yourself and humility is denying yourself, preferring others ahead of yourself. Which in Scripture we are encouraged to both walk humbly and confidently. But what does godly confidence look like and what does godly humility look like? 2 Corinthians 3:4-6 tells us that the confidence we have through Christ is that we are not sufficient in our own selves. We are only made sufficient through the Holy Spirit and Jesus dwelling and working in and through our lives. He is the one in whom we can have our confidence. It is not anything you can do, because a part from God there is nothing good inside of us. It’s when you look to things of this world like your appearance, your job, your money, your knowledge, your college degree, etc for your confidence that you begin to walk in pride. However, true godly confidence is TOTAL DEPENDENCY ON GOD. When you live in total dependency on God and you have total confidence in Him. That He will complete the good work He started, you have no way to boast in yourself. You have no way to take credit or glory when you know where your source came from. 2 Corinthians 10:17 says to let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.
Also, when you walk in godly confidence you don’t have room for insecurity or for comparison, because you know it is not you but God working through you. When you surrender to Holy Spirit and allow Him to show you who you are in Him, and which part of the body you are created to be, and fully depend on Him to show you how to be that part; you have no room for comparison. You know it’s not your efforts it’s God’s power working through you. 2 Corinthians 10:12 says that when they compare themselves to one another they are without understanding. When you compare yourself you are walking in a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding of who you are in Christ, because if you really knew who you were in God you wouldn’t want to be anyone else! (Yall can tell i’ve been reading 2 Corinthians lol IT’S SO GOOD!!)
The crazy thing is, is that humility and confidence are actually the same thing in the kingdom of God (in my opinion). Humility also looks like TOTAL DEPENDENCE ON GOD. It’s not a pity party or tearing yourself down or down playing every time someone tells you something good about yourself. (That’s just annoying and we all need to learn how to just say thank you to a compliment okuuurrtt ain’t nothing more frustrating than complimenting someone and they immediately have a disclaimer. JUST SAY THANK YOU) Anyways…Humility ultimately looks like knowing that in your own strength you can’t do anything, but through Christ all things are possible for you to do, to believe, to speak, to know. Humility looks like boasting in your weakness (2 Corinthians 11:30), because Christ’s strength is evident through our weaknesses. Humility is when you don’t attach your confidence to what you do or who loves you, but you are steadfast in knowing that Jesus loves you and His opinion of you never changes.
Matthew 11:28-30 says come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. It says that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. That doesn’t mean life is always going to be easy. However, when you walk in the confidence of the Lord and the humility of the Lord you know that it is not you having to face things on your own. When you live a life of total dependency on God, you live in peace, He gives you the strength to carry your burdens so that they do become light, He gives you friends and a church community that also comes along side you and helps you carry those burdens, and He wants you to live in total dependence on Him so that those things can be light. We were never created to receive glory only God was. When we take things on and try to carry them ourselves we can easily get into pride and false humility, and the reason that’s weighty is because in those things we are ultimately trying to glorify ourselves. Glory is heavy. And glory is something we weren’t made to carry. This passage also doesn’t mean we stop laboring. It says come to me all who LABOR. So laboring is still important. We just have to labor from a place of total dependency on God. Because in TOTAL DEPENDENCY ON GOD, we will work and labor from a place of rest, because we aren’t working from our own strength or energy.
When you are working from a place of rest you are loving yourself. You are taking care of yourself because you are allowing the Holy Spirit to do the work, and you are being the vessel. As Christians we are called to deny ourselves. We are called to prefer others’ interest above our own, and help those in need. However, we are also called to love our neighbors as ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves well and allow Holy Spirit to pour into us we won’t be able to pour anything out to others, or actually love others well.
I just wanted to encourage total dependency on God. Pray about it and ask Holy Spirit to help you do that. He wants to help you!! He’s good like that 🙂 And talk about it with the community around you. Hold each other accountable to total dependency on God, help carry each other’s burdens, be open and honest about your own burdens so other’s can help you carry them, call each other higher when you see each other trying to do things on your own. That’s the great thing about Christianity is that we are a family and families help each other out.
Liv
