It's a commandment we all know pretty well: Love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-40). The love your neighbor thing we get for the most part: We're supposed to love and serve others and put them above ourselves. But what does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? This statement implies that in order for us to love others, we have to love ourselves too. What does it mean to love ourselves? Loving ourselves is not self-absorption, vanity and pride. It is recognizing that we were created in God's image for His glory. It is realizing that we are beautiful, whole and righteous in the eyes of God. It is accepting who we are, trusting God doesn't make any mistakes. It is receiving His love, grace, and mercy and living in freedom from the ugliness of sin, guilt, and shame. In his book Blue Like Jazz, author Donald Miller writes about when God showed him what it means to love ourselves, "…He was saying I would never talk to my neighbor the way I talked to myself, and that somehow I had come to believe it was wrong to kick other people around but it was okay to do it to myself. It was as if God had put me in a plane and flown me over myself so I could see how I was connected, all the neighborhoods that were falling apart because I would not let myself receive love from myself, from others, or from God…So I stopped. And I mean that. I stopped hating myself. It no longer felt right. It wasn't manly or healthy, and I cut it out." Students: I pray that you will learn to love yourselves. I pray that in learning to love yourselves, you will experience the life-changing fullness of God's love and the love of others. And finally, I pray that your love for yourself will pour over into a love for God and for others that knows no bounds!
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