Finding Peace Through God's Unconditional Love

“I know God loves me, but I don’t love myself.”

This statement is false.

If you cannot love yourself, you have not accepted God’s unconditional love for you.

In essence, the above statement says, “I know the doctrine which states, ‘God loves me,’ but I don’t really believe it. I do not consider myself to be good enough to be okay or acceptable. I need to be better before I accept myself.”

When you take this position, you have inadvertently placed your love in greater importance than God’s love. You have idolized your own opinion over God’s.

The world says to “love yourself,” but what they actually mean is, “You must look out for yourself because nobody else will look out for you.”

This is actually the opposite of loving yourself. The person who looks out for number one is the person who believes God has placed zero value upon their life, and therefore they must protect themselves at all costs. They may want to be kind to other people, but their kindness is limited by their lack of resources. They will only give out of their surplus. They cannot give sacrificially because that would undermine the core of their survival doctrine:

Protect yourself.

There is a good reason the Bible says,

“Perfect love casts out fear.”

1 John 4:18

And,

“We love because He first loved us.”

1 John 4:19

The world’s version of “self-love” means that you value yourself above others. This kind of “love” is a parody and perversion of true self-love.

You can scream and shout to the world all day long that you are valuable, important, worthy of love, and respect, but nobody will listen because they are busy trying to convince the world of the same thing concerning themselves.

You cannot listen and talk at the same time.

And you cannot give what you don’t have.

If someone is saying, “You MUST value me! " they have no capacity to value you. Such a person is too impoverished in their spirit to give you anything.

Your value and my value come from God.

Only God has the capacity to love us because He does not need us. God gives Himself to us freely out of the abundance of His love.

Our existence is born out of God when He took some of Himself and separated it out from Himself to create us.

God loves us because He loves Himself.

We are an extension of His existence.

Jesus’ contemporaries asked Him,

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment?”

Jesus replied,

“YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’ The second is this: ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Mark 12:30–31 NASB

The two greatest commands are:

• Love God.

• Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

You cannot love your neighbor if you do not love yourself.

And you cannot love God if you don’t believe that He loves you.

That is why John says,

“We love because He first loved us.”

Only God is rich enough in Himself to give anything away.

We cannot love ourselves or anyone else until we first accept that God loves us, right now, as we are.

We cannot earn God’s love. We cannot improve our value through moral or physical achievements.

Our value comes from what God placed inside us from the very beginning.

The apostle Paul reminds us,

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Romans 5:8

It is simply a lie to say,

“I know God loves me, but I don’t love myself.”

If we are to be honest, we would have to say more accurately,

“I know that God says He loves me, but I don’t want to need Him.”

This honest statement reveals the true face of what we are dealing with:

Pride and rebellion.

The good news is that the way to freedom is extremely simple, though it deeply offends our pride.

You only need to accept God’s love for you, and the evidence that you have done this will be that you accept yourself.

The irony is that, while you may think you are giving yourself the easy way out, it is actually hard to humble yourself.

And while you may think that accepting God’s love will turn you into a wild sinner, the reality is that believing God’s love for you will cause you to trust Him and His ways enough to walk in obedience.

Accepting God’s love is the key to victorious, consistent Christian living and the only means by which we can love ourselves and our neighbors in the same way.

Accepting God’s love is the very essence of repentance, which is why John the Baptist said,

“Repent and believe the good news!”

God loves you completely, right now, with no conditions.

Accept it. Accepting God's love is the only difference between those who experience intimacy with God and those who feel like His enemy. If you feel like God's enemy, it is because you are fighting with Him. He is not attacking you.

Receive God's love and you will stop fighting yourself and you will become an agent of God’s love for others. If you need help receiving God's love, reach out for a prayer session today >> EMAIL ME HERE