Love yourself? Huh?

The world we live in emphasizes man and his potential. It propagates a pathetic desire for recognition, popularity and acceptance. It is so sad to hear these things being preached from pulpits worldwide. Walk into any “Christian” bookshop and you will find many titles that deal with this topic. Books like; Love yourself, The art of learning to love yourself, Self-love, the dynamite force to success fill the shelves. Everywhere we look it is all about self. Advertising campaigns are focused on letting you believe that you need their product, that you will look better with it, feel better with it, live better with it. Pastors shout out; “come to Jesus and everything will be all right.” Will it be? What does the Bible say? Well, if everything is going all right after you got saved, ask yourself; “did I really get saved?” because the word guarantee us that things will not be all right. Php 1:29 For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, - It was granted us, a gift, to suffer for His sake. Mat 10:22 makes this promise to us – “you will be hated for My names sake” Does this sound like the problem free life we are promised. Definitely not, but we are promised these things because it is part of the religion of self. They want us to feel good about ourselves, but we should not, we should realise that we are vile sinners in the presence of God’s holiness, that we fall short of the glory. We do not have any righteousness of our own. If it wasn’t for the righteousness of Christ that was imputed on us, God would not even be willing to look our way. Its like throwing a blanket over yourself. When someone looks at you, all they see is the blanket. But under the blanket is the real you. We are sinners, dirty rotten people, but Christ throws His righteousness over us and when God looks at us He sees Christ’s righteousness. How marvellous is that thought, how humbling. Forget about feeling good, forget about having a problem free life, only focus on the God that forgives, is merciful, is in control and loves you. Cry because of your sin daily, beg for forgiveness continuously, and thank God that He does not see you when He looks at you, but that He sees Christ.