I can’t find my car keys. My phone is who knows where. We’re late. Someone can’t find a shoe, and I have a project on deadline. I’ve dropped all the balls in all the familiar ways, which causes me to berate my own little heart not extend love to it.
Blergh.
What’s a try-hard girl to do when she feels like she’s utterly failing and dropping the ball?
The way of Jill is to relentlessly attack my weaknesses, to marinate in my failures, to make very dramatic vows of how I’ll never allow it to get this bad again.
But the way of Jill is not the way of Jesus. Jesus, who is Love and loving to our hearts, offers a different solution. Christ invites us to extend love to ourselves as we are. Not a future, more put-together version of us. The us wrapped up in failure and ball-dropping. That’s what Jesus does: He loves us like crazy and expects us to do the same.
First, let’s all admit that extending love to ourselves sounds weird.
I’m familiar with loving God and others. But extending love my own direction seems awkward, weird, and sort of uncomfortable. It sounds like an all-about-me preoccupation, doing only what makes us happy, and forgetting about others. Yet, we know that this is not love at all. Not the way God defines it.
Let’s take back the definition of love.
God tells us through Paul that love is patient, kind, rejoices in the truth, protects, hopes, trusts, and perseveres. It doesn’t involve envy, boasting, pride, dishonoring others, looking out only for oneself, a quick temper, or keeping a record of wrongs.
From Paul’s definition and Christ Himself, we understand that love is an action verb. It’s what we do: we act with patience, we offer kindness, we rejoice, we protect. Because of love, God sent Christ into the world. Because of love, Jesus went to the cross. Real love has to do with action, movement, and the meeting of needs.
The overflow of Christ in us is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. When Christ is active in us, the first manifestation of His presence is love. But does extend to us or is reserved only for others?
What does God say exactly about extending love to ourselves?
The first three gospels all outline that we are to first love God, then others as we love ourselves. (Matthew 19:19, Mark 12:31, Luke 10:27) Jesus implies that we already love ourselves—again, remembering His definition of love as being patient, kind, rejoicing. In fact, extending love to ourselves is seen as the default. He wired us to actively treat ourselves with kindness, compassion, grace because that’s who He is. And He is Christ in us. It’s our sin-nature that twisted extending love to ourselves as an exercise in selfishness.
Paul also references this idea in Ephesians 5:29 when he says we should care for our bodies “just as Christ does the church.” Isn’t that amazing? How we care for ourselves is a reflection of how Christ cares for His church, and we know that Christ loves and cares for His church like crazy.
How do we practically extend love to ourselves?
We’re patient when we learn something new. We’re kind when we drop all the balls. We are gentle instead of harshly critical. We get excited when we apply God’s truth to our lives. We protect ourselves from negative people who crush our hearts. We offer our soul hope as its anchor. We trust that God has a plan so big and great that even our mess doesn’t negate it. We persevere through the trials and the pain.
Doesn’t extending love to your own heart sound like the best?!?!? So how do we do it?
Receive Christ’s love for you as you are now.
Until we accept His love for us, it’s hard to accept His forgiveness, mercy, and the truth that He’s got good plans for us. Once we accept His love, we can apply it to our right-now life. But even though we’re the recipients, there’s still more to do.
Love God with all your heart, mind, and strength.
We need to love God first. Cassia Glass writes in New Woman, New Clothes, “Trying to be more loving when you’re not willing to throw yourself heart and soul into the arms of Jesus will not work… To fill up on God, you begin to have more than enough for others and yourself because the God Who IS love is operating on the inside of you.” (italics mine) And there’s one more step.
Ask yourself these types of questions.
The fruit of the Spirit is not reserved exclusively for others, so how would it look to apply it to ourselves? Ask yourself the following questions to get to the heart of this.
- What would it look like to be gentle with yourself right now rather than striving or listening to the inner critic?
- How can you be patient with yourself and give yourself grace as you try and even fail?
- How do you offer your heart hope instead of put downs?
- What does it look like not to expend your energy on envy and comparison but to show gratitude instead?
- How can you protect your time and your heart from negative relationships?
When you feel like you’re dropping the ball, do this.
Remind yourself of God’s love for you and allow Him to lead you as you learn how to extend love to your own heart.
We may not be able to find the car keys or phone. We may run late. Sure, sometimes someone won’t be able to find a shoe when we’re on deadline. But this is life, and we can choose to respond to ourselves with frustration and belittlement, or we can extend patience, kindness, gentleness (you know, love!) our own direction. The choice is ours.
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Jill,
You did a lovely job! Yes! Part of being able to care for others is having cared for ourselves in the first place. If we are sick with shame it is difficult to raise others up. We need to stop expecting perfection of ourselves. The Lord loves us as we struggle along, we should love ourselves in the same way.
Angela, thank you so much for your wisdom and help in shaping this piece. It was a definite collaboration! God is so good to extend kindness and gentleness to our own hearts. I am beyond grateful for His grace and compassion for us. -jill
Jill, this piece is so beautifully written. I especially love the part about practically extending love to ourselves. I often find myself giving my absolute best to everyone else (best advice, best pep talk, best act of kindness ect.) and then giving the absolute worst to myself (impatience, unreasonable expectations, harsh comparisons, hurtful words, ect.) To not love ourselves is to reject what God has created and tell Him that He did not do a good enough job. He did a perfect job with all of us, so let’s start living like we believe that!
Summer, thank you so much! I totally get it as I treat my heart the same way, which made this post so important to write. Thank you for reading! I appreciate your sweet heart and your encouraging words. -jill
I had never thought about applying the fruit of the Spirit to myself before. But that is so true. The fruit of the Spirit needs to evidenced in ALL areas of our life. Thank you for the eye opener!
Julia, thank you for reading! It’s a new concept for me too: to extend gentleness and kindness to my own heart, which only makes it easier to live Jesus out to others. – jill
What a great post! Thanks! I sometimes think that even though we all tend toward selfishness that the sin in the world keeps us from really understanding how to love ourselves. And if we can’t love ourselves then how are we to know how to love others. Thanks for helping us understand what it means to love ourselves. 8)
Debra, thank you so much! The phrase “love yourself” has been co-opted to mean “be selfish and narcissistic,” but really, if we define love as God does, it’s all about being patient, kind, and gentle. And those are attributes of Jesus Himself! -jill