Love. We use the word for so many different reasons…
I love summer.
I love Star Wars.
I love reading.
I love my family.
I love tacos.
We use the word love so often I feel we have become over familiar with the term. We often misinterpret or miss the full meaning of the word, especially when we hear it said to us. “I love you” is a phrase we all long to hear, but often doubt the authenticity of the meaning. We live our lives wanting to be filled with love but often doubting the giver. What about loving ourselves?
In scripture we are often commanded to love others, neighbors, and even our enemies but we often gloss over the phrase hidden in Mark 12:31:
“Love your neighbor as yourself.“
Whoa! How many of us love ourselves? I know that my inner dialogue most days includes a plethora of phrases loaded with anything but love regarding myself. How often do we come into our health and fitness journeys because of something we hate about ourselves or find disgusting? I started my own personal health and fitness journey because I loathed what I had let myself become and for a while that was a good motivator.
Being tired of being sick and tired can be a good jumping off point, but it does not provide lasting motivation to pursue a healthy lifestyle. In fact, if we still feel disgust and hatred toward ourselves then we will speak negatively into our inner dialogue and continue believing we are failures, disappointments, and unable to succeed.
What if we began from a heart place of self love instead of disgust or disappointment? What if we learned to care for our bodies because we loved them? Let that sink in for a minute. Don’t we treat other people we love with much more care and respect than we do ourselves? Would you ever speak to your spouse, child, or friend like you do yourself?
How do we do this? How do we learn to love ourselves? Positive mantras and “surfacey” platitudes will not create a new heart perspective toward ourselves. In fact, the Bible says in 1 John 4:19 that we “love because He first loved us.” My friend we must inundate ourselves with God’s love before we can learn to love anybody else well, especially ourselves. We must sit with Him, ask for his love, read about his love, and choose to believe and receive his love. This is the heart of our health and fitness journey. We cannot be healthy without Him.
Monday October 1st we are going to start on a 30 day journey of discovering how to love ourselves well by exploring scripture, our own personal beliefs, and moving our bodies out of thankfulness and gratitude. Are you interested in going on this adventure with us? Join us today!