You have probably heard the saying, "There are two sides to every story just like there are two sides to a coin." Well, this is very true and is relevant today. Let me clue you in on where I am going with this.
The toxic self-love culture says everything we do is based on our works and that we must love ourselves more before we can do anything else. And that we have to fix ourselves before anything else. While basing everything we do on high emotional extremes.
Whereas, Jesus says come as you are accept salvation confess your sins, and turn away from sin. The point is in turning away from sin and following Jesus, we do not have to have all things figured out.
We just need to come to Jesus.
See accepting Jesus is easy. The hard part is accepting who we are in Jesus.
The hard part is also accepting God has made us into a new creation. So we do not have to take all the baggage of sin and what the self-love culture tries to put on our minds that is false.
Because we have to let go of all these false expectations about having everything together before we come to Jesus is just plain false. It is like the false stigma that everybody who goes to the church must have everything figured out and be perfect when they step into the church doors.
See this self-love culture builds on status, money, success, and self-absorbed emotional extremes.
Although, God builds differently and builds people up in the fruit of the Spirit. Compared to this toxic self-love culture that wants everyone to believe it is solely based on what you say or do. Whereas, God bases on truth, not things, or social status.
The self-love culture builds on what is outward. Yet, God builds on what is unseen and inward. This culture of self-love builds on what is seen and what we look like or how much money is spent on self-care. And how self-sufficient we are in life without depending on anyone.
However, God looks at our hearts and restores our broken hearts before anything else. See God does not want us to figure things out ourselves. He wants us to come to Him and bring everything without leaving anything out.
God builds on the impossible. He builds differently which is why it changes us from the inside-out. This is exactly why with Him there is no time-lapse in our lives with our testimonies because He takes the messy and rebuilds it for His glory.
Here's the deal God is in it for the long hall when we accept Him as savior. He does not write us off when we fall short or lose it. Or when we complain or when things get tough God does not walk away.
See God does not see what people see. God sees differently from an eternal impact perspective. Whereas as people we see from a limited perspective based on what we see. Or what other people, in general, have told us.
Here is the deal we need to start taking God at His word and start leaving behind what is false. Meaning we have to leave behind all gossip, slander, and heresy so that we can know the truth of God. Instead of basing decisions on lies that someone passed onto us. We have to get to the source of truth.
This means all the toxic self-love that culture tries to press us with needs to go to the wayside. Even the myth and lie that, "we are perfect just the way we are." And the, "you determine your own truth." These things are just empty cliches that this world and culture have come up with to make us feel better for a temporary period.
Yet, Jesus does not leave us empty or lonely He fills us with His spirit and love. We have hope in that he takes us and restores what is broken to bring glory to Him. God leaves out the empty cliches and gives us in return a lasting hope and love that never runs out.
"I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins."(Isaiah 43:25ESV).
"But I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law."(Galatians 5:16-18ESV).
I love the book of Galatians especially chapter five in how Paul goes over how Christ has set us free, to how we are to walk in the Spirit, and what the fruit of the Spirit looks like. And then goes into chapter six on how to put on the armor of God.
The reason I love these so much is because Paul gives us a guide through scripture on how to walk in love and know the truth. So we can determine what is true and what is false.
I can relate to having a hard time accepting who I am because I have a ton of insecurities about myself and how I look. Let's just say being laid up for six months not able to walk on both feet and not be able to exercise besides being on lockdown because of a pandemic is not exactly what I call fun. And there are some personality things I wish I could change a little bit.
But the frustrating thing about trying to get your body back in shape or even your spiritual health is it takes consistency and discipline. It also takes a little bit by little bit to see the changes that come in getting back in shape.
It is the same way in our walks of faith in how God changes us from the inside out after we accept Him as savior. It is a little bit by little bit.
Strengthening our Spiritual lives takes diligence in digging into the word of God and continuing to remain steadfast in the truth of God, and fleeing from all sin. It is the same for strength training at the gym it takes diligence to not give up on the little progress you make.
Even when you do not see rapid results and you are to the point you want to pull out your hair or wish you could just suck all the excess fat off your body with a magic wand like a fairy god-mother from Cinderella the movie, who made Cinderella's character look dramatically different and more beautiful with a pretty dress and glass slippers.
The point is strengthening our Spiritual life and our psychical bodies also requires sticking with the process even when you want to throw it all out the window. Yet, nowadays nobody wants to stick with the process even when limitations come or when things get tough and we need the grit to stand our ground.
Thus, to realize or understand the difference between the truth of God and the toxic self-love culture we must align everything we hear, see, and know with the scripture of God. So that the lies of the enemy can be filtered out.
I will give another analogy that maybe you can relate to. For instance, strength training at the gym could be like changing to a different shampoo for your hair.
Or a different makeup company because the one you were using changed the products or discontinued them. So you have to change to something different for a time until you find something better, or something blends better.
Just because you change a different product or add more weight in training at the gym does not slow down the progress it just makes a little change bit by bit. Which is exactly what God does within our walk of faith in how we learn to discern the truth.
See the thing about God is He removes the roadblocks that no one else can remove. And He fills what is empty and fills it with unfailing love. Whereas, the toxic self-love culture only leaves holes of no lasting value but empty promises.
"You're perfect the way you are" leads us into accepting parts of ourselves that we should be rejecting, making excuses for ourselves when we should be repenting, and believing things about ourselves that hold no lasting value."(Stuckey, 2020, pg.104).
I share this quote because it is very important we do not get sucked into believing the wrong thing. We are meant to need God and rely on Him. He is our savior and we cannot save ourselves. None of the works we do on earth save us from sin. Only Jesus Christ can do that by dying on a cross.
References:
English Standard Version Study Bible (2008) Crossway Publishing, Wheaton ILL,
Picture by: wix.com
Stuckey, Allie Beth, (2020) You're Not Enough (And That's Okay) Escaping The Toxic Culture of Self-love, Penguin Random House LLC, penguinradmonhouse.com