I read a quote from Tumblr the other day that I’d like to share with you. I don’t know who the original author is, but these words pierced my heart. It says
“So many years of education yet nobody ever taught us how to love ourselves and why it’s so important.”
I hope you really read that. I hope you really understand what that is communicating. You are fed in school a massive amount of information that you are told is important, and how you will succeed in life is by mathematics and social studies, and business. Which is all well and good, school is important, and knowledge equips us. I believe though in the midst of this practical information we’re missing out on who we are, where our value comes from, and that our identity and self-esteem is just as important as feeding our brains and logic. What good is all of this wisdom if you hate yourself and cannot look at others with love? I want to take some time to tell you an important truth that you won’t be taught in school, to love yourself.
My pastor always tells us that we can’t give what we do not have. This sounds so elementary but think about it. If I do not have one hundred dollars then I cannot give you one hundred dollars, so in the same way if I do not love myself, how can I possibly properly love others? It is so very important to love ourselves because we give of what we have, so we want to have love. It is difficult to love yourself when you know the deep corners of yourself isn’t it? You know every ugly thought that you have ever had, you have seen yourself at your very worst, the ultimate evil that you are capable of. How could you love yourself like you love others when you see all of this wrong that you do? May I challenge you to look to Jesus the one who gave his life as a sacrifice for even your worst day, because he loved you?
Psalm 139 says, “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
In this chapter David writes in verse 13 “Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for the darkness is as light to you.” Does that speak deeply to you as it does me? I believe that no matter what darkness you think you observe in yourself, God the Father, sees past that to the light that truly resides in you. He has searched you, and he knows your every thought, and surely he still loves you unconditionally, and would run after you relentlessly. God loves you with an everlasting love. He has taught you how to love by the way He loves you. I challenge you to see yourself through the eyes of someone who sacrificed everything for you, because He looks at you and He thinks that you are to die for.
This blog was written by Pure Design Teen Magazine’s blogger Carly Sage. Carly is 19 years old and lives in Youngstown, Ohio where she attends Victory School of Ministry through Victory Christian Church. She hopes to be in full-time ministry as a pastor one day and loves to express herself through writing!
