Loving yourself

Hi there,
How's your week going?
This week, I want to talk to you about  loving yourself.
There's a rise in today culture to take instant photos of yourself, and become instantly popular.
To do what others say, and to take it on board.
For those people out there, who when under peer pressure, do things, because.
A. you're a grown up now, it's time to do what you think you should be doing.
and
B.  you don't need any other opinion, or any other person, you just need yourself.
You're wrong.
Both of this type of thinking is wrong.
Because, we never stop growing up, our brains don't fully develop until your in your late 20s.

The problem in today's culture, is that you get taught this, from school, from your parents, then from your friends.

It filters down, and then we make our own, values from what we've learns.
It's all important things, but we need to take care on who we listen to.
So how do we navigate our way through this ever wondering path?
We can't be boxed in, but we can't also let others dictate what we should do.
If we look to Christ, he in our perfecter of our lives, he also broke the religious rules of his time, he wasn't going to be dictated to, and he put up with no nonsense when his temple was made into a market place,
So how can we live like Christ, and yet love ourselves?
If you have been struggling and feel like you can't love yourself, and that you look around and everyone else is having fun, and yet you get warnings,  or just get told that you can't do things.
It's hard to break the seal, of this, because it is ingrained in your mind, the risks and the dangers of things.
Loving ourselves, can be hard, if you haven't been loved by others, you come into the mentality, of ''everyone else is having a good time, but that good time isn't for me.''
You know, it says in the bible, that we shouldn't be jealous of wicked men, because their path leads down to things not good.
People may see you as weak, they may see you, as a project, or someone to work on.
You know that they can't change us, and the first thing to love is, seeing people the way they are, not wanting to influence them, or push them into things that they don't want to do.
Many people are full of talk, but when it comes down to being committed and actually carrying the task out, they find it impossible, because they haven't actually mastered the first task, they have told themselves and perhaps their co workers, that they can.
under the form of 'love'', but when they do it, they can't.
We need to be careful, that we are honest,  with people, if we struggle with relationships, we should bring them up, or if we've been living in a bubble we should be open and honest about it.
I'm not going to say, that God knows all these things, what does love look like when it comes to ourselves?
It means being open and honest about our relationship with him, and ask questions, ask the hard stuff, ask why, when, how what?
When God puts a seed in your soul it doesn't like dormant for ages and dies, he plants it there knowing that it's your desire to do his will.
He doesn't come in by force, he doesn't preach, he doesn't get crucial, of our plans, he doesn't put a red light on them, saying that's a no go area.
My friend summed it up very nicely, he said, we often see God on how we see our parents, and if we see them as crictal, we put that into God, we see him as crictial, and when we miss trust, or are abused, we think that God will abuse us.
There are some lovely things, that come out of brokenness, think of Mosaics broken crockery, that can be made into beautiful things, stained glass windows, were made out of broken glass, to make amazing things in churches.
It's time to take some time out, to grieve over the things that we've longed to wish for, to say enough is enough if we're someones ''project'' to be set free and start to live like there's no tomorrow.
To stop being critical, of people, and of things, to turn it around and see it as something special.
Chloe