It's been a while since I posted on my blog. The whole "buy our building" adventure has been exciting, exhausting, and challenging. YWAM San Francisco battled through to get our offer accepted by the landlord to purchase the property. However, pressure from developers who have cash to offer has resulted in a real Mt. Everest challenge: If we can't prove we can get a mortgage by July 25, the landlord will accept the developers' cash offer. That means we must come up with 30% down payment because the only lender that will give us a mortgage in that short time requires 30%.
This means we must raise $400,000 in the next 3 weeks!
Of course the developers know this. Of course, they assume since they have money, they can press us into a time-crunch corner and we won't be able to complete the purchase.
They have finances. We have faith. They have money and lots of it. We have Jesus.
So, please join us praying for a miracle....a small one in God. $400K by July 25th! Like I said, they just have money. WE have Jesus.
NOW...to the reason for this blog post:
A friend called in crisis the other morning. Tough times.
In the midst of the back-and-forth I commented, "God says to love others as we love ourselves....so if we aren't loving ourselves, we're not loving others either." I used the old therapist illustration of putting your oxygen mask on first in an airplane....so you won't pass out from lack of oxygen and not be able to help your child or neighbor or whomever put their oxygen mask on...
suddenly I had one of those "flash photo" moments when I saw a new thing. Clearly. It was such a new idea that I almost wanted to hold my head really still....like any movement would somehow shake the idea out of my head and I wouldn't be able to catch it again.
Yeah...well maybe I'm the only person who has those "stop..don't breathe...I don't want to lose this thought" moments. Maybe it's just a touch of adult ADHD combined with a brain that sometimes races on ahead of my actual capacity to remember stuff!
I realized that "Love others AS you love yourself" can have two beautifully different meanings. Two windows through which we can see and Do love. We are to love others in the same way as we love ourselves. And, at the same time....while....we love ourselves, we will love others.
first, We are to love others in the same way we love ourselves. If we are stingy and critical and withholding kindness to ourselves we're in trouble there. If Jesus lives in us, our hearts want to love others in the same way He loves. Generous. Affirming and accepting. Radically lavishing kindness
We want to love that way. So, Jesus says, in essence, "If you want to love others, you need to love yourself the same way. "
Now, some of us have heard judgmental-type sermons saying "Because we're all so self-centered and selfish that, of course we love ourselves, Jesus is saying, "If you want to be generous and forgiving and kind to yourself, you have to treat other people that way first"......Nope....
He really is saying "I want you to love yourself and to love others in the same way."
BUT, in the middle of the conversation with my friend, the flashbulb flashed in my brain. Wait...
"AS you love yourself" can mean two different things. One, "in the same way." the second is
"while or at the same time."
I started thinking...."What if at the moment I am loving myself....while I am treating myself with kindness or gentle acceptance or generous affirmation I will automatically being loving toward others?" What if loving others is a natural, spontaneous, outgrowth of loving myself?
If I love myself I "build up, not tear down"....(Ephesians 4:29). When I treat myself like Jesus treats me....I am built up. When I am stingy, critical, self-punishing, unkind to MYSELF, I tear myself down.
When I start focusing on "building up" my strengths instead of "fixing" my weaknesses. When I love myself.....
Then, what comes out of me toward others?
What if loving myself will automatically make me more loving toward others?
Now, I immediately heard this religious voice in my head. that "healthy skepticism" that used to live full-time (and rent-free) in my mind. And now still makes periodic visits until I kick it out again.
that voice said, "All this loving yourself stuff sounds like an excuse to be self-serving and selfish. After all, aren't we supposed to "count others as more important than yourself?"
Then I remembered my pastor Paul saying "it's all about relationship." And Danny Silk saying "religion wants rules. Love wants relationship."
Can I be self-serving and selfish? Of course? If you never are, please let me know...I'll come and follow you around to figure out how you do it!
BUT, I am in a love relationship with Jesus. HE is alive and loving and doing good stuff in me.
That skeptic voice would have me believe that my tendency to be selfish is stronger than the power of His love to make my heart soft. That my weakness is stronger than His power to love me until I want to be like Him instead of selfish and self-serving!
So....every morning I walk down the stairs from my room at the YWAM building. In the span of windows above one of our entry doors, I see the line of homeless people waiting for breakfast at GLIDE church. I see some of our women - tired from a long night on the streets - standing in line.
I'm deciding to remind myself, as I walk down those stairs each morning:
"I want to love others in the same way I love myself."
And "While I am loving myself, I will actually love others in the process."
For a number of years I've been trying to learn to love myself. I'm getting better at it. that religious skeptic voice no longer lives full-time in my head.
But now, I'm doing an experiment with self-love. Speaking affirming words about myself. Accepting myself with grace instead of judgement. Encouraging myself. Speaking words that build myself up instead of tear myself down.
It's an experiment to see how this changes the ways I love others!
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