The Best Self-Care in the World

Louie Giglio talks about the importance of loving ourselves rightly, teaching that our most vital relationship after God is our one with ourselves, because how we love ourselves profoundly shapes how we love others.

Today, we are talking about the most critical relationship you have apart from your relationship with God.

It’s not your relationship with your spouse, closest friend, coworker, parents, children, workout partners, business partners, pickleball partners, neighbor, accountability partner, counselor, boyfriend/girlfriend, siblings, ladies group, golfing buddies, trainer, or mentor.

The most critical relationship you have, apart from your relationship with God, is your relationship with yourself.

You spend more time with yourself than you do with anyone else. Your brain is feeding you 12,000-60,000 thoughts a day. Research has shown that 80% of those thoughts are negative in nature, and 90-95% are

repetitive in nature (the thoughts are the same as the day before).

So, how are you getting along with yourself? How are you coping?

Maybe it's selfishness, self-loathing, self-hate, self-destruction, self-critical, medicating self, coddling self, self-centeredness, self-promoting, self-serving, self-dependence, or self-awareness.

But why does your relationship with yourself matter so much?

1. If you are not in a healthy relationship with yourself, it’s unlikely you’ll be in a healthy relationship with anyone else.

2. The way your neighbor is going to experience the transforming love of God is by the way you love them.

3. You are most likely to love others as you love yourself.

This is the central axiom of our Christian faith.

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:34-40

In the text above, Jesus is asked to highlight the greatest commandment.

He reaches back to the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4-5, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."

This is the first and greatest commandment—AND the second is like it—love your neighbor as yourself.

It’s important to note that if Jesus had stopped with the first commandment, He’d potentially have endorsed an internal (personal), non-observable definition of what loving God means. But Jesus wanted to make it clear that the central axis is that our love for Him is to become tangible and visible in the love we express to others.

In short, loving our neighbor is our mission. Our neighbors will know God’s love by the way we love them.

If we love our neighbor as ourselves, will it go well for our neighbor?

The danger is:

1. We will love our neighbor better than we love ourselves (which is different from how we love ourselves).

We may be generous, forgiving, and kind to our neighbor while holding ourselves to an unattainable standard and punishing ourselves for failure.

We may value and love our neighbor while hating and loathing ourselves.

2. We will love our neighbor way less than we love ourselves.

We will walk, accepting God's grace, while holding grudges for others.

We will give ourselves the benefit of the doubt while rarely giving anyone else a break.

We will receive God’s mercy with a shovel, but dispense it with a spoon.

Our goal is to love our neighbor as ourselves with a healthy, life-giving, grace-filled, truth-saturated, freeing, empowering, healing love.

This implies that we have to get the “love yourself” part right.

The self-care mindset has become a, if not the, buzzword of the post-pandemic era.

According to Inc. Magazine in 2023, self-care was a $1.5 trillion industry.

Self-care is essential, but what is the best way to care for oneself?

In Jesus' words, the ultimate love of self is to find oneself in the love of God. Love God, but implied in that is God’s love for us.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4:7-12.

The hope of your neighbor is the same as it is for you, that you let God love you.

1. Understand that God loves you.

As a result, you are valued, wanted, prized, pursued, chosen, forgiven, delighted in, and loved.

Embrace these three words—Jesus loves you.

2. Center your whole being around Him.

In the garden, God was in the garden, but in Adam and Eve’s hearts, they were at the center.

A right and healthy relationship with self begins with reframing where we fit in the world: "I am in the garden, but God is at the center."

You must—

• Believe in God’s love for you.

• Accept your story.

• Love yourself.

• Forgive yourself as He has forgiven you.

• Let His love shape you into the person God created you to be.

• Speak truth to you in love (Ephesians 4:15).

You are in charge of yourself.

So, how do I overflow with love to my neighbor? See them, pray for them, meet their needs, love them where they are/accept them where they are (you also don’t have to agree with all their conclusions to love them where they are—God doesn’t agree with all your conclusions, yet He loves you right where you are), extend grace to them, forgive them if necessary, and encourage them with the hope and vision God has for their lives.