“Which is the first commandment of all…And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is…thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart (emotional), and with all thy soul (spiritual), and with all thy mind, (intellectual) and with all thy strength (physical)…And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”~ Mk. 12:28-39
A story I have told often (my authority for doing such is the Bible which repeats itself throughout) is one that my spiritual and very witty late wife said to me on one occasion. I asked her once if she ever got disgusted and fed up with herself. After a short deliberation she answered, “Not really. You see, I am all I've got.”
I am not in the same league with the psychologist or psychiatrist, but I do profess to be a student of God’s Word! As a dear Christian psychologist friend wrote in one of her books, “I think the Puritans, men such as John Owen and John Newton, were way ahead of what we have today in this field.
I find it a wise thing to love what God loves, and He loves me! Yes! His original creation is cursed. For example, I truly hate the thorns on the rose bush, but I sure do love those roses. Likewise I hate my sin, but I sure do love the creature He created; he goes by the name of Richard D. Sandlin. I have learned not only to accept him, but dearly love him.
When God made me a New Man. He put within me all the potentials of being everything I never was, but dearly wanted to be: a good man, a man of integrity, a loving man, a merciful man, a man of real character, and the list goes on and on.
The secret of seeing such a person spring into action is by them not dwelling on what they were, but, who they are; in Christ!
“Remember, you cannot love others and hate yourself!”~ rds