In prayer this morning I caught myself asking God to help me be nicer to myself; to limit all the ways I beat myself up over even the tiniest thing I may have done or said. Keep in mind it doesn’t have to be sin, it can be anything, breaking something for example. It was an accident. But good night, can I be mean to myself about it, as though I somehow did it on purpose. Of course I didn’t…so the “sin” only begins when I start to berate myself. No grace for self. For human. Where did I ever get the idea that being human and making mistakes, intentional, short-sighted, or not, was condemnation-worthy??

No really. Where do the voices in our heads telling us we aren’t okay coming from? Simple. The accuser. The law, “in whom our hopes are set”, even as Jesus says He doesn’t condemn us. Quite literally there are spiritual forces hard at work, their full time job being for me to discredit…me.

I was reminded recently that, “whatever you do to the least of these, you do unto me.” You DO. Not LIKE you do. You DO. Which makes sense since Christ quite literally lives inside of me. You. Christ is all and is in all. Christ IS me. Christ is IN me. In spirit, He said, “if you want to beat yourself up, you’ll have to go through me first.” Wow. Ever thought about that? When we say, “I’m not good enough” to ourselves, we’re speaking death over Jesus, too. DO NOT WORRY, He’s fine, He can take it. It’s YOU, ME, He wants to see living in His joy, His strength, His love. He just wants you to see YOU like that too! Like He does.

If today you’re only able to function this way because you wouldn’t do that to Jesus, even though you’d do it to yourself: it’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up. And if you do….haha don’t beat yourself up about that either. In time, as you treat Jesus the way He deserves to be treated, loved, you’ll find the reduction of self-condemnation to be even more effective than “positive self talk”. Don’t get me wrong, speaking to yourself positively is okay. But I think you’ll find over time the way you “treat Jesus” will be the way you treat yourself.

I’d encourage you to try it. Give it time. I’ll be trying it with you. <3. Would love to hear how it goes for you, perhaps we can compare notes….here’s mine. 😉 Maybe you’re a visual person like me.