And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul (life), and with all your mind (thought, understanding), and with all your strength.’

mARK 12:30 amp

Declaration: God loves me; God made me so He can pour out His love on me, God loves me! Beloved and Unique child of God, your Heavenly Father loves you!

Love is a central theme in the Bible and the foundation of its greatest commandments. These commandments are to love God with our entire being and love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:29-31). What does this love look like? God shows us by example. He first loved us. He expressed His love by giving His best, His only Son. Sacrificing Jesus for our sins, God provided the way to reconciliation and eternal life with Him. This act of unconditional and unparalleled grace is a gift available to all. 

The same love God extends to us, He expects us to extend to ourselves and others. How can we do this? Through releasing the love living within in us in the Person of the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). As we believe, receive, and experience God’s love, we return His love and grow in our ability to love ourselves and others. Importantly, the extent to which we love ourselves shapes how fully we can love others.

Jesus summed up all the laws in the old covenant with just two and we translate those two laws in layman term as, “Love God; Love People.” The truth about God is that he is love and he made us to love us not punish us. The bible tells us we are the object of his love, he created us to love us. God, who is love, made me just so he can love on me, oh that changed my life forever. The truth is we can never love God or people if we first don’t know how much God loves us. I pray today you are gaining freedom from your past hurts and leaning in on the fact that God loves you.

If you think it’s a challenge to love yourself, know you’re not alone. To help you overcome this challenge, meditate on these insights:

• Humanity is God’s good idea (Genesis 1:26-31)
• God personally formed man and woman (Genesis 2:7, 18, 21-23 and Isaiah 64:8)
• God knows and loves each of us individually (Psalm 139:1-18; Jeremiah 31:3; Isaiah 46:3-4; and Luke 12:6-7)

“You weren’t mass-produced. You aren’t an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on this earth…by the Master Crafts-Man.”

Max Lucado’s book, God Thinks You’re Wonderful,