is self-love biblical?

girlllllll. this is a top i know none of you wanna talk about but we have to talk about it!

the world is so heavily consumed with self to the point where it's beginning to literally seep into christian culture. but why? is this God's plan? 

and on a surface level, self-love is the very thing you should have as a human. surely that's a completely innocent, good thing that God would want you to have. well... it's more complex than that.

in this episode, i'll be talking about...

• how thinking too heavily of 'self' can impact you
• idols and why putting yourself as an idol is the worst idea ever
• why Jesus' love is better than our love

it's one of those topics where it sounds hard hitting and overwhelming, but when you truly know God's heart on it, i pray it takes the weight away.

God wants the very best for you, and leaning on yourself to provide yourself the best simply isn't HIS BEST <3

Transcript

0:09

Good morning, my beautiful homegirls. Or good afternoon or good night, depending on

when you're listening to this. It is 07: 0:16

00 p.m. where I am right now. So it is not good morning, but my podcast is scheduled to go out in the morning, which is why I thought that that would be the right thing to say, but clearly wasn't. Anyways, hi. How y'all doing? I'm doing good. I'm actually going on holiday on Sunday. I'm going to Portugal, going to the Algarve with my parents and my boyfriend. It's gonna be so fun. I haven't actually had a beach holiday in a hot minute, not since Bulgaria in 2018. So, yeah, your girl's only been on city breaks. I love a city break, but I also love a break, because a city break is not a break. That's a scam. Whoever told you that, they're lying. A city break is walking and walking and walking and nothing stopping unless you're eating, and then you're walking and walking and walking again. It is great. It's great for steps, it's great for seeing the sights, but you come home wanting a holiday because you're just exhausted. So I'm glad that we're doing something a bit different this time. Even though I will, like, I'm not a chill holiday person. Like, I struggle to just, like, stay in one place. Like, I'll go to the beach, I'll tan or, like, you know, read my book or something. But I want to, like, go for hikes. I want to go sightseeing. But I guess, like, we're going for a long enough time where I can do a little bit of both. So, yeah, I am so excited. But it also does mean that this week is a bit hectic with work and packing and also finding time to do my podcast. But I. Our God is faithful. He is gonna see it through. I know that he loves me and he cares about me, and he is so intentional in everything. So in the moments when I'm crying, he'll be there. Because your girl is so last minute. Like, I just. I really hope that I'm not last minute this time. I I find it so stressful, but I do it to myself. Like, I'm not really sure what goes on in my brain, but I do everything to avoid being last minute. I think I'm not being last minute, and then I end up being last minute. Or, like, it's like, if I'm trying to be tidy or, like, trying to, like, make sure I keep, like, keep something in a place where, like, I can find it. I then, like, can't find it, or, like, things are too messy where I can't find it. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, why am I like this? Like, I'm not clean person by nature. Like, I'm only tidy because I clean often, and even that's hard sometimes if I'm honest. Like, yeah, like, I wish that if I, you know, I come in from work and I take off my trousers and I, like, put in, like, put my pajamas on. I wish that, like, they just instantly, like, either went in the wash or, like, back in my wardrobe. Like, I just wish that that was how life works, but it doesn't. Sorry. Anyways, hello, everyone. In today's episode, I was thinking, hmm, what am I going to talk about? Because I want to challenge you. I want to challenge myself. But nothing was really sticking out to me. Although I had a thought, and I do think I should have a video on this before, a while ago. Didn't actually watch the video in preparation to this. So let's hope that your girl's saying similar stuff to now. But, I mean, it's something that you see all the time on social media, the topic of self love. And funnily enough, it's not just something you see on worldly social media. It's something you see on christian social media in terms of self care, self love, affirmations. You know, God has such great plans for you. You are so cool, you are so good, you are so amazing, blah, blah, blah. And obviously, that can be taken both ways. You can do it in the name of Christ, which is what we stand for, or it can become a little bit self serving. And that's kind of what I want to talk about today. Answering the question, is self love biblical? Because there are so many different scriptures that we could look at, which I am going to go into a few as we go on. But, you know, on face value, Christianity is a very, I don't want to say fluffy, but, like, I think some people can take it to be fluffy. Like, oh, Jesus loves me. And, like, regardless of what I do, he loves me. And if you go to certain churches or you hear certain christians speak, it's all about prosperity and God will bless me and everything is going to be so rosy. And that, like, as I said, there are ways to take that and nuances that that would be, okay, acceptable. But sometimes we're, we're seeing the gray line, and we're not even in the gray. We're like way over in the black. And it's, it's not good, you know, and I've fallen into the trap myself, definitely. When I first became a Christian, I thought that Christianity was like a good, um, how would I put it? A good crossover with self care. Like, I'm. My goal is self love, but I will use faith to get there. You, like, speak your truth, you know, like, if faith isn't for you, or like, if a different faith is for you, then that's fine. Like, whatever makes you happy. Like, I was having God as a resource to my source and not the other way around, like, because I think, unfortunately, as I said, it's not just in worldly spaces, which is a big drive for me thinking that way as an 18 year old. Like, if the whole world saying that self love is like the best thing ever, then I'm going to believe that self love is the best thing ever. But then when I go into christian spaces and that is like the main focus as well, even if it's not explicit, but it's very implicit. And I'm not going to name names as I'm doing this podcast at all because my goal is not to call out false prophets and I use that with quotation marks. My goal is not to slander other people. My goal is just to block out the noise for you guys a little bit and encourage you to go back in your word and really think, okay, what does God really say about this? What's God's heart on this as well? Because whilst I'm going to say some hard hitting stuff, I want to back it up with, there is a reason why. Okay, the answer, newsflash, spoiler alert. The answer is self love. Isn't biblical aspects of it? Yes, but I'm gonna dive into, like, how that will be the case. But I just think there's so much noise, especially in TikTok, YouTube, churches as well, even if we take away social media in general, but then it's still, those people in church are being influenced by what they're seeing. And a large part of that is social media and the way that the world's moving towards like, self sufficiency and independence. And I love myself and, you know, I am the only person who really cares about me. I'm the only person that knows me. I'm the only person that can provide for me. Like, whilst we love God, and whilst a lot of these avenues may be encouraging you to seek God, it's why, like, is God becoming a transactional relationship to what you want to achieve in yourself. And this, like, can spring into all different areas, you know, not just self love, but just overall, like, prosperity of life, money, career, finding love. And I kind of want to go into a few or two in particular scriptures right now, insofar as when the Bible is just extremely clear on what self love is and if it is of God. So the first one is two Timothy, chapter three, verses one, two, five. You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be difficult times for people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving. They will slander others and have no self control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that. Dang, Imma. You know, let me just dissect this a little bit before I go to the next one. One thing I really want to make clear here is the concept of what loving yourself really means. And, you know, I can hear different people's, you know, rebuttals to what I'm saying in the sense of, well, God loves me, so I should love myself. Amen. But is your priority when you wake up in the morning to recognize God's love for you? As in God being the source, as in, I'm looking at God's character and God's sacrifice for me. Therefore, I treat myself in a way that is respectable to God and in alignment to his word? Or am I seeing it as, oh, God loves me, so me is the focus, and whatever I'm doing around loving me is my business and no one else's, and I just come and go as I please. If it's a latter, you will fall very uncomfortably so in what Paul is talking about right now, because he starts off by saying they will only love themselves and their money only. So if self love becomes your priority, and putting it bluntly, your God, if that becomes your main focus, as in, you know, my goal is to constantly be self improving and constantly knowing that myself is the only person that's going to get myself to that point. I am relying on my strengths and my wisdom and my glory and all the achievements that I've done. You then become only concerned with those things. And do you see how it goes on to say that, like, all the things that they start doing wrong, they're boastful and they're proud, they're mocking God, their disobedience, their parents are ungrateful, they consider nothing sacred. And that's a very interesting thing that I will go on to later. But I really want to let you think about that in the sense of is loving myself, taking the glory off of God to the point where I don't value his values. It goes on to say that you're unloving, you're unforgiving, you will slander others, you'll have no self control, you'll be cruel and hate what is good, these things, when love of self becomes the main priority. Like, okay, there's two sides to it, right? Like, someone that hates themselves is horrible to others. Like, it's a root of insecurity. And my goal in this podcast is not to make you dwell in insecurities. It's not to make you someone who can't even look at yourself in the mirror. But if it becomes like self obsession, which I think the world is so carefully, stealthily, but then sometimes explicitly going towards, when it's like, you only have to open TikTok, literally open TikTok. And it's all about me, me, what I can achieve, what I'm good at, what I want in this life. If people don't respect me, then f them. If people don't care about me, then f them. And I'm just minding my piece and my life and no one else matters. As long as me, myself and I are good, then it doesn't matter. Do you see that type of mentality? And it all like, in my opinion, people like that, that are so selfish are still insecure. Because if your focus is loving yourself, yourself, like, is not. Sorry to break it to you, but it's not like a good foundation. To have you yourself is sinful. So putting yourself on that pedestal of I am my own goddess, you will fall and you'll make other people fall and you'll treat other people in a bad way. And like Paul's saying, it will fester into so many things. Like, you think for people who love only themselves and their money, that is technically something that the whole world is doing right now. But Paul is trying to emphasize that that doesn't stop there. It will continue and fester and fester and fester to the point where overall you lack all the qualities that God has to offer you. And then the second one that I wanted to read is Luke 923. And this says, then he said to the crowd, if any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up. That is not the version I want. I'm sorry. NLT, like, I like NLT sometimes, but ciao, sometimes it just not be saying it how I envisioned it in my head. Oh, I like amplified. We'll just go with that. And he was saying to them all, if anyone wishes to follow me as my disciple, he must deny himself, set aside selfish interest, and take up his cross daily, expressing a willingness to endure whatever may come and follow me, believing in me, conforming to my example in living, and, if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in me. Girl, I didn't read the amplified version before I read that out. But we're just gonna leave it that. I mean, facts, but that. That's hard hitting. Like, the conforming to my example of living was hard enough, but if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in me, Jesus is saying that, I only want you to want me. I don't want you to want yourself. I don't want you to say, oh, yeah, I'm gonna follow God. But there's some things I want to hold on to because that's what self love really is. If you really look deep enough, if that's your priority in fulfilling your own desires, your own needs, your own comforts in life, you will become almost, like, incapable of really letting God be in the driving seat, really letting God be your king, your lord. And it's even like I was listening to a podcast, I think, or a video, I can't remember, but it was something that I said in a previous video a long time ago about progressive Christianity. And I was saying how there's too many people in this world who will see Jesus as their savior. So, you know, he loved me so much that he took away my sins, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't have to be bound by the law anymore. I'm not defined by my actions. I'm defined by the righteousness of Christ. Great. But that does not get fulfilled if you don't see Jesus as your lord as well. And someone else said that, and whatever I watched recently, and I was like, wow. Like, people are getting the same revelations as me. Because I've been thinking this. Like, don't just see Jesus as your savior. See him as your lord. Lord means he rules over your life. Lord means he is seated above all principalities and powers in your life. Not just for vibes, not just for the world, not just for an impersonal understanding of goddesse, God deserves and is worthy of being seated higher than anything in your life, period. And what Jesus is saying, that you need to deny yourself, not just right now when you give your life to Christ, not just in the little things, not every now and then. He must deny himself daily. He must set aside selfish interest daily. He must take up his cross daily. And when you look at the, like the example of, like Jesus taking up his own cross, it makes so much sense as he continues on, obviously in the amplified version. So it's not necessarily what Jesus said, but if needs be, suffering or perhaps dying. Carrying a cross is not comfortable. Carrying a cross is not comfortable. Jesus was in immense pain carrying the cross, but in immense joy at the same time, knowing that what he's carrying is of so much benefit. I think it's. It's a beautiful picture. It's a hard picture to envision, but it's a beautiful picture knowing that if we let go of our flesh, there is so much joy to be brought of it. I'm not saying it's not hard when I wake up in the morning and I have to choose Christ over my sin, over my flesh, over my selfish desires. But when I do that, the fruit that it reaps is something that can't be compared to anything else that I was planning on doing for myself, for any comforts I was planning to pursue, for any ideas that I were planning to see come to fruition, no. But when I say that God is seated above all. When I say that God. When Jesus is my Lord, when Jesus is my entire life, to the point where I'm willing to do the most uncomfortable things, to see his purpose fulfilled in me, I will not just see my life flourish, maybe in a different way to what I envisioned in the material, but I will see my life flourish to the point where I have everlasting peace, I have everlasting joy. I have a hope that passes. Anything this world can offer. And all of that equips me to be able to sow that same seed in other people. Whether it's his believers who are already in the body of Christ or those that he is wanting to save. Every single person that I come in contact with should see the light of Christ, not just because, oh, I accept him as my savior, but I accepted him as my lord. Because when I accept him as my lord, I'm accepting him to transform me by the renewing of my mind. I'm accepting for him to change me, to get rid of the areas that don't serve him. I am accepting for him to refine me. And I remember this one time, this one period of my life that. Let's just say it was. It was really hard. And leading up to that moment, I didn't really know what was happening, but I just. I had an inclination that God was trying to try to do something, but I wasn't sure. Maybe, like, deep down, I was sure because this particular problem was a problem, and I wasn't acknowledging it. Maybe out of, like, pride and not wanting to let it go and, like, the comfort of it. See, I could be spitting facts at you a lot. I could be preaching at you a lot. But I promise you that I'm coming from a place of experience. I'm not just being Pastor Elodie. And Pastor Elodie hasn't walked the walk. She has most definitely walked the walk. And I remember in this particular time, no matter what I did, I kept getting refiner by Maverick City. Come up on my Spotify where it says, I want to be tried by fire. Purified. You take whatever you desire, lord, here's my life. And when I tell you, I was like, yeah, I'm ready. Like, whatever it is, God. Even though, like, I wasn't really, like, acknowledging that there was something, but I was like, yeah, God, like, I'm ready, girl. When I tell you that refining period was the hardest period of my life. And, like, I even saw Emmy Moore, like, a TikTok talking about, like, suffering. I forgot. Exactly. But she was like, people will be, like. Like, making their hard times seem so, like, idyllic and, like, oh, this is so amazing. I'm ready to go through my hard time with God. Like, it's not pretty, though. Like, I cried a lot. It was hard. Like, I had to really take it. Like, you know when people say, like, take it day by day. I had to take it second by second. I had to remind myself of God second by second. Like the. The verse where it says, pray without ceasing. That was a time when I realized what power that really meant, because I had to keep my eyes on Jesus every single step of the way, because it was so easy for me to fall back into my worries and my anxieties, and maybe it won't work out, like, how I thought, or maybe this will happen. Or what about this timeframe? And what about what I'd planned? It was a lot. And Jesus is making it very clear that carrying your cross is hard. But I now look on the other side of that situation, and at one point, I will share what I'm talking about, just not today, but when I do share it with you, you'll be able to see, like, wow, this was necessary for Elodie to go through and not just like, in a material sense, like, oh, like, I ended up, like, making loads of money from it. Oh. Like, I really got what I wanted. And it was also flowery and beautiful in the end. Like, yeah, God's blessings are beautiful, but they are beautiful in a way that is edifying in a way that I had to sacrifice to get to where I was. Other people in that same situation had to sacrifice to where they wanted to be. Well, not even where they wanted to be, but where God wanted them to be. And it's the whole thing of I then had to reframe my mind to be in alignment with Goddesse. So I'm not just looking at myself and what I want out of this situation. I'm just dwelling on what I want and what feels good for me in that time. I'm having to completely change my perspective and say, well, I don't know what's going on right now, but I'm going to trust that what God's plan is, is of the most glory, is of the most goodness for me and for those around me. And this kind of leads on to my next point in the sense of sinful beings. And if I in that situation, were to look at what I wanted and what was most comfortable, it wouldn't have been sinful. But it showed my sinful and destructive nature. Like, this particular scenario wasn't necessarily like a sin for me. It was more surrendering, but my disobedience to surrender. I guess that you could say that's a sin, and it would be my stupidity and my fleshly nature that is literally incapable of understanding God's long term plan. And that's why loving yourself does not do any value to you whatsoever. We should not love ourselves because in of ourselves, we are sinful human beings. In of ourselves, we are capable of not just disobeying God, but harming so many things in the process. We are capable of, literally speaking, death over people. We are capable of being selfish. We are capable of killing. Think about it like, I have all free will in myself to go and kill someone right now. I have a kitchen knife downstairs and I could just kill my parents. Would I do that? No. But am I capable? Yes. That's scary. And there's times even when we don't look at murder, there's things that each and every one of us has done that we look back and say, oh, that was a mistake, that was ugly. That was just not the type of person that I want to be. It could have been you lied to someone. It could have been that you betrayed someone, that you spread a piece of gossip that wasn't yours to spread. You told someone, someone else's business that that person really didn't want you to share, and you swore that you wouldn't tell anyone. You could have done something really bad that's made you feel guilty over the years. It could be sexual sin, it could be alcohol, it could be drugs, it could be anything. And we're all willing to say, yeah, I've made mistakes in life. So if we're willing to say, yeah, I make mistakes in life, why am I continuing to worship myself? Surely the act of worship should only be set aside for a being who is incapable of doing wrong. My God is incapable of doing wrong. I remember in philosophy we did a certain module about God and his power and his abilities. And there's obviously two sides of the story where, like, perspectives in terms of people thinking that, okay, God is God, but he's just as capable of doing bad as he is good, and he just chooses to do good, but then it's subjective because you could think that God does bad, and then it's a whole thing of problem, of evil. Do you believe that God causes hurricanes or the devil, or our fallen world? Or do you believe that God causes cancer? Or is it attack of the enemy? And again, our fallen world, which is human's fault? There's so many different things. And I remember listening to this particular christian theologian and he was saying how God is God, but God is love. He is defined by love, he is defined by goodness, and he is physically incapable of hating, of doing bad. God is eternally righteous. He is eternally for the things that are ultimately long term good for the world, for humanity, for his purposes to come to fruition. When you look at the Old Testament and whilst, like, yeah, God was like, kind of scary. Like, I remember this one time I was reading, I don't remember what it was, maybe it was numbers and someone like stepped out of line or did something and God just like, boom, bam, bye, got rid of that kid, got rid of that kid's family, got rid of that kid's kids. And I was like, dang, God's like, he's a little bit scary, but God did that out of righteousness because the Lord just come into play and thank the Lord Jesus Christ, literally, that we had the Lord Jesus Christ who died for our sins. So we do not have to atone through animal blood, lamb blood, because of our sins. And we have to do it over and over again. He was a lamb who died once and for all. So we are not defined by the mistakes that we made. But from the dawn of time, God's perspective was righteousness. He is righteous. He has no capability of doing anything but righteousness. And when I think back to that time when I learned that, like, I think we all get that wrong in the perspective of God, because that's how we then choose. And I don't mean capital g God, by the way. I mean, like, God, lowercase g in the sense of idols. We make things idols because we don't recognize that they should never be an idol in the first place, because they are capable of doing wrong and they are incapable of always doing good. Alcohol can. Yeah, make me feel good in the moment. I feel like on a high. I'm laughing. It takes away my problems. But the fool is terrible. If you drink enough, you're going to get a bad hangover. If you drink enough, you're going to get addicted. If you drink enough, you're going to think that anytime that you feel down, that you should pick up a drink. These things are not to be worshipped the same as you. You are capable of doing good stuff. There are videos I see on TikTok every day. Non christians doing good deeds. They're being kind to an old person, crossing the street. They're helping their neighbor. They're giving to charity. Great. But does that mean that humankind, that mankind, that you and me are worthy to be worshipped because of that one act of goodness, because tomorrow we could do something completely opposite to that. We could do something that completely contradicts what we did yesterday. But my God never contradicts. What he did yesterday was just as righteous as what he did today. He literally is incapable of failing. Incapable of failing for himself, but incapable of failing for us, incapable of failing for humanity? The only time humanity is felled is because of human beings and because of the enemy, and the enemy using human beings. God, in love, himself, cannot do that, but we most definitely can. So when we love ourselves in God's way, I wouldn't even put it as loving yourself. I would put it I love God, and I love everything that God loves because of goddess. So my love for myself is more of a respect for myself? Yes, I love myself in, like, you know, a surface level way of, I'm gonna take care of myself. I'm gonna, you know, have good hygiene. I'm gonna make sure that I keep, you know, exercising and eating the right foods. I'm gonna make sure that, you know, I'm stimulating my brain or I'm, like, picking up new hobbies and I'm being nice to people and I'm doing things that make me happy. But to the extent that still serves God, I am an ambassador of Christ. I am a servant of Christ. Therefore, I take care of what is God's. And when you have that perspective of respecting what God respects, of loving what God loves, you won't just love yourself. You will love everyone and everything and treat everyone and everything with utmost respect. You will do things in accordance with the word of God. You won't do things in accordance with finding your truth. Finding my truth? I'm going to do what's in my truth. I'm going to do what makes me happy. A load of junk that is rubbish. If you let yourself go down that hole of discovering what makes you happy, you are literally setting yourself up to completely reject God, because as soon as self love becomes your priority, you make yourself an idol. God doesn't compete to that, for one, but he won't be able to compete in your mind because you'll be so focused on yourself. But yet God should be competing, and he should be winning, because our God is not destructible. You could die tomorrow. I'm sorry to be morbid right now, but you could just die tomorrow. But are we going to hear on the news that God died? No. Are we gonna go to God's funeral? No. Are we gonna say, oh, God's, like, really? Like, got a bad cold right now. He's feeling down in the dumps? No. Or am I gonna hear, God lashed out on me today. He's like, you know, not in a good mood, so maybe don't talk to him right now? No, but are we gonna hear all that about you one day? Yeah. I pray that you have a long, healthy life in Christ doing his purpose. But there will be a day where you and me will die. I will have a funeral one day. People will attend my funeral. And at that point, I really pray that everyone that is at my funeral looks back and says, wow, elodie made an impact through Christ, but it's going to show people that are at my funeral that, wow, life is so short. Surely life has deeper meaning because it can all be gone in a minute. I don't want my. I want my kids to be sad. Duh. Like, I want a good relationship with them, but I don't want them to be mourning me to the point where they see me as their source. It should push them towards Christ. It should say, wow, like, my mom was able to live a life of honor, a life that was pleasing to God because of his transformation through her. And that makes me think I want to continue to surrender my life to Christ. And in my head, that shows God's character, God's love, God's faithfulness and God's goodness. It doesn't show that God's an angry God. It shows that he doesn't want us to put our hope in something that is only going to let us down. We will let us down forever and a day. I've experienced it, you've experienced it, and every single person that has given their lives to Christ in the first place has hit some sort of rock bottom. Even if it's not like really dramatic, there is still something in you that thought, yeah, like, I need some help. I can't lie. Like, I'm really struggling on my own. If that's your reason and you're still trying to put yourself on the pedestal, where are we going? Because it's looking like roundabout, like, it's looking like we're not really taking an exit and we're just wasting loads of gas going round around in circles because that's not going to lead you anywhere good. The whole point you came to Christ was to escape self, so why are you going back to self again? And my two favourite verses in regards to this topic, it's obviously John 316. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. I am not going to try and quote that actually, because your girl will get it wrong and I have no shame about that. We're going to read it and amplify it again since it's already on my phone. For God so greatly loved and dearly prized, the world amplified is just like that one ante that you can't get to stop talking. For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world, that he even gave his one and only begotten son so that whoever believes and trusts in him as savior shall not perish but have eternal life. That is a God that I want to worship. I can't give myself that. Like, I can't sacrifice myself for myself. But Jesus sacrificed himself for me once and for all. That's the type of love that I want. And the second one is romans six. Six. And this says, we know that our old self, our human nature without the Holy Spirit was knelt to the cross with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with so that we would no longer be saved society. I'm going to go to verse seven because it's good for the person who has died with Christ has been freed from the power of sin. Verse eight and we'll carry on now. If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live together with him because we know the self evident truth that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has power over him for the death that he died. He died to sin, ending its power and paying the sinner's debt once and for all. And the life that he lives, he lives to glorify God in unbroken fellowship with him. Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin and your relationship to it broken, but alive in God, in unbroken fellowship with him in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts and passions. Do not go on offering members of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness. I love this verse, but offer yourselves to God in decisive act as those alive raised from the dead to a new life. And your members, all of your ability, sanctified, set apart as instruments of righteousness, yielded to God. For sin will no longer be a master over you since you are not under the law as slaves, but under a merited favor as recipients of God's favor and mercy. The gospel is so good. Like, who can compete with that? Because God's saying, like, I want you to give your all to me, but I want you to know that I have given my all to you. That is the gospel we love because he first loved us. That is what the gospel is. We don't just love God out of, oh, I probably should love God. I probably should direct my self love onto God. Now I love God because he loved us. And really, when you really think about it, the only reason why people are so heavily focused on, like, making sure people have self love is because they don't have self love, because they naturally hate themselves, because they naturally don't do what's good. It's even, like Paul said, I know what is good, but I don't do it like us. As humans cannot do good by ourselves. We let ourselves down all the time. Like, as I was saying earlier, in terms like me being messy or like me being disorganized and stressing myself out later, that is a sign that I don't respect myself. And even if I respect myself with my utmost ability to respect myself, there is a point in which I cannot respect myself anymore because I am a human being. God has a love for you and me that surpasses the love that we can have for ourselves. There is no human that can love themselves in a way that God can love them. First of all, being that he is holy and he is God, he is alpha and Omega. He is king of kings. He is lord of lords. He is the prince of peace. But also so much so that he showed his love for us by dying a shameful death, a humiliating death. He literally died for the people who crucified him to that cross. And you know what? Whilst we weren't there and the flesh, when Jesus died on that cross, every single sin is another whipping, is another slander, is another spit in the face of Jesus as he was walking to that cross. Every single sin is another nail through his hands. We have so much sinned against goddesse, but he loves us so much that he still saved us. If that's not a love that you want, I don't know what else you would want. And you can't get that from yourself. There is no one, no thing, not even yourself. Even though you think that you can do good by yourself, you cannot do good by yourself. We are able to do good through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. True good, true, everlasting good, not good. That is, sometimes good and sometimes bad, and sometimes makes mistakes and sometimes does this. God will never leave nor forsake us. God isn't capable of letting us down. God is incapable of letting us fall. We might fall because of our own fleshy desires and our own disobedience towards God. But God and of himself does not walk with us to put us in harm's way. That's not God. God will be there in the times where we put ourselves in harm's way. God will teach us lessons through times that we have had to move forward in a place of sacrifice that's uncomfortable. He'll be there for that. But in of himself, God is not there sometimes and not there others. Even in the valleys of the shadows of death, God is there all the time. So I don't know if that was enough of a persuasion to you guys, but I don't, I don't want anyone to fall in the trap of this, anyone to fall in the trap of thinking that you can do it on your own. And that's. That's tiring. That's literally why Jesus said, come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. It's tiring doing it on your own. It's tiring feeling like you have to achieve a certain standpoint. And when you really think about it, self love is Old Testament. Self love is old covenant, because self love is saying that if I do xYz, then I am worthy. If I do xYz, then I am a good person. That is literally the bond that Jesus came to break. You might be thinking you're being all new age and all spiritual and all like, oh, so modern. You are literally putting yourself back into slavery. You are saying that I am defined by my good deeds, because as soon as you let yourself down, you're going to be fuming like yourself. You're going to be beating yourself up. Next minute you're suicidal like I was because you couldn't do it on your own. And you realize, damn, it's hard out here, and my human flesh can't do it on its own. But God came to save you from all of that. To say that I give you my grace, my unmerited favor, because of the sacrifice that Jesus gave on that cross for you. And he didn't just sacrifice. He died with all of your pain. He died with all of your confusion, all of your suffering, all of your mistakes. And he rose again. Then on the third day, with grace, with love, with joy, with peace, at password and understanding, with a hope that no other thing nor a self can provide you. The gospel is like, the gospel is so cool, and we don't realize how cool it is. Like, the gospel's incredible. The gospel is so forward thinking. It's so innovative. It's so beyond anything that any other human nor religion nor new age cult can ever come up with. Our God is insanely out of this world. And so many people are missing out on that because they're so focused on thinking that following God is bondage. Following God is freedom. Following Jesus is freedom. There is nothing like it to say that everything that I did was buried in that tomb and rose again in a completely different light three days later. I want that. You should want that, too. I shouldn't want to feel like I'm. I'm weighed down by every single act that I've ever done in life. And every day I have to wake up and choose myself, even though I let myself down yesterday. That's a rough world to live in, and I don't want to live in it, and I don't want you to live in it either. And there's on period. Elodie stopped spitting now. Sermon closed. Past Elodie walking off the stage. But I hope y'all get it. If you need to rewind it and listen back, rewind it and listen back because I'm being serious. We need to stop having these different so say new age thoughts. But it is the most bondage and heavily weighed down thing that you could ever give yourself. It is so tiring. Jesus may have been born 2024 years ago, but he is more modern than any human on this planet in the sense of like a life living of abundance. Anyways, I'm a stop because I'm. I'm a just get too passionate and I'm actually need to eat my food because I'm hungry. But I love you. And I hope that whilst I've spit facts and I've spit a lot of like, hard hitting, convicting stuff, I hope that it still blessed you. And I hope that you leave this episode feeling just so on fire for God and so in awe of him. Study his character. Get to know who Jesus really is. Because if you know who Jesus is, you won't want to serve anything other than him, even yourself. Because when you compare yourself to Jesus, there is so many differences. And the differences are astounding because you can never be like him unless you are following him. You, on your own, cannot do it with Jesus. With the Holy Spirit, sure, but on your own, never. But anyways, I love you guys so much. I pray this has touched you and I will see you guys in the next episode. Bye.