How to Like Yourself
Text: John 13:1
A number of years ago, I read a bestselling book titled, "Hide or Seek," written by Dr. James Dobson, a distinguished Christian psychologist and writer. His book focused on the problem of self-esteem in children and adults. I was stunned by the book's first pages, which described Lee Harvey Oswald, a man little-known to most of us.
Lee started life with numerous disadvantages. His father died of a heart attack shortly before his birth. His mother had to work long hours during Lee's childhood and gave him little affection and no training—she even refused to let Lee call her at work for any matter.
Most of his classmates disliked Lee Oswald. This lonely man was scrawny, balding, unattractive, poor, undisciplined—and to nearly all, unlovable.
He had no sense of self-worth. Despite his high IQ, Oswald failed academically and finally dropped out during his third year of high school to join the Marine Corps. Other Marines made fun of him, so he resisted both fellow soldiers and authority and was dishonorably discharged.
Oswald married a foreign girl, but his marriage quickly disintegrated. Instead of being his ally against the harsh world, his wife became his cruel opponent. She mocked his attempts to provide for his family's needs and ridiculed his failures.
At last, Lee Oswald stopped groveling to his sadistic wife. Everyone else had rejected him, and she didn't want him, either. At this point, Lee Harvey Oswald, the rejected, unlovable failure, became a changed man. He picked up the rifle hidden in his garage and carried it with him to a Dallas, Texas, book storage building. There. according to numerous crime investigators, from a third-floor window, on November 22, 1963, he fired two bullets into the head of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy— who embodied all the success, handsomeness, wealth, and family closeness which Oswald had yearned for all his miserable life.
If only someone, anyone, could have believed in Lee Oswald and could have shown him, genuine love.
What happens when a person doesn't like himself? What are the results?
Fortunately, not many people take Oswald's route of violence. For most people, the road to personal worth is filled with many detours: lonely, scary bouts of depression, excessive drinking, under or over-eating, drugs, sexual issues, a string of job changes, and the haunting, almost never-ending sense that you just don't have what it takes.
How does a person learn to like himself? What's the secret?
The Apostle John made a fascinating comment about Jesus' relationship with his disciples:
Having loved His own, who were in the world. He loved them to the end.—John 13:1
I'm convinced that John's words hold the cure for self-devaluation. Amazingly, the great Son of God had a magnetic love for all people. Jesus Christ was able to shatter their negative selfimages and transform individuals into happy, self-confident people!
Across the centuries, people who've come to faith in Jesus Christ as Savior have, for the first time in their lives, actually been able to love themselves. The result? New freedom to love others, as well.
Experiencing Jesus Christ's love is the key to dreaming big, thinking big, and loving big. That's right— the key to loving yourself is first to know that Jesus loves you.
But what does this love of Jesus Christ mean to you, personally—on a very practical basis?
Jesus loves you unconditionally
First of all, Jesus loves you with an unconditional love. That means He loves you in spite of your strengths and weaknesses. He loves you for who you are—not for what you have accomplished, or what you are getting done now, or whatever you will achieve in the future.
Centuries ago, Jesus met a nameless Samaritan woman at a well in Samaria. Her life had been marked by botched-up relationships and other "failures"— She'd gone through a string of five bad marriages and other difficulties. When she met Jesus, she was living immorally with her present "friend." In spite of all her sinful disappointments, Jesus Christ loved her for who she was, not for what she had done "wrong."
Martha, was the opposite of the Samaritan woman. Martha exemplified a successful person— who was a gracious hostess from the small town of Bethany. She devotedly opened her home countless times to Jesus and His disciples. Jesus loved her—for who she was, not because of the many good things she'd done for him and others.
Sadly, we don't often love people that way. It's unnatural for you and me to love people for who they are– apart from the ways they can enhance our own or others' lives. We usually love other people in direct proportion to how successful they are or how they can benefit us. Too often, we care for others depending upon how they appreciate us or how they can help us. But that's not how God loves. You see, the Bible says,
The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.—(1 Samuel 16:7)
God loves you unconditionally. With no strings attached. Just for who you are, regardless of your strengths and weaknesses—"because, Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end.
Jesus has already proven his love
Secondly, Jesus has already proven that His love for you and me is real.
Talk is cheap. The ancient wisdom is true: actions speak louder than words. Jesus Christ not only spoke his promises, he also fleshed them out.
He said,
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friend" —(John 15:13)
In one special instance, Jesus backed up his talk about sacrificing one's life for his friends: he literally went to the cross to voluntarily be executed on our behalf— for all of the wrongs we've done that have alienated us from ourselves from each other and from God. He took the penalty of our sins on Himself. That's why the Bible says of Christ, While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.— (Romans 5:8)
While we were helpless to clean ourselves up and make ourselves acceptable—Christ died for us— when we were at our worst. He died to prove to you and me the extent that God will go to say, "I love you. I want to forgive your past. I will provide you with a new, adventuresome, fulfilling way of life."
Talk to any competent therapist, and he or she will explain that many of their patients suffer from guilt problems. Mental health professionals, especially, will tell you that a large number of people in mental institutions today are there because they are unable to cope with guilt.
They are locked into their past, chained to their past failures, sins, and mistakes—unable to forgive themselves. With these warped, distorted, negative, self-condemning perspectives, no wonder so many of us suffer from low self-esteem.
Several decades ago, popular preacher-author Norman Vincent Peale once shared with a friend how awful he felt about himself. One time Peale was bemoaning the bad sermon he'd just preached. He'd felt terrible about it for days. Peale said he wondered if he should keep on being a preacher. His friend looked him in the eye and said, "Norman, that sermon you preached is over. Your audience has forgotten it. Why don't you forget it, as well? That will make it unanimous!"
Friend, if you were the only person in the world, Jesus Christ would have died for you. Even if you believe your past has made you unworthy because you've been too bad and you feel you aren't worth saving, Christ would have given His life for you—because, having loved His own, He loved them until the end.
The love of Jesus is transformative
Thirdly, because Jesus Christ loves you, grabbing onto this fact will give you the basis to begin loving yourself. For centuries, every person who ever came into contact with Jesus walked away with a different perspective of herself or himself— and began to see themselves as God saw them.
For the first time in his life, Simon, a common "nobody" fisherman, was able to believe that he could be somebody. In Greek, Simon's name means "shifting sand," "little pebble," or "unstable one."
When Simon met Jesus, Jesus gave him a brand new name, which gave Simon a self-image makeover—to show him that Jesus had confidence in him. Simon's life changed when "Jesus looked at him and said, You are Simon son of John. You will be called 'Cephas' (which, when translated, is "Peter, the Rock."— (John 1;42)
On the basis of Christ's love a crooked politician by the name of Matthew dared to believe that he, too, could recover his past reputation.
Since Christ's love and forgiveness were and are always available, a prostitute by the name of Mary, also dared to believe that she could become a lady.
I've always been impressed by the Broadway musical, The Man of La Mancha. My wife and I saw it on Broadway during our honeymoon fifty-five years ago. I still get emotional thinking about it.
Don Quixote was the Man of La Mancha. I believe Quixote, the Man of La Mancha, was in many respects a symbolic Christ figure. He had the ability to help people develop confidence in themselves.
On one of his travels, Quixote stops at an old broken-down inn where he meets a prostitute named Aldonza. He lauds her as "My Lady."
But she, mouth open and scantily clad, leers at him and says,
"Me, a lady? I was born in a ditch by a mother who left me there naked and cold and too hungry to cry. I never blamed her. I'm sure she left, hoping that I would have had the good sense to die;"
Yet the Man of La Mancha looks at her and continues to believe in the best in her as he announces grandly,
"Your name is no longer Aldonza. I give you a new name. You are 'My Lady. And I give you the name, 'Dulcinea'— Dulcinea.'"
The play continues, and later on, she appears on the stage sobbing and hysterical—as a group of ruthless travelers has just raped her in the back of the barn.
Again, the Man of La Mancha reaffirms his belief in her goodness. But she can't handle that, and she screams at him,
"Don't call me a lady. God, won't you look at me! I'm only a kitchen slut reeking of sweat, a strumpet that men use and forget. I'm only Aldonza. I'm nothing at all."
She's wounded, crushed, and filled with self-hate as she runs off the stage with those words of ruined self-esteem. At the end of the play, the Man of La Mancha lies, dying of a broken heart.
At that agonizing moment, a beautiful Spanish lady approaches his bedside and kneels beside him. He turns his head, and he asks feebly, "Who are you?"
The beautiful lady arises, stands tall and queenly— and says,
"My name—my name—my name is 'Dulcinea'—'Dulcinea!'"
God wants you to have a new name, too! He wants to help you discover it—because, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end.
What new name do you think God wants to give to you?
Jesus will love you forever
Fourthly, Jesus Christ's love for you will continue until you become the person He wants you to be. He will never quit on you. He will never cast you aside for someone else who's more likely to succeed. That's the nature of His love for you. It will never stop.
I like the way the writer Bruce Larsen describes Christ's love in his book, No Longer Strangers:
"God says to you in Jesus Christ, 'I love you. I love you just as you are. I love you unconditionally. And now all I ask is that you begin to respond to my love and to my commitment to you. By committing to me all of yourself and all that you are able to give.'
You see, God's love does not depend on any virtue in us or on our achievements. But the nature of his love is that He doesn't leave us where He finds us.
When someone begins the adventure of faith, God says to him or her, in effect,
"I am going to begin to change you—I love you so much that I want to change all of your life's negative and positive experiences that make you an unknowable, unrelatable person. It may take me a thousand years of reprogramming to make you a lover of people, of me, of yourself. But I promise that I will continue relentlessly until you have been totally transformed.
Even after a thousand years of this process and change, I will not love you one bit more than I love you right now— or at the moment of your conception and birth— or at the moment of your commitment to me. My love for you is total and unconditional. I am not trying to change you so that I can love you. Rather, I love you— and because I do, I want to change you."
No wonder the Apostle Paul could state so boldly,
Being confident of this, that He who has begun a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6)!
Norman Vincent Peale once shared with me and others an incident that profoundly influenced his own self-image. One of his mentors, John W. Hoffman, was the president of Peale's university. Hoffman had been an outstanding athlete and was an easy-to-elate-to person. He was a great man and a man whom Norman greatly looked up to. One night, after a dinner banquet, Dr. Hoffman took Norman for a walk outside and told him,
"You know something, Norman, I believe in you. You've got some qualities and abilities with which you can do much if you will believe in yourself and believe in Jesus Christ.
Believe in yourself, Norman. Stop shrinking and being afraid. Stand up to yourself and remember that your old college president will always believe in you."
Reflecting on this life-altering moment with his beloved guide, advisor, and friend, Norman Peale noted,
"Why Dr. Hoffman did this act of kindness, I'll never know. But that he did it, I'll never forget."
Peale concluded his description of Dr. Hoffman's life-changing influence on him saying,
"Years later, I'd heard that Dr. Hoffman was on his deathbed in Pasadena, California, with cancer of the throat. I went to see him. He could no longer speak. That golden voice was stilled. And I sat by his bed and said,
'Dr. Hoffman, I've come here to tell you that I will never forget that night when you told me that you believed in me. I just want to say that I love you and that I always will.'"
A beautiful smile crossed Hoffman's face. He took a pencil and jotted on a pad,
"Norman, I still believe in you, and I still love you, too."
Friend, Jesus Christ loves you. He loved Lee Harvey Oswald. If only Oswald could have known it and responded to the Savior's love.
Do you believe Christ loves you and has great confidence in you?
I do—certainly not because of wrong things I've said and done, and not because of things not said and not done. I believe Christ loves and believes in me solely because I count on his actions and promises, such as: having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end!
His assurance, loyalty, support, and guidance have made all the difference in my personal and professional life—And He loves you this same way. You can depend on that!
PS—You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. —Christopher Robin