Now here is what I am up to in this part of my challenge…
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31 NIV)
Now why did I just add that here? “Love your neighbor as yourself”
So how can I love my neighbor, IF I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO LOVE OTHERS…
I am currently on the the 25th day of this challenge… Now here is what happened in the last few days…
Yesterday I did not do any of this, due to having a hectic schedule and only being home at about 1am, was helping someone with academics.
Day 15 – Love is honorable…
Live with your wives in an understanding way … and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life. (1 Peter 3:7 NASB)
What does it mean to honor?
According to The Love Dare…
“To honor someone means to give them respect and high esteem, to treat them as being special and of great worth.”
How does one honor you spouse?
By encouraging them, instead of discouraging them…
By honoring your spouse, you look to listen to them rather than to just speak down to them…
Now this is not really for marriage which I am doing…
So how does one honor oneself…
How about speaking positively about oneself instead of negatively? – I mention this due to me failing at this till today…
Honor comes in different forms… We must learn what it means… Thus firstly look at yourself in respect and high esteem, then what we have to do to honor ourselves, will become clearly visible…
I will also honor them and they will not be insignificant. (Jeremiah 30:19 NASB)
Day 16 – Love intercedes…
Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers.(3 John 2 NASB)
Why should we intercede? What is the reason for this?
Now on a previous day it was mentioned that there are two rooms…
The room of appreciation…
AND
The room of depreciation…
Now when interceding for someone, you thank God for the stuff you appreciate, and pray for God’s light, for you or the other person, in all the areas where it is depreciated… We tend to think we should do this because we want the person to be exactly like we want them to be…
BUT, why not ask God to change our hearts as well….
Now that this is mentioned, there is one person whom we tend to depreciate the most (in my case)… This is ourselves…
WE KNOW OUR EVERY FLAW AND TEND TO FOCUS ON IT…
WE ALSO SEE ALL OUR SHORTCOMINGS AND WE HATE OURSELVES FOR IT…
AND WE NEGLECT TO SEE ANY GOOD IN OURSELVES, BECAUSE THIS CAN BECOME A TYPE OF PRIDE….
Now to ourselves we have to intercede more than ever… And rarely we think it deem necessary to do so, yet it is needed…
We need God to show us that we are not this big failure we tend to see in the mirror every morning… And let God show us how to appreciate ourselves, even when every person sees us as losers, and freaks… (I came to believe that I am worth NOTHING AT ALL, EVERYONE ANYWAY HATES ME AND EVERYONE THINKS THAT I AM WEIRD, AND YET THEY HATE MOST THINGS ABOUT ME… ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO KNOW WHAT THEY SHOULD DO)
I feel very alone these days and it hurts that even those who “say” they care, actually degrades me to the extend that I hate myself…
I need to pray more for myself now than ever before….
Day 17 – Love promotes intimacy…
Love overlooks the mistakes of others, but dwelling on the failures of others devastates friendships. (Proverbs 17:9 TPT)
We all tend to speak out of turn, this end up in such a way that we sometimes hurt friendships and more…
Now if we would start keeping the “dirty laundry” we know of other people out of public, wouldn’t this make our lives easier and more peaceful?
Yes, I have done this… And people got hurt, but worst of all, people say to my face how much they dislike me, due to who I am… At this stage I am no more the person I used to be, due to everyone hating me… The old person everyone hates is now no longer in existence, yet now everyone wants that guy back… Why? I can’t really say….
I know how I was…
I gave people complements, due to me always hearing what a failure I am…
I made jokes due to me always being depressed….
I care and gave lots of hugs… Especially when I care a lot about someone… And sometimes when I really needed a hug…
I hate trousers and formal/semi-formal clothing… It really doesn’t make me feel like someone out of the ordinary, more than that, it makes me feel like I am trying to fit into a world that doesn’t want me there either… The result… More depression….
Now, I know I am flawed, seriously messed up right now, yet this could have been avoided…
I said what?
Yes… I have various ways I could avoid this…
1) Go through life with no one…. But I am a people person… Yet it hurts….
2) I could learn to love myself and tell everyone that they can dive in a ditch…. I am me, got a problem, talk to my God and my Creator…
Wait, did I just say this?
YES!!!!!!
Now I was created for a day as this, yet my identity is the core of everything…
My identity is being destroyed, that which I am is being said to be demonic in some sense…
“You are not supposed to care this much, why do you?”
“You should not look at people and complement them, they don’t want it”
But why…
There is something I realized… We need to talk to someone when we are down… Yet when I am down, NO ONE WANTS TO BE CLOSE TO ME… It is like I have some contagious disease that could kill someone…
Why do we not pray and talk about this to God? Moan, groan, tell God how much this world sucks… HE doesn’t mind… He loves us…
Day 18 – Love seeks to understand…
How blessed is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding. (Proverbs 3:13 NASB)
Why do we need to understand?
Everyone of us has a past… NOW REALLY, IF YOU THINK YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS ONE, YOU ARE MISTAKEN…
I have one, did stuff I regret… Loved people, who hate me… And cared about people, who doesn’t give two hoots about me anyway…
Why then…
If we seek to understand why a person thinks and acts the way they do, we will understand much… like mentioned a bit earlier I had reasons for my actions… Now, because no one wanted to understand who I really am, I stopped… destroying who I really am… And now I do not see the positive in life anymore…
What would have been different if everyone thought differently?
If everyone knows who we are, there is something that releases you from the bondage of being fake, childish and immature…
I do not want to have a boring life, yet everyone expects a life to be the way they believe life should be….
If we live in the way expected, we lose our ability to dream… I know this due to me currently being on the verge of just giving up… Just work so that everyone is happy… Yet we miss the mark about what we are capable of… We miss our purpose… How do we understand ourselves…
About a year ago, I caused some issues… The relationship (friendship) was destroyed because they didn’t come to me to explain to me what is up… And this hurt me because they held a grudge for a year, and acted like everything was fine…
Why do we think of ourselves as super human to handle what happens… But we are just human… We are not bullet proof, not hurt-proof… We are like a fragile vase, which when dropped, is not ever replaceable…
BE CAREFUL HOW YOU TREAT PEOPLE…
GOD BLESS… Next week this takes a different turn… I didn’t even expect it…