While Jesus said we were to love our neighbor as ourselves, somebody else said, “Heaven help your neighbor if you hate yourself.” There’s a lot of truth in this statement. The fact is I can only love and accept others to the degree that I have learned to love and accept myself; that is, in a healthy sense.

How I see myself, what I think about myself, how I feel about myself, and how well I accept myself will largely determine what I get out of life. If I see myself as having little worth, I will never achieve my God-given potential. But if I see myself as having great value, not in a prideful way, but as God sees and accepts me, I will, with God’s help, be able to reach and achieve my God-given life purpose and potential.

Take a bar of iron and make it into nails and it will be worth a few dollars; make it into weight bearing posts it will be worth much more; refine it and make it into stainless steel pots and it will be worth even more; or refine it even further to take out all its impurities and use it to make finely tuned space age rocket engines and it will be worth a fortune.

Life’s like that. If you believe in yourself in a healthy sense, with God’s help and his “refining fire” (plus a lot of hard work), you can become the person God envisions you to be, and be able to fulfill your God-given life purpose.

What is important is not how or where we got started in life, but how and where we finish! We had no choice in the former, but we do in the latter.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to see and accept myself as you see and accept me, and put me through your ‘refining fire’ so that I will reach and achieve my total God-given potential for you glory. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Mark 12:31 (NIV).