 Have you ever thought to yourself, man, I'm really down on my luck, I don't know my purpose in life and I'm really struggling. I should probably consult with Oprah, see what she has to say. No, well, me neither. Unfortunately, though, if you're a woman between the age of 40 and 60, the probability that you've thought something at least close to this is a lot more significant. That's not necessarily a particular judgment on you folks. Each generation has its own set of theological gobbledygook to debunk. Now, Oprah's had no shortage of theologically void statements, some of which are semi laughable. Okay, okay. I need to go back on that. I wrote semi laughable in the script, but I'm being too charitable. These things are hilarious, some of the stuff that she says. Today the video we're going to be engaging with has a little bit more substance to it. I think it will be quite entertaining, but I think we're going to learn a lot from it as well. Even though Oprah isn't reaching my generation, Gen Z, or the millennial generation, it's important to know that the ideas that she puts forward and the ideas for guests that she brings on aren't unique to her generation. Issues of self-love, self-esteem, self-care are perhaps even more popular in recent generations than with Oprah's generation. So today we're going to touch on all those topics and sort through the Oprah insanity. So let's begin. But first, hey, what's up guys? My name is Isaac David and this is The Daily Disciple where I help you find Jesus and follow him daily. If you're new to this channel, subscribe because I'm putting out new videos every single day. A huge shout out to everyone on Patreon. It is because of your guys' support that this ministry keeps going and growing. If you want to help support what I'm doing and helping people follow Jesus daily, head to the link in my bio and become a patron today. Now, on to the video. Jackie Ryan just wrote on Facebook, I'm tired of being strong. I want to be weak. And Yana said that so many of us wear that as our badge. Those of you, how many of you are the strong ones? Not good. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, you know. You're strong. Yeah. And then why isn't that good? Because then first of all, it's probably inauthentic, you know, that you always put other people before you. Bro, of course it's inauthentic. Like what? Like, of course it's inauthentic to put others first. See, this is the big problem with the authenticity movement. And I'm a big proponent of authenticity. The problem is sin is authentic to the sinful nature. So if you want to be completely quote unquote authentic, then you are going to be a terrible person. You are. The Bible says no one is righteous. No, not one. No one seeks for God. No one does what is right. We are naturally selfish. And even when we do nice things for people, get this, that we're usually doing it to bolster our own sense of self or our own, how we feel about our self or how other people see us. Philippians says, do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourself. See, we need to distinguish here what is good authenticity, biblical authenticity and bad authenticity, because the world will try to tell you, you're perfect just the way you are that you need to embrace every desire that you have, every inclination and every behavior. But the Bible paints a different picture. We are told in the Bible that we need to be transformed because we have a sinful nature and we are a slave to wickedness. However, when we put our faith in Christ, he transforms us from the inside out and makes us a new creation. We are given a new self and we are to be authentic to that new self, that new creation, those new desires that God has placed in us, those desires for service and sacrifice. It's the worst possible thing for you to be, quote unquote, authentic to the old man, to who you once were because that person, all those desires were in sin, were enslaved to sin and they were just looking out for yourself and you don't want that. You want to be authentic, true to who you newly are in Christ. From that new identity flows a sense of self worth and a foundation for self acceptance, which we're going to talk about a little bit later. Always put other people before you, but you put yourself last. How you treat yourself is how you treat God. So you're putting God last because you are the representative of God in your life. Come on. What? Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. What? Okay. You kidding me? This is hurting my brain here. You are the representative of God in your own life and how you treat yourself is how you treat God. I'm trying to figure out where this lady is getting this stuff. Honestly, it makes no sense. I don't, I can't be quite any more eloquent than that. I think she, I think she might be getting it from the idea that, oh, how you treat yourself is how you treat other people. So if you're mean to yourself, if you call yourself bad names, if you're, if you, you know, that's how you're going to treat other people. And I can kind of, okay, I can kind of buy into that a little bit. I do think there's some nuance to it. At the same time though, how you treat God is completely different than how you should treat yourself. You, we got to worship God. We got to, you know, give him all the glory. We got to dedicate our lives to him. That is very different than how we're treating ourselves. We're not worshiping ourselves. We're not giving all the glory to ourselves. We're not submitting our lives to ourselves. We need to treat God very differently than how we treat ourselves, because we are not God. And, and okay. So what's this idea about we are the representative of God in our own life? I think this is some sort of twisted mangled like idea taken from, okay, we're created in the image of God and we're created to image God on this earth. Yes. That's true. To show the world what God is like through my character, through my behavior, imaging God on this earth, because I'm created in the image of God, but I also want to reflect his character to everybody on this earth. And none of us do that perfectly, but that is our calling. At the same time though, we are the representative of God, of our own life, so we need to treat ourselves really well because that's in essence how we're telling the world we need to treat God. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Like this is this is the thing with Oprah sometimes and the people that she brings on. There's like a little sliver of truth to it and then just garbage, right? And then so you can kind of be like, I can kind of see what she's saying. Like, okay, yeah, don't treat yourself bad, because if you're treating yourself really poorly, then you're, you know, you're telling the world what that what God created was not very good and was not worthy of, of, of, of love or, or protection or, or valuable. So I can kind of get that, but then we go to the extreme of saying, well, you know, you know, you're God's the representative of God in your own life. So treat yourself like you treat God. It's like, no, that's, there's a two like distinct things. Yes, don't treat yourself badly. And we're going to talk about that later. And I'm going to make another video. I made videos about self-hate before and self-acceptance and all that sort of, sort of thing, but there's a distinction here. It's like, okay, just because I'm, I'm, I'm holding God to this, this different standard, right? He is holy. He is, he is amazing. He's the best thing ever. And I'm going to worship him. I'm going to dedicate my life to him. That doesn't mean that I need to treat myself that way. Like give myself all the praise, all the glory. And it also doesn't mean that I need to treat myself like garbage. No, that's not what we're, we're, that's not the place that we're in either. We got to recognize, okay, how we're created in the image of God. God has given us value and worth. He demonstrated that in giving his life for us, he saw that as worth it. And, and, you know, we're not trash. He loved us. That is where we find our identity and our sense of self-worth and acceptance in what God has said about us. Because if he is our everything, then his opinion matters most. And if that's true, and that's where we found, find our foundation for how we see ourselves, that ought to change your life. That doesn't mean you start treating yourself like God. Everybody gets so excited here, too. That just wasn't, uh-huh, you don't have nothing right now. Where's my writing tools, Dean? Yeah, guys, the sad fact is about a lot of the programming nowadays when it comes to, you know, when people approach theological or philosophical topics is somebody will say something generally pretty absurd or nonsensical. It just won't make sense. Um, and everybody will be like, Oh, that's deep. Oh, that's deep. Oh, that hit me so deep. It's like, okay, it's not, it's not that deep. It's not that deep. Now, how you, I've never heard it put that way before. Yeah, because you are the representation of God in your life, and you put you last and put other people ahead of you, which means you're putting other things and other people ahead of God in your life. Really? Yes, really. What? I'm just, I hate to just keep doing that, but I had no idea this was going to be this bad. In this lady's world, you are God. You, like, there's no distinction here. It's like, okay, like, if you're not putting yourself first, then you're not putting God first. Well, lady, I'm sorry. You're, you're God is you, which is obviously not biblical. Nowhere in the Bible is like, Hey, by the way, you're a God. It's like, um, no, that's not part of the biblical story. Um, but people will try to create idols. That is part of the biblical story. People creating idols. You saw it. The Israelites making a golden calf for themselves, even as Moses was giving them, about to give them the law of God. They were already like, Oh, where he left. Let's just create an idol. Same here. This lady is creating an idol for ourselves herself in the image of herself. And, uh, and it's the, the idol of self-care. It's the idol of put me first and we can create a lot of justifications for it and workarounds and, and you'll even hear Oprah here trying to bring out some scripture, interestingly enough. And, uh, this lady kind of, well, like, waddles and wobbles around it, trying to off you, skate, you know, biblical truth in order to maintain her philosophy and her understanding that she is most important and you need to put yourself as most important in your life, which I'm sorry. It, it's just not biblical. It's just not. So let's just continue on. But I thought, I thought God said, Jesus said, what you do to the least of these and how you treat other people. You treat your brother like yourself. Okay. That's when you're getting into the service, but in your life, yes, you've got to be as good to you as you want to be the God in order to be of service to others in the world. You got to be as good to you as you want to be to God to be of service to people in the world. Okay. Like this is what I'm saying. We don't need to operate in extremes here. Self-hatred, let me just be straight up here, is incompatible with the gospel, right? When we understand that Jesus died for us, that he gave his life for us, that he so loved us, how could we hate the one that God loves? It doesn't make any sense. So obviously the extremes here, it's like self-hate. That's out of the question. But now, you know, this lady comes in and she's like, well, you know what, you got to, how you treat yourself is how you, you're going to treat God. It's like, well, no, actually, I, I, yeah, I need to be secure in who I am, in what God says of me. Um, but I treat God very differently and I'm called to treat God very differently. John the Baptist saying, let me decrease that he may increase. That's the mentality that we need to be thinking here. It's not a popular mentality, but it is, um, we can have that and also not lose our sense of self-worth and, and self-acceptance and, and, um, identity, you know, because that's all founded in Christ says of us. So just because we're decreasing, we want to decrease, you know, less of me, more of you God, that doesn't mean we lose who we are. It actually means that we're, we're growing into who we were meant to be. So it's not selfish to put yourself first. No, it's self-full, it's self-full, self-full to be first, to be as good as possible to you, to take care of you, to keep you whole and healthy. That doesn't mean that you disregard everything and everyone, but you want to come with your cup full, you know, my cup runneth over. What comes out of the cup is for y'all. What's in the cup is mine, but I got to keep my cup full. Okay, okay. Um, I'm gonna, she's, she's conflating some verses here. Um, when my cup is running over, it's running over cause I'm filled with Christ. Like that's the difference here. I'm not filled with, oh, watching TV by myself and pursuing my own career goals and putting myself first. That's not the reason my cup is overflowing. It's overflowing because I have Christ and he is more than enough for me. As an introvert, I can kind of relate with a little bit of what, like, you know, it's that sliver of truth. As an introvert, I'm like, yeah, I need time to recharge. I need time where I'm out of social situations so I can, um, you know, regain and, and, and feel myself. Um, so I'm ready to serve other people. Okay. Um, but this mentality that, oh, it's not, uh, it's not selfish to put yourself first, first it's self-full. It's like, okay, well now we should look at what are we doing to fill ourselves? Because you know what, a lot of the stuff that we're doing in terms of self care and, um, you know, putting ourselves first, it's actually not doing us a lot of good. It's not really filling us. It's actually making us more empty. When we look at social media, I got to spend, you know, two hours on social media day. It's me time. Like that's actually draining us more than it's filling us. Um, when we spend more time on, on making sure that all our goals are achieved and all our dreams are met, um, as opposed to looking towards the other people around us that, that might need service as well, that's not going to satisfy us. Ultimately, if we're just completely focused on our self, it's not going to make ourselves full. The interesting thing that the Bible and Jesus talks about is, is, you know, when we serve others, that is where, um, we are in our true purpose, right? That's our true calling. And in that, there is so much meaning and purpose and, and satisfaction and wholeness because that's where we're supposed to be. That's stepping into who we truly are, our, our new authentic self. So let me just say this. I don't think there's anything wrong with, with taking a bubble bath and calling it self care or listening to some music and journaling and saying, I need my self care time. Like that's cool, right? Like I, I do that too. Um, but what I do think there is an issue, it's, it's our posture towards how we're approaching these things. If I see my highest priority as myself and my, my self care, um, then my priorities are out of whack. Yes, it's important. Keep, you know, keep yourself healthy and, uh, and, and well, you know, well fed and well rested and, and great. Right. But God is calling us also to stretch ourselves beyond what we find comfortable. That's something I'm learning. There are a lot of situations that I am encountering that stretch me, that push me. And if I was in the self care mindset or, you know, like putting myself first, then I would just say, no, I would just be like, no, you know what? I don't, don't want to do that. It makes me uncomfortable, stretches me beyond what I, you know, where I feel nice. Um, so that's a no for me because I got to put myself first and I got to be full. No, like, and it's, I'm not saying this is easy. I'm, I'm learning. I'm trying to, I'm trying to battle through this. Honestly. It's like, well, look, God calls us to stretch ourselves sometimes and sometimes he needs to push us beyond where we feel full or when we feel completely rested or taken care of beyond what we can handle in those moments. That's where we most need to rely on Christ. See, if we're just stepping out in those moments where we feel perfectly ready and like I've self cared myself and I have enough self-esteem and I feel totally confident in who I am. Now I'm ready to go out. You'll never get to that point. And as we're serving God, God is going to stretch us. I like that. And so many of us think that, you know, we're going to get brownie points in heaven. Like we're going to get into sit in the box seat section, you know, if we just give and give and give and give. Now here's what the Course in Miracles says, which I love, the Course in Miracles says that when you give to others to the degree that you sacrifice yourself, you make the other person a thief because OK, OK, I think she's quoting her book here. I'm or some sort of new age literature, I would assume. OK, this one of those things again, where somebody tries to say something so profound, it makes absolutely no sense. I've seen a number of opera clips and it's pretty much all the same. It's always somebody coming on saying something absolutely ridiculous and you're like, oh, how does that make sense? You really need to be in this mindset of just eating up and consuming whatever they say and being like, oh, yeah, that's true in order to get anything from it. But in essence, the other person is a thief if they if they take something that you sacrifice, that should be yours. So, you know, if I have time and and maybe, you know, I got lots to do and, you know, one of my siblings comes over and they say, hey, can you help me with this? And I say, oh, well, I got lots to do. But, you know, I guess I got to, you know, sacrifice this stuff and go help you. That person is being made a thief. They're a thief now. Now they're the bad guy because they're taking from you what you rightfully deserve because you need to do what you need to do. It's like, I'm not going to say it's not frustrating when you have to sacrifice the things in your life that you want to get to. It is right. But it's what we're called to. We're called to service. We're called to lay not only our dreams, desires and time down, but our lives down. That's a lot more radical. And so the other person isn't being made a thief. You are actually stealing from God when you do not give him what he deserves. What is his? Because all of our time, our lives are not our own. That is the biggest thing. That's the aha moment that Oprah should be having here. It's like, no, they are not being made a thief. You are the thief. If you do not submit and give to God and sacrifice all that he has given to you because it is all a gift. When you start sacrificing yourself for other people, you make them a thief because they're stealing from you what you need and they don't even know it. Yeah, this couldn't be any more wrong. I'm, you know, the video, the video is pretty long already, so I'm not going to get into it. But this couldn't be any more wrong. We are called to a life of self-sacrifice. We are not called to a life of safety and comfort. And in your own life, my encouragement to you in application of this because it's really fun to just to watch a video and laugh at Oprah and her guests. Believe me, it's a good time and I hope you had a good time today. But at the same time, I want you to be able to take something from this and apply it to your own life. Know this, you're called to a life of self-sacrifice. Analyze the areas that maybe you've been a little bit selfish. I mean, a lot for me, I've put so much energy and attention into this ministry that I haven't been paying attention to the other aspects of my life and just kind of within the last couple of months. It's now establishing some balance and being able to sacrifice. OK, look, I want to move what I'm doing further along. But sometimes I can't do it as quickly as I need to because I need to sacrifice the time that I want to spend doing what I want to do in order to help somebody else with something or serve a church or do other things. And so that's kind of the application piece that I'm looking at right now. I'd encourage you to look at your own life and say, what do I need to lay down? Where have I placed myself above God? God's going to stretch you. He's going to move you in this time, especially as you begin to lay down things in your life and submit it to him. But it's already his. So we're just giving him the things back that he's already given to us. And that's true discipleship. That's true, truly following Christ is just laying those things at his feet and saying, God, you know what, I don't know how this is all going to pan out. I'm kind of running on empty right now, but I need you to fill me up and he will. Thank you so much for watching this video, guys. If you enjoyed this video, subscribe because I'm putting out new videos every single day. Also, if you want to check out my podcast, all these videos, these longer videos are going to be on my podcast platform, as well as original podcast. So just search up Daily Disciple Podcasts and you can listen to these videos and original podcasts on your commute. Thank you again to everyone on Patreon is because of your support that this ministry keeps going and growing. So thank you again and I will see you guys next time. God bless.