 This is a video that I should not be making today was really challenging and I was dealing and I am dealing with a lot of just emotional confusion maybe that's the word to put it but I was just journaling today and topics of shame and self-love and self-acceptance came up and I just want to talk through them honestly and I have some thoughts here that I want to share with you I want to share with you some of my journal entry that I thought was might be interesting to you and also I asked your questions for your questions on Instagram as well and so I'm just going to dig into it the reason that I say I shouldn't be making this video is that I feel like I'm so far away from in some ways I'm so far away from actually like um figuring this out for myself shame self-love self-acceptance how it all works itself out how a Christian should look at it how a Christian should approach it how we can forgive ourselves all these different things that I just feel like I'm so ill equipped to talk about in some ways I'm going to do my best and I'm just going to speak honestly and and maybe let you into some of my questions that I still still have I guess the first thing that came to my mind at least about self-acceptance is this lie that I don't know maybe you've heard it too but I know I definitely have it's this idea that if we accept ourselves as we are right we're Christians we are saved by the blood of Christ and all of a sudden if we start accepting ourselves right even though we still sin right we accept ourselves then we'll stop growing and progressing in faith and life basically we'll get lazy and maybe we'll we'll veer into sin my thought is that I just realized that this is a total lie like the fact is is that until we actually can't accept ourselves as we are as Christ accepts us then then we will never heal it's not about like because I think there's this this idea and and I have it in my own heart too I feel like sometimes it's like if I ever get like if I ever accept accept myself right as I am then I'll get complacent and I'll get lazy and I won't do what I need to do and so I'm gonna have this kind of looming shame like almost using my shame as as a tool to get productive and to accomplish things kind of like a I don't know like a slave master an inner critic whatever you want to call it this thing that is over your shoulder that's telling you you are not enough and I want to make this clear I think when people talk about you know us being enough or not enough because there's lots of confusion going on within the Christian community about this like are we enough are we not enough so in a moral sense the Bible is clear that in a moral sense we are not enough right that is why we need Jesus that's why we need him to take the punishment on himself but from a personhood stance that's not the right word from a from a personhood perspective we are enough through Christ in Christ we are made whole and so I don't think there's any problem with with having it in your heart in your mind as a Christian that through Christ you are enough I think people understand this is like oh well that means you're gonna start being prideful and you're gonna start like believing that you can do it on your own it's like no did you forget the through Christ part because I think language is important and I think if we continually tell ourselves that we are not enough even with when we have Christ that's like shame talking like the devil will try to convince us that we are enough without Christ and then it will try to convince us that we're not enough with Christ and so honestly I'm like okay you I mean this is just the basics right we gotta accept ourselves now that's just like the the facts but actually doing it is so much more difficult and this is where I have actually like an because for your for you right you you are so much more likely and it's so much easier to accept other people and their flaws and their issues like you see your friends you see your family members and they have their own stuff going on but it's so much easier to look past that in a lot of ways than your own stuff because the thing is is you have to live with you you know everything about yourself well most most things most things God knows you better than you know yourself but you know a lot of things about yourself and that makes it that much more challenging to actually accept yourself I don't have an answer on that I think this kind of segues into the idea of self-love like when we talk about self-acceptance it automatically okay how does self-love enter this equation because there's been some people within the Christian evangelical community that have been on a tirade against self-love and how it's portrayed in media in culture the trends self-care all that kind of thing and I agree with a lot of that stuff I agree that it is turned into kind of a toxic trend a self-centered selfish trend but I don't think we ought to throw out the whole like not necessarily the baby with the bathwater because I don't think that's a great analogy in this case but you know what I mean like when the culture when the culture has some sort of movement they're addressing a problem that's actually there but they're using things that are they're going about it in the wrong way a lot of examples to this it's like minimalism right minimalism has become kind of a cult but they're trying to address real issues of of people being greedy and selfish and stuff obsessed so they're like they go to minimalism that's kind of their savior when it comes to self-love and self-care there's an issue there's an actually an issue because people need to be caring about okay how am I actually treating my body and also treating my mental state and how can I be healthier in relationships and take care of myself in this and uh yes people have gone off the rails I definitely think that's true but at the same time my question is is that if we as Christians are going to throw out the the idea of self-love altogether and whatever that means for you right if we're going to throw that out then what are we left with are we just left with like tolerating ourselves like is that what Jesus called us to just tolerate ourselves to like you know because we're just that terrible no good garbage we just like you know we're stuck in this body we're stuck with who we are so we might as well just try to tolerate it until we get to heaven I don't think that's I just can't believe that that's what God is calling us into like when he made us a new creation I don't think he called us to despise that new creation or just to tolerate that new creation I don't think it's I think the thing is it's like we we automatically attribute the fact that if we love something right then we're like ranking it above other things like if I love myself that means I love myself more than God or I love myself more than other people it's like no like I do think you can love who you are and who God's creating you to be and that can be properly directed at God because it's only through him that that he's moving in us right like I think that can be okay but if we're just going to dispose of it all together I just don't think that's what we're called to just like self-toleration I think there's more to that because the sad truth and I've experienced this in my own life is that so many Christians are walking around that have grown up in Christian conservative circles that are so bogged down by shame and guilt and this idea that they are they are basically pieces of trash that they are so insignificant to God like we got the holiness thing right we got the repentance thing right but what we didn't get right was understanding how God sees us and how he loves us and how he accepts us and how we don't need to be in this self-loathing um self-punishment state of mind just because that's how horrible we are and that's what we deserve like where's the freedom where's grace where's the healing because I think healing only can take place when we actually can like begin to accept reality and the reality is is that we are forgiven we are accepted we are loved healing will never come if it's this forceful judgmental self condemnation that's all about you need to fix your life now you need to fix yourself get yourself together you piece of trash like you're not measuring up to where you should be you'll never be enough all these words this self-talk is destroying people from the inside out and based on the the the messages that I got this is a bigger issue than I thought we can properly understand that God has called us to love other people and love him above all but we also need to remember that God God hasn't called us to hate ourselves to wake up every day and despise who we are to feel like we we are obligated to feel bad about ourselves because we're not there yet because we're not measuring up to where we think we should be like I don't think we should live our lives believe me I'm trying to work on this but it's like we have these goals and these these things in front of us and this this idea of who we want to be and where we want to go and and this and the things we want to achieve I don't think God wants us to only begin to accept ourselves when we've made it there because that we'll never get to that point where we're perfectly content where we give ourselves a break because we've done enough because we've accomplished enough because we made enough money because we have enough friends because we have enough popularity we'll never get to that point where we actually give ourselves license to accept ourselves I mean we treat God this way too we think we have to give God's license to love ourselves like we got to do enough stuff like we got to clean our lives up even when we're a Christian like like each day is a is a test and if we don't pass that test if we're not smart enough if we don't get the grade if we don't perform well enough at work if if people don't like us enough then that day God was kind of disappointed in us that were that day were a little bit less of a person I want to get into your guys questions but first I just want to read this journal entry for you I've kind of redacted some things because some things are a little too personal for the online space but I thought this might um honestly I don't know what this is going to do so let me just read it maybe the fact that every time I break down I judge myself for doing so this part of my problem this isn't very good grammar by the way maybe if I didn't shame myself so much for feeling bad I could actually explore these negative emotions and begin to heal but I haven't given myself license to do that yet instead I go into a state of panic where I feel like I need to fix my life right here and now it's my job to devise an executed plan that will bring me from zero to hero from failure to success from average to exceptional but these days my anxiety tells me that I'm on the edge of losing everything that I have but also that ultimately all amount to nothing at all what are you telling yourself throughout the day what are the common strings of thought that you meditate on is it panic about where you are and where you should be is it fear about what is to come is a regret and shame for the past do you listen to the voice that continually tells you that you're not working hard enough that you're not enough that god couldn't love you because of what you've done we're killing ourselves and we think it's good that's the sickness that's the sick part of it we we know it's bad but we don't really believe it we still think that it's helping us we still think that holding on to the shame is helping us because it moves us we still think that holding on to the guilt is helping us because we think we deserve to to suffer we think we we we have to live in this that this is what we deserve that this is our destiny but we're forgetting the power of the gospel like through christ he's taken all of that on himself we don't need to be bossed around by the inner critic the inner voice that that continues to weigh us down day and night that tells us to never accept ourselves that we'll never be enough until we get to this certain point in our lives or we've done this thing or made up for our past you've convinced ourselves that our anxiety is doing ourselves a favor that our fear is doing ourselves a favor that our shame is doing ourselves a favor how do i become more positive without feeling like i'm shoving my emotions away i kind of been asking myself that same question recently i want to be a naturally that's a positive person optimistic person but i find myself trying to honing in constantly on everything that is wrong everything that is going straight everything that's not going perfectly even when things are going up right they're not going up fast enough or they're not going up fast enough as yesterday or things like are my brain our brains are so screwed up in this way i think i believe that i don't even want to try to become a more positive person like i don't think that's that's the the goal is to be positive it's to explore these different emotions that we're feeling because i think emotions in a lot of ways are triggers for certain things going on underneath the surface now i don't know a lot about the stuff but this is just what i'm thinking is that if i'm feeling sad or if i'm feeling depressed maybe instead of tearing myself up about it or judging myself or shaming myself like i said in the in the journal entry that if i just i was okay with it that i wasn't seeing it as like a a bad thing or a sinful thing it was just how i was feeling and i was kind to myself and you are kind to yourself you say okay i'm not feeling that great today i'm going to do what i need to get done and i'm going to do um i'm going to act in healthy ways and not go out and binge on different things just to ease the pain or distract myself but rather exploring these things through prayer and journaling and maybe through that maybe through exploring these emotions we'll begin to find some healing i think that's the i i think we to preemptively try to be positive when you naturally want to feel or you're feeling in a particular day bad or sad i think we just need to embrace it and accept it and and and be compassionate to ourselves in the in the midst of it and speak to the comforter of our souls who isn't immediately going to take away the pain or make us feel happy there's a sick twisted idea within the christian church that through god we are always supposed to be happy we should always have a smile on our face i remember posting a picture years ago and i don't know this was i wasn't smiling in the picture and i remember somebody commenting doesn't look like you're displaying the joy of the lord lord very well i just remember laughing at it i just remember laughing because because it's so twisted to think that we as christians are supposed to have a smile on our face all the time because it's inauthentic it's it's not it's not right number one because that's not how people operate if you have a smile on your face all the time i don't know what kind of emotional walls you have closed off or delusions you've got yourself caught in but real people feel bad and a lot of people feel bad a significant amount of the time and i'm not saying that's perfectly healthy and you shouldn't do anything about it i'm just saying that to force yourself or to shame yourself or to judge yourself because you're feeling that way and oh i shouldn't feel this way as a christian god's given me so much like you're adding on to the problem so if a moment you could just take a breath and be compassionate with yourself and just ask god to be with you in the midst of it not necessarily changing how you feel just be with me i don't know man i think that's the beginning ways to move forward in life when you made a mistake and can't apologize to someone that's something that i dealt with for a long time honestly um i felt like i didn't do a good job with a certain relationship in my life and it was when i was a bit younger and that was something that kind of stuck with me i felt a lot of guilt for that it was also kind of motivation to do better in the future i mean ultimately it's like i guess how i processed it was i can't go back i can't fix it i can't do as all that i know to do now i was a different person then i didn't know all the things that i know now and ultimately i keep god's sovereignty in mind he obviously wanted me to learn something in that you know maybe it might take a while to figure out what that is but maybe there's a clear lesson and honestly um god does give second chances in a way people re-enter your life down the road and so i don't think all hope is lost and and you know this will be lingering over you for a long time i think time has a good a good part to do with it and um i just think that if you're if you're experiencing the shame and guilt of it and your and with anything really and this negative self-talk that you can get yourself into if you're repeating this to yourself daily like that's a habit that that you need to be intentional about breaking and so just to kind of give a personal example and this wasn't related to this issue specifically but every time i would do something that was just like a little mistake right not even like a moral mistake like a sin it was just like a mistake um my internal dialogue was always oh you're an idiot you're a loser how could you be so dumb um it would bring up past things i would bring up past things in my mind key moments where i either felt embarrassed or that i had said something wrong or that i just felt like just really like oh man what an idiot right and i had that kind of internal dialogue playing for a long time and i kind of how i broke out of that or you know i've come a long way since then since i had that kind of a consistent daily thing was every time i would say that every time i would think because it would be immediate it would be like okay i do something and i'm like ah idiot i'm dumb i'm so stupid i would come back and i say no no that's just a mistake that does not define you that's not who you are that's just a mistake and it's okay everyone makes mistakes like as as as dumb as as this sounds we need to be okay with sounding dumb to ourselves because the fact is we need to hear this stuff you need to tell yourself it's okay you need to be okay with telling yourself i'm here with you you're okay you're safe when your anxiety is going out of whack when your shame is just accusing you when old past guilt is coming up and accusing you of all sorts of things that's when you strike back with words of truth no i'm forgiven no god loves me no i'm accepted no i'm a new creation no that does not define me i was thinking about this the other day that if i believed everything that i said especially around this issue of self-acceptance self-love um shame dealing with shame i would i would be great i would be so good like i would have no issues at all because i just believe it and then my life would be changed but the thing is is that actually beginning to believe this stuff like let's talk about god loving you right like you can have an intellectual knowledge that god loves you but how does that play itself out in your daily life do you act like he does love you because most of us don't most of us act as if it's just us out here as if we're individuals that are trying to make it out on our own that it's up to us to make our lives work in terms of ourselves we can have um an intellectual knowledge that we're okay like okay you know what i'm not i i kind of like who i am but then we still hold this unrealistic expectation over our heads we hold past guilt and shame and things that we've done over our heads and we treat those things as if they're speaking truth we treat those things as if they are like the objective um leaders of of what is true about ourselves people let these things these voices these past guilt and shame and current just like lack of acceptance ruin their lives i was thinking about this today if i if i could ask god for one thing what would it be and if i'm honest it would be peace because it used to be it used to be success in the terms that i defined it because then i thought you know what if i got success in the terms that i defined then i would be happy then i would be perfectly content with with where i was at everything would be in line but as time has gone on and goals have been passed and moved about and rearranged and i realized that the things that i thought would satisfy me at least for a bit they don't and there's still this uneasiness in my soul that needs something else i know what that thing is it's god and we know what that thing is like it's god so it's not a lack of intellectual knowledge it's like a heart knowledge to actually step into that to actually believe that i have the intellectual knowledge that god is what i need that god accepts me that god loves me and that should flow into me accepting myself and to me being okay with me being alright with me to giving me license to to like who i am to love who i am but i don't believe it but i don't believe it and i think that's the crux of the issue is that we don't believe it yet i know this video is all over the place and i don't exactly know what you got from this video but i just knew i just know that that god was moving me to make this and talk so i hope you're encouraged by it i just want to read here from john 1633 i have said these things to you that in me you may have peace in this world you will have tribulation you will have trouble but take heart for i have overcome the world the lord has given us everything his truth his love his grace his acceptance he has said those things that we may have peace now we're called to take heart to believe him because he has overcome the world he's overcome all those voices that are calling us back into shame back into guilt he's he's overcome all those voices that say that will never be forgiven that we shouldn't forgive ourselves that we shouldn't accept ourselves no he's overcome it all and he's given us freedom to follow him that doesn't mean we're not going to experience challenging emotions trials but it does mean that we can look to him for that peace that he offers us daily giving everything to him submitting it all to him i hope you're encouraged by this video thank you to everyone on patreon that makes this content possible you guys are a tremendous blessing to me and so many people that are able to be blessed by this content thank you guys so much and i will see you next time god bless