Healthy Self Image

We had our Power Point Meeting last night and my, it was a crowd. We continued our lessons from Joel Osteen's book Living Your Best Life Now. This time, it is Part 2 which dwells on developing a "Healthy Self Image". Guess what, I have to lead the discussion again. Oh..oh... how I drag myself to prepare for the lesson. Pheew... I actually pushed it aside until the very last day. Tell you the truth, I actually finally prepared the lesson for the evening, over lunch hour in the office. How lazy can you get, Cheekar, Cheekar???

Well, I am really amazed many times how God can work through the very the weakness of people, like me, and bring glory to Himself. For Him, it always work out while we freak out.

Some salient points from the lesson.

Self Concept:
Self Image - how we see ourselves
Self Esteem - how we feel about ourselves
Self Worth - How we value ourselves

Sum up, a level of self acceptance. I call it a measure.

We would never live beyond the self image we see for ourselves. It is like a measure we set for ourselves, and we will and we surely will live to that measure, be it a good or a poor measure. Hence, we got to make sure it is a healthy one.

The the question is, what is God's measure for us. What image does God sees us? How do our image of ourselves measure up to God's image for us?

Now I realised why the church keep asking us to confess, confess all those goody, goody stuffs. Sometimes sounded fake to me. I guess, in this context, if we confess and believe, we set a healthy self image for ourselves and hence we will live into achieving it.

If we have a healthy self image, we love ourselves and we can also love others. If cannot love ourselves, we too will find it difficult to love others. Richard Innes of ACT International says that we love others the same way we love ourselves.

1 John 4:19 We love because He first love us.

We have to be loved first, and then we can love others. Thus it is important to love one another, that they can also love others. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot have a healthy self image. Why can't we love ourselves then? It is due to the dark secrets and hurts in us that are not resolved.

Richard Innes offers seven steps to developing a healthy self image for ourselves.

1. Be real, do not live behind a mask or in pretense. People will love our mask and not us.

2. Face the dark side of ourselves. This is the part that we are ashamed, guilty, embarrassed of. The cause of why we don't like ourselves or reject ourselves. It can be rejection, abuse or painful memories, anger, fear, hurt, guilt and grief. These has to be brought to light and dealt with.

3. We need to self-love. Learn to love and accept ourselves.

4. Resolve all unresolved feelings of hatred, anger and offenses.
1 Peter 2:1-2 (TLB) So get rid of your feelings of hatred [anger]. Don't just pretend to be good!

5. Live in harmony with healthy moral, ethical values based on God's standard.

6. Forgive.

7. Ultimately, of love and acceptance, be connected to God, know His love and affirmation. This is through confessing our sins to God, asking Him of His forgiveness and accepting His Son, Jesus, into our heart and soul as our Lord and Saviour.

1Jn 4:12 If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.