Ephesians 1:4 says, “For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.” The problem is, some of us can know in our minds that we are holy and blameless, but our hearts condemn us. Our hearts reject us, and sometimes our hearts can even hate us. So the the first two commandments that Jesus mentioned are, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. We must love ourselves in order to be able to love other people. So what are some signs of self-hatred? I’m going to share some signs that I’ve learned through my own personal journey of coming out of self-hatred.
The first one is that we can feel less important than everyone else. I knew that I knew that I was a daughter of God, but I always had this image that in the throne room, for example, all the other children of God were closer to God. And I was sort of on the peripheral at the outer edge. That is one of the evidences of not loving ourselves and distancing ourselves from ourselves.
So, another sign or evidence of self-hatred is that if we’re jealous or envious of others because of their gifts. One of my spiritual fathers said to me one time, “Throw away the measuring stick. Stop comparing yourself to others.” And the Holy Spirit actually showed me that the reason I struggled with jealousy and envy of others’ gifts and talents was because I didn’t value me. I didn’t value who I am, what I carried, the worth of my personality. So if we’re envious and jealous of others, that can be a sign of not loving ourselves well.
Another one can be as if we say, “Yes” to the requests and the needs of others, but our heart is screaming, “No, I don’t want this. I need a break.” We can tramp on our heart and ignore our own heart needs. And that is a sign or a form of not loving ourselves well. We can ignore our own heart needs to the detriment of our health, our spiritual, emotional wellbeing.
Another one is, if we put ourselves down or insult ourselves. In college, I had a crush on a guy who looked at me one day in a discussion and said, “You are one of the most sarcastic people I’ve ever met,” and I was crushed by that man who I had a crush on, but it was actually a gift from God, because I began to see that in my family as I was growing up, there was a lot of putting each other down, and that I did that to myself. So it was a sign that I needed to learn how to bless and love myself and speak well of myself. The last one is that if we look, actually there’s two more. If we look at our body and we don’t like something about our body, that’s actually a form of not loving ourselves. Culture has told us what beauty is, but God sees us as entirely beautiful or handsome. He sees us from a heavenly lense. He doesn’t see us through culture. So we need to ask Him, if we don’t love something about our body, “God, what’s your truth about that?”
And the last one is, if we’re hard on ourselves. If we really love others and have compassion for others, but we’re hard on us, then we’re not loving ourselves well. So what do we do about that? We need to come out of agreement and repent for being hard on ourselves. We need to speak to ourselves and bless ourselves, and we need to sit with God and ask Him to show us a revelation of who we are in His eyes and how He sees us. And we need to start partnering with what He says about us.
It’s a process. Be patient with yourself. But as you turn to ask God, He will reveal those places where you need to come into alignment with His words and His truths about you.
Father, thank you for this one. And I pray for those who have recognized a measure of self-hatred, that you would break that power over their lives, that you would bring them into truth, and that you, Lord, will let them see how you celebrate them, how much you love them, how you adore them, and how they are your delight. I ask for that shift in the name of Jesus Christ. You are a beloved. May the Lord bring you into that truth. I ask in your name, Jesus, to do that for them. Amen.