Covenant Investment: Loving Yourself

One of the questions I have been wrestling with for a large part of my life is this: How can I love others and how can I love God when I do not love myself? When I came to the revelation that I did not love who I am, that was step one. I still did not know how to love myself, but I at least began to confess that I love who God created me to be. Still, there’s been a constant battle waging within me. So I recently asked God to show me how to love myself. All I got was silence.

Then last week, I decided to start listening to some tapes on old testament covenants by Kenneth Copeland. It turns out that when a covenant was made, it was made between two families. One family would have a strength where the other one was weak and vice versa. The two families would come into covenant with each other to essentially become one. Each other’s resources were openly available to the other, even if it meant dying to provide it. There was a ceremony where the covenant would commensurate. A representative from both families would perform the ritual that forever sealed the families together.

Well, I was meditating on this throughout the week. We know that God has made a covenant with all of mankind through His Son, Jesus Christ. And actually, Jesus, when He was on the cross, was the sole representative for both sides. He represented God and He represented mankind. As is the custom of covenants, blood had to be shed, and it was. Now, because of Christ’s blood, burial and resurrection, we are in a blood covenant with God through Jesus Christ. So I asked the question: If each side has a strength and a weakness, what strength could I possibly bring to the covenant table that God is lacking? Then I remembered. Our strength is that we have a physical body here on Earth! Our physical body means we possess an authority that God has chosen not to have. God has chosen to operate through mankind, through His Church.

So what in the world does this have to do with loving myself? Investment. Confused? Let me explain. When we care about something or love someone/something, we are willing to invest our time, our energy, our heart, and our finances in it. God has invested His only Son to provide you with all of His strengths and provisions. What are you investing in yourself? What are you doing to maintain your covenant strength?

I discovered this week that I have not been investing in myself. I’ve disliked who I am so why would I invest in something I don’t like? But I now have a strategy for learning to love myself, and hence, loving others as well as God: invest in myself. I have a strong suspicion that once I begin on this journey of self investing that I will discover how much I truly love and accept myself. And it will all stem from having a new understanding of my covenant role with God. So let the investing begin, and let it begin with me!