Can you come up with One Good Reason to change your life? I understand it's much easier to look to loved ones or outside circumstances for reasons to change. All of those are beneficial, but you've got to come up with a reason that starts with you and loving yourself.
For each behavior, activity, or attitude you know you need to change, I want you to make a Reasons List. The first one, the One Good Reason, at the top of the list needs to be about you. Go ahead and list all of those other reasons underneath -- but until you decide you're worth it, it's going to be difficult to find the motivation for sustained, long-term change.
There's a reason why expending this effort and energy to change is worth it -- and that's because you are worth it. You may not have been taught or told or modeled that you were worth it, but the time has come for you to approach yourself as a loving, mature adult. Other adults may have withheld love from you or made a mess of how they loved you, but you can decide to love yourself. You don't have to prove that love or promote that love, but you do have to accept that love.
Loving yourself isn't a weakness; loving yourself is a wellspring of strength. Loving yourself becomes the springboard you use to dive into a true love of others.
Still not convinced you're worth loving?
God, through Christ, went out of his way to provide definitive proof. John 3:16 says: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
There's the proof, right there -- the death of Christ. Now, many men understand the death part. They have condemned themselves to a slow, drawn-out death by the activities they engage in. They may not be killing off their bodies, but they're killing off their joy, their hope, their sense of worth, their relationships. But death isn't the point of this verse; life is. God's goal wasn't to kill his Son to prove to you how much you deserve death. God's goal was to create an attitude of belief that leads to victory over death. Christ died for my sins, yes, but he didn't stay dead. God resurrected him, and that's what God wants to do for you.
Isn't it time you allowed God to resurrent your life through his love? Isnt it time you allowed God to resurrect your love of yourself by proving to you that you are worthwhile, you are lovable? God's love is both global and personal. When John says that God so loved the world, he means God so loved you.
The above is excerpted from chapter 13 in Battles Men Face: Strategies To Win the War Within by Dr. Gregory Jantz.
