Respect Yourself

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.” Jeremiah 1:1 

Many believers respect life before birth; but too many don’t respect life after birth.  You are one of 7,000,000,000 people who live on planet Earth.  You are one of over 300 million people in the USA.  Despite these statistics, you are one-of-a-kind.  You are unique.  You bring something to society, to the culture, to your circle of friends and to your family that makes you unique.  The huge choices that lie in front of you today call for your best and highest efforts.  The difference you make in the world may mean the preservation of hundreds of lives.  Something you do, something you accomplish, something into which you invest yourself may be critical to some important person that you don’t even know today.  

Self-respect enables you to be humble without humiliation.  Self-respect leads you to self-confidence without arrogance. Self-respect means you can be sure without being presumptuous. Self-respect teaches you to love yourself without being in love with yourself. Self-respect helps you to be assertive without being demanding. Self-respect shows you how to be responsible without breaking beneath the load. Self-respect informs you how to love others without being co-dependent. Self-respect provides a way to be submissive without being robbed of self-identity. 

If you truly respect yourself, you will:  accept God’s love for you; embrace the fact that Jesus Christ died for you; realize that you have been created for a divine purpose; understand that you are a unique person, unlike anyone else in the world; accept the priceless value of your soul; agree that you matter in the grand scheme of the universe; deliberately take positive words and thoughts into your mind and exercise great care in choosing and cultivating your relationships.  If you respect yourself, you will impose great discipline on your mind and body; develop your talents as much as possible; acquire good moral virtues and habits; constantly work to improve yourself in every way; spend your money wisely and effectively without wasting it; apply the highest standards of integrity to your life; develop a healthy fear and respect for God; respect your fellow travelers in the journey of life; resist any adversity that threatens to hinder you from fulfilling your dreams; protect your name and reputation from ruin; not abuse your body through neglect or dangerous acts and not destroy your mind by any substance or philosophy. 

Joseph respected himself and made a difference.  He held his head high, even after being sold into slavery.  He rejected the sexual advances of his boss’s wife and was thrown into prison, but he didn’t give in.  He lay forgotten in his cell for years before his good deeds were remembered, but he didn’t let it get to him.  Eventually, he became one of the greatest men in Egypt. 

Paul respected himself and survived the crushing weight of guilt from persecuting and killing Christians.  He confronted other church leaders when they were wrong.  He made his views known in a respectable way and gained the confidence of the entire church.  Today, one cannot mention the writings of the New Testament without referencing the Apostle Paul. 

Jesus respected Himself and stood firm against the religious hierarchy of His day.  He knew who He was and what He came to do.  He submitted Himself to the mockery of a trial, the abuse of the mob and the injustice of the cross.  Even though He was the Almighty God manifest in flesh, He was also a human being with all the related weaknesses and limitations of the body.  He felt totally abandoned, but He prayed, “Not my will but thine be done.”  It was not self-loathing, but self-respect that authored that statement. 

Self-respect tempers, influences, guides and sanctifies the way you treat yourself.  You are God’s manager of your own person.  You are God’s creation!