“…That’s how you once behaved, characterized by your evil deeds. But now it’s time to eliminate them from your lives once and for all—anger, fits of rage, all forms of hatred (f.n., “including self-hatred”), cursing, filthy speech, and lying. Lay aside your old Adam-self with its masquerade and disguise…” Colossians‬ ‭3:5-17‬ ‭TPT‬‬

We are always dearly loved by God. ‭However, hatred for one’s self closes the door to love. We cannot know and fully receive the love of God or others when self-hate makes us feel unworthy. Nor can we truly give love when we hate self.

To top that, we tend to judge the opinion of others toward us by our own opinion of self, so self-hate produces misunderstanding of others words and actions, thus causing us to react inappropriately toward them.

Self-hate keeps us self focused, so we cannot see the struggle and difficulty others have and are acting out of themselves. Self-hate denies we are worth loving, and when we can’t love self enough to recognize any good in us, we can’t truly give love to those around us who struggle as we do. It’s a vicious cycle that gets confusing with the thought of it.

So, let’s get that out of the way. We are unworthy. In our fleshly struggle of self-hate that cannot truly receive love, we are broken vessels. None of us are perfect apart from Christ, nor can we be perfected without the work of God active and alive in us. We need Him. When we broken vessels think love is earned by worthiness, we cannot recognize true love to receive it, nor can we give it. Broken vessels cannot receive true love and hold onto it long enough to possess it where we can have it to give out freely to others.

Here’s the thing: God IS Love. His love comes to us, not because of who we are or what we do, but because of Who He IS.

We cannot lose what He freely gives. We haven’t earned it, therefore we can’t unearn or lose it. His love is ours by His choice, because love is His “who”. And when we finally learn that truth, the truth of God’s love for us personally, heals us. We become His mended vessels, able to recognize, receive, know, possess, and give true love: which is God in all His fullness.

And here’s another wonderful truth we need to know. When we choose to believe and receive this love from God, He begins to show us who we truly are and can be in our relationship with Him through Christ. Like a River flow reconfigures the riverbed, by His love working in us, He adjusts our “who” to something glorious and new, as we become like Him, including being able to love and give true love out of who we are because of Him.

His unconditional, unearned love flows from Him to us and for us to self, healing our brokenness and filling us up. But it doesn’t fill us like a closed reservoir, He flows through us like a river flows, which makes us love as He is love. An extension of His Who, He flows love from us to all around us. He makes us worthy of love by making us as He is, love, able to truly believe, receive, and give love, even to those who can’t earn it, because they haven’t received for themselves Him who is love.

Beloved, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to pay the price of our unworthiness. By accepting that gift of grace, letting go of our self-loathing to receive God’s unconditional love, we enter the River flow to be made love as He is love. Believe it. Receive it. Begin now to be changed by God’s love flow.