L-O-V-E and I'll tell you what it means to me :) Jk not really.

So, on Sunday, I went with my friends Aaryn & Joe to visit the high school youth group at Foursquare. I don't want to be that person who makes a judgement on that whole congregation based on a few things and I'm not here to comment on how I felt about the service there...if you want to know you can ask, but that is not my purpose tonight.

What I will say, is that the sermon was on Love and had 3 basic points:
1. The Bible says to love your neighbor as yourself.
2. You have to love yourself to love your neighbor.
3. You have to love God to love yourself. 

And some people might disagree, but in a general sense I agree with these points. The first one is a no-brainer, I can show you if you want. The second one sounds a little funny. You have to love yourself to love your neighbor? Aren't Christian supposed to be selfless? Well I don't think he meant you had to love yourself and pamper yourself and have a super big ego to love others. If you think about it, it's impossible to be selfless if you aren't confident with who you are. Thinking of others before yourself doesn't mean you think you are scum or unimportant or anything, it's realizing what you want and what others want and putting their needs first. Which is hard to do unless you are secure in yourself as a person. And I think point number 2 is especially important in dating relationships. I've said it before (in this post from February http://greenlightgoredlightstop.blogspot.com/2012/02/valentines-day-and-my-exciting-weekend.html & my first vlog: Things I don't understand about girls) but I'll say it again, you can't be successful in a relationship unless you know who you are without the other person. If you depend on them for your identity, you won't ever be happy and you'll smother the crap out of them. So you have to "love" yourself in order to love them correctly.

And in order to really "love" yourself in the right way you have to love God. Because loving yourself doesn't really make sense unless you believe that you have a purpose and were created. If someone who doesn't believe in God loves themselves, it can only be egotistical. They love themselves because they are pretty, or artistic or good at sports etc. It comes from within them and is so shallow and surface. But we can love ourselves because we know God made us perfectly and loves us. It can be hard to love ourselves because we are constantly making mistakes and sometimes we may wish we were prettier or smarter or something. But in the light that God made us and has a plan for us, how can we not be happy with who we are? And as we grow closer to God, we can't help but see how he loves us and then we can't help but begin to love ourselves.

Anyways, I thought it was good so here are my thoughts :)

Love you guys!