What is self-love? / S06E8

What is self-love? And why does it do more harm than good? Culture tells us to love ourselves first but that self-love leads to temporary satisfaction and it takes you to rely on yourself rather than on He who created you. Self love is a lie but God’s love is eternal truth! In today’s episode, we invite Donovan McReynold and Ashley Okada, together we break down the importance of love His way. No matter where you are in your path with your faith, God, or Christianity know that God calls you to love Him more than you love yourself.

WHERE TO FIND THEM:

VERSES FROM SELF LOVE:

John 13, Matthew 16:25, Luke 9 23,  Philippians 1: 6, and 1 Peter 1: 14.

QUESTIONS FROM SELF LOVE:

• What is self love?
• What does self-love mean?
• What does the Bible say about self-love and loving self?
• What does it mean that love is not self-seeking?
• What does the Bible say about hating yourself?
• Can you be your own idol?

QUOTES FROM SELF LOVE:

Perfect love casts out fear. Perfect love can cast out anxieties. Perfect love can cast out depressions  but we miust trust in that love

Shea Watson, The Pantry Podcast, Self Love with Donovan McReynolds & Ashley Okada.

“In Luke 9 23, Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. That means continuously going to the Lord with the desire to be more like Him.”

Michelle Watson, The Pantry Podcast, Self Love with Donovan McReynolds & Ashley Okada.

“I was literally only put on this earth to bring him glory. So all the other stuff about how I look or how I feel doesn’t even matter. Cause it’s not about me.”

Ashley Okada, The Pantry Podcast, Self Love with Donovan McReynolds & Ashley Okada.

“I was doing all sorts of stuff to divert my attention away from Christ and what I know I needed to be doing. But once you sit back and you really look upon Christ and His promises and what Christ has already done for you so far in your life, you’re kind of forced to go to Him.”

Donovan McReynolds, The Pantry Podcast, Self Love with Donovan McReynolds & Ashley Okada.

ANNOTATED TRANSCRIPT:

Michelle Watson: Self-love sounds good, but the self-love movement offered up to us today is full of pitfalls. God has our best in mind, but often the world’s suggestions of how to love yourself, lead us into self-worship and indulgence. That is really at its core self-hate. This week we welcome two good friends to chat about how we can walk fruitfully in love without falling into an obsession with ourselves.

Shea: Hey, I’m Shea.

Michelle: And I’m Michelle.

Shea: There’s a battle being waged. It’s not flesh, it’s not blood, it’s spiritual, and we need to be prepared. The last thing a warrior wants on the battlefield is spiritual anemia. When the enemy attacks we need to be prepared

Michelle: We don’t always realize where the attacks are coming from or that we’re being attacked at all. This is the pantry podcast, and we’re here to remind you of who we answer to what we’re capable of, and how we are called to do it in every aspect of our lives.

Shea: This is season six, rewired when you’re saved, you’re saved for good, we all experienced sanctification differently. The more we grow in our relationship with the Lord, the more he transforms and renews our minds. The more we cut the cords of this world, the more we’re charged up in him this season, we’re arming you with the sermon of some of the culture’s most toxic snares

Michelle: Support our ministry, reaching the lost and found in over 50 countries with spiritual and literal nutrition. Every one-time and recurring donation makes a lasting impact, donate through Patreon or pantrypodcast.com. And now let’s dig into the meal.
Shea Watson: Hey, hi, metal fired up. I’m excited, Man. We are going to talk about self-love tonight. Ooh, this is going to get hot.

Michelle Watson: We brought up some really good people for that.

Shea Watson: And you know, as I’m sitting here thinking about this, and I think it’s one of the verses that really catch people up in this, and it’s the greatest commandments. I mean, don’t get me wrong. The two greatest commandments, Jesus lays out. There are super important. It’s like Lord with all your heart, right with all your soul, with all your mind, love your neighbor as yourself and people get to that love yourself part. And they’re like, oh, I’m supposed to love myself. Well, no, let me explain something to y’all. That is not what this was about. We love ourselves enough that that’s the reality of it. I mean, if we were okay, look guilty. Hello, headlights on me right now. I have no problem in the self-love department. I think most of the world has no problem because of the self-love department and really what we’re getting at here is the unhealthiness behind it. And what drives it is because it does not stand against the word at all. And on that note, man, let’s just get this fired up.

Michelle Watson: So Donovan James, Mark Reynolds, and Ashley Okada are brother and sister cohosts of bloom. The podcast, having grown up in a Christ-filled home, they’ve experienced the value of parents who feel everything through the Bible. No matter the topic. Bloom is a lifestyle and Christian discussion show where Donovan and Ashley dive into various topics regarding church communication relationships and the ups and downs of life from a believer’s point of view. So welcome to the show fam.
Donavan James: Thank you guys so much for having us. We are so happy to be. Yeah. Stoked actually

Michelle Watson: As we brought on the perfect people for this it’s because, so you might, you may have seen them on our live stream or you may have heard us on their show at the end of their season one, but they are both. I mean, to speak generationally they’re gen Z. I am a millennial. Shea is gen X and we’ve all been impacted by a self-love movement in different ways. And I think that bringing on, these two youthful wise minds is going to definitely add that. So what are your thoughts? Like just off the bat, when you hear self-love as a believer, where does your mind go?
Donovan James: I’ll let you take that first. Cause I know Ashley has helped quite a bit into this topic. Me I’m on more of the surface here, so I’ll let her start. I’ll let her start for sure.

Ashley Okada: Yeah. So kind of like what you guys were saying before is I don’t really think that anybody has like, needs more to like love themselves. Like we love ourselves plenty, plenty. And we look in the Bible, there is nowhere where it God’s like, Hey, you know, you just need to love yourself more. You know, like all this stuff like that is not what we hear. If anything, we hear like how we are conceited, how we tend our simple nature always thinks about ourselves first and how we need to put others first, always. But the world is telling us that we need to switch that around and put ourselves first so we can love each other more and that is just a lie.

Donovan James: I think a lot of times too, the main driver of this self-love movement is it’s really overcompensating for other things. So a lot of times when people are sad or people are going through tough times, that’s kind of their crutch to say, oh, let me just love myself more because if the problem is in me and because I’m not loving myself and I’m not manifesting these things and, you know, doing X, Y, or Z, whatever ridiculous thing you want to put into that, you know, blink, I think a lot of times we rely on our self-love to get us through tough times, instead of relying on Christ, all the focus is here instead of there. And that’s where we end up in a pretty sketchy spot.

Ashley Okada: Right. And I think also that it really just teaches us to appreciate our sin is what I’ve noticed most like anything that could possibly be a negative thing about you that you could work on. You’re told that you should love that part of yourself because it’s, it’s really just hiding from the things that we need to work on ourselves. It’s hiding behind self-love to be like, no, it’s okay and make ourselves feel better. Do you know? Like our sin is just supposed to be left by us is what the world tells us. Yeah.

Shea Watson: I like that. I like it. Cause the whole love thing, right? The self-love thing. I think we’re all guilty of it at points in our lives. But when we start to think like Donovan was saying of this reflectiveness, like instead of being self-absorbed self-love to self, self, self, self, it’s like, like in John 13, it’s like, what’d he say, hold on. I said I can do command. I give you love to one another. But watch this as I have loved you. See, it’s not my love. It’s not my love to garner. It’s not my love to put on myself. If I’m a Christian, if I’m a believer, if I’m in Christ that I am being the reflection of love and what I’m going to hold that love God, it doesn’t hold that love for just me. I’ll just go pour out my love on you today. Shea, everyone else. Y’all just take a hike for a minute. No, God’s not that way. He pours out his love onto everyone. So in that example, I pour my love out like that verse love your neighbor as you love yourself. Yeah. You already got that one covered. So love your neighbor.

Michelle Watson: As soon as you said it first when you were like, we have no trouble loving ourselves. I want to acknowledge those who like me have sat there and said, I hate myself. Right? And I bring two things to the table on that one apathy is the opposite of love. Hate is just a supercharged passion but in another direction. Right? But there’s still a big interest and investment of energy in that thing. There’s still a hyper-focus on that thing. Apathy is actually the opposite because it’s a complete void of any of those passions or cares or anything. The other thing I will say, we don’t always think of it as fixating on ourselves, but that’s a continual focus on that. We don’t think about the self-preservation parts of that, where even if you’re really sad, you look for food, you don’t stop breathing, you know? And of course, there are those moments where people do go to that very dark place of suicide, whether contemplating it or not. But even in that, it is a sickness that stems from a world that has so hyper-focused on itself that you just attack yourself because you want to fix yourself so badly to escape the pain because you don’t want yourself in the paint. So it’s still this, this self-focused, but not to lose sight of that, not to discount that. And the last thought I had on this thought when you’re a little kid and you get a scab, when you’re completely bored or focused on yourself, you don’t have anything else to do. You’ll pick up that scab and it will not heal. And you’re obsessed with yourself. I know we have a two-year-old who is guilty of doing that when she has nothing better to do, but when you keep them engaged, when you give them purpose, when they have focuses outside of themselves, that scout is left alone to heal. And so the self-focus is very damaging.

Shea Watson: So throw this question to the room. Cause, cause I’m listening to all this and I agree, 100%, I think we come at hard. Sometimes we come a little bit, so self-absorption self-love is right. So it doesn’t matter necessarily the direction, but it’s the self-absorption. Right, right. So what do you guys think about that?

Ashley Okada: No. So kind of what you were about what you were saying is even in the negative thoughts about us, right? It’s normally Discontentment or caring more about what we think about ourselves and what God thinks of us. And so even in like the negativity of not liking yourself or not liking a personality or seeing your flaws, your skill so focused on self. And like I said, once again, like this contentment with how God created you and you just like not measuring up to your standards and not realizing that you’re, you know, you don’t matter like what God thinks of you is what matters the most.

Donovan James: I definitely agree that a lot of times the self hating and self-deprecation and all that does usually come from a more, surfacey level of like, yeah, my weight or yeah. I don’t feel like I look good or I’m still single or, you know, whatever it is, but I think more or less what often drives it is, your purpose and I can say for myself, whenever your purpose is not on furthering the kingdom, you’re going to feel that way. And I remember a couple of years ago just being super low and we kind of talked about it on our ups when you guys were with us. But I mean, it was a very extreme, state of sadness and depression that I was in at that time. And you go through all these crazy waves of ups and downs, trying to make yourself okay with yourself. And that’s really not the right way to be looking at it. Because all of that sadness and all of that depression that I was feeling was based on where I was placing my value. My value was placed in my worth to myself and to the people around me rather than my work in Christ. And that is where I feel like so many people are lost because especially in the world without Christ because they have this void that cannot be filled apart from Christ.

Donovan James: And they try to fill it with all these things, whether it be self-love, whether it be less, it is an indulgence, all this stuff that they try to fill instead of going to Christ. So all of it comes back to that center point of where is your value? Because we do have worth not in our flesh and not who we are as a person. He goes, oh, I do this thing where I do that thing. Where, because I believe in myself for all these things that we’re told, we’re supposed to say about ourselves, we have worth because of what we do in the church and what we do through Christ Christ is glorified in us. That’s what the word says, crisis glorified in us. And in that we have worth not in what we perceive to be worth in this material sense here on earth.

Ashley Okada: Right? And I think also another thing that people think a lot of the time is or get stuck thinking is that they deserve more and kind of going off the discontinue thing. But this is also something else because we forget that we literally deserve hell. So, therefore, if we deserve absolutely nothing and just like realizing all that God has given us, knowing that we deserve, how, how can we ever complain about anything ever? I don’t care what it is. We have no right to complain even in the hardest of trials. And we do because we know we’re sinful human beings, but God is so good. And the fact that we’re alive and breathing, and that is what we should be focusing on all the time.

Michelle Watson: Hmm. I love that. I love the thing about purpose because you’re right. When I was focused on works, instead of faith, I was so down on myself because I was experiencing conviction, not condemnation. I at least I knew that. I knew that he wasn’t sending me to hell for my flaws, but I kept saying, why can’t I do better? Why can’t I fix myself? Why can’t I get it right? And over time, what gave me the revelation was the word. It wasn’t, you know, a deep meditation on a phrase that led me to hear the audible voice of God. No, it was going to the words he’s already spoke that have ministered to countless people before and seeing that everything I do, no matter how good I think it is, is dirty rags compared to what he does in us. And that’s why the holy spirit comes in to do that work on our behalf.

Michelle Watson: That’s why Christ died on the cross to do that work on our behalf. And once you realize that obedience is what he’s looking for, mercy, you know, that is what he’s that’s how he works within us. It’s so freeing. And those feelings of hating yourself go away because you no longer, like you both said, you’re no longer placing your, not your litmus test anymore. And neither is anyone else that’s walking around. It’s what do you, what would you have me do Lord? And then focusing on the fact that he’s going to be doing the heart work so that I can walk more like him, but those are the things you can’t even perceive. It’s just spending time with him slowly brings you along into his image and teaches you who you are in him and gives you that identity. And that’s, that’s the good news. That’s, that’s the hope. That’s the joy. The peace that passes understanding is that somehow reading these words is doing everything that I could not myself do. I just love the hope in this because it sounds like, oh, well, you’re you Christians just want us to all hate ourselves false, but self-love leads to self-hatred in a lot of degrees.

Shea Watson: I think that sometimes people would hear this too, and they’ll come in and they’ll say, but I have problems. And you’re not, you’re not allowing me to address my problems. I’m not saying that’s not what we’re saying. What we’re really saying is the Bible comes in. And so when you look at the Bible, you look at the new Testament. When you look at the different kinds of love. So we’re not going to walk with all the other kinds of love. We’re going to look at one word of copy love because I think we have to look at a copy low cause even where it says, you know, how hard is it to love someone who loves you, right? Even in those terms, the love that was used, there is a copy of love. So you’re using a copy of love primarily through the New Testament, which is selfless love.

Shea Watson: Now, when I say this, it’s not even my love to give, like it’s not generated from myself, right? It’s a love that’s generated from God. It’s God’s love. Now. Think about how selfless God is. You don’t need me. You don’t need you. You don’t need you. You don’t need any of us. Right. But he loves us. And it’s so selfless. And that is, and again, I’m saying this to the people that, that might be sitting there thinking they just, they’re just using these verses and told me to go to the, but yeah, we are. We are. But I’m also telling you that we understand that there’s the circumstance, what you’re going through. Isn’t easy. We know that, that it takes, it takes work. And we know it takes time and it takes different avenues, but those avenues have to reflect God. They have to be of God. They have to be of this love because if it’s any other kind of love and it’s, then it’s not of God and it’s not going to help.

Ashley Okada: Yeah. And kind of going off of what she’s saying is like, my simple thought is your love for yourself is never going to be enough. Like your love just doesn’t mean much. Here’s how you need God’s love. And that’s what you need to focus on because our love can’t satisfy ourselves. Cause we can’t love as God can. So even if you spend 24 hours thinking about how you can love yourself better and all this stuff, it’ll still never measure up. You’ll still feel empty because your love is not enough.

Donovan James: nd I think how we address our problems is putting our problem through the biblical grid of scripture and placing that upon, you know, how we view our situation. Once we look at our problem through the greatest scripture, the problem immediately becomes minimized because we know what the Bible promises us through Christ. So when we kind of take Christ out of the equation and say, I want to deal with this problem. I want to address this problem. Good luck. I would say good luck to you because you’re never going to find that answer. If you distance Christ out of your equation of how you address that problem. And I’ve totally been there. And I know what that’s like because when I was going through that phase, I would have done anything outside of looking to Christ to try and get my answer. I mean, I was doing all sorts of stuff to divert my attention away from Christ and what I know I needed to be doing. But once you sit back and you really look upon Christ and his promises and what Christ has already done for you so far in your life, you’re kind of forced to go to him. You kind of hit a rock bottom point where you’ve exhausted all your worldly options of fixing this through self-love.

Donovan James: And I think ultimately self-love portrays this lie as well of, you know, not caring what anybody else thinks, because you’re going to handle it on your own. I think that’s a lie. I think the, at the core of self-love, is you’re wanting validation from everybody else about how you live your life. And if you combine those two things with distancing Christ out of your equation of addressing your issue and seeking the validation of everyone else in the world, through this guy of not caring, what the world thinks, we just started becoming to live in this delusional world where we don’t know what we want. We don’t know what we’re looking for. And we’re just dazed and confused and stuck in this rut. That just becomes a circle.

Ashley: Right? We’re not empowered without God. I think that’s what people don’t realize. We’re really nothing without Him. So like we nothing, you know, there’s nothing there. So whenever I see that, like, oh, I’m empowered. You know, like myself, I’m like, no, you’re not like without God, we cannot be empowered by anything. Michelle Watson: You’re like a cell phone plugged into the wall. I’m in power. It’s all me. IIf I unplug that, you might last a second. I go ahead and then it’s over. Like, just try right with God. It’s like, your breath is on loan.

Shea Watson: As we’ve talked so much, we’re all friends, we’re all friends in this. And it’s like, we’re looking at this from like decades, point of view, decade, point of view. And then, you know, like it’s just, okay, I already cut it way too short on that. Y’all my math was horrible. There was just a decade. It’s like I waited till 41 for the rock button. So I know, look, I know today as I sit here, I have to sift it. I am nothing. I can do nothing without God. Then you just transfer it over to Michelle. And she had to come to that point as well. And then we get a little bit younger down the road to Donovan and Donovan tells us, you know, you’ve shared your story with us before about the depression and how it ended up being a sift back to God, you know, everything else was nothing. And then we have Ashley, which, you know, comes in and she’s saying the same thing. So we’re not sitting like I just really want this enforced. We’re not coming from points of view where it’s like, we got this all together. Y’all know. We just know from all of our points of view and ages and differences.

Michelle Watson: Absolutely. Yeah. I was, I was looking at when Donovan was talking, I thought of Matthew 16:25 For whoever wants to save their life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. Galatians 5 24 says, now those who belong in Christ, Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. What does self-love do? It says follow your passions. Do what makes you happy? Do what you desire, just go for it. And then in Luke 9 23, Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. That means continuously going to the Lord with that desire to be more like him.

Michelle Watson: And it’s not always this perfect like today I was so like him. And so not like me, like our flesh sins continuously, the redeeming factor is the holy spirit within us. But you know, when you realize, and you have a heart posture that says, I know you’re my savior and you’re my savior because you did it. Perfect. So your way is perfect. And I want to be more like you. That’s what changes us. And we were on the street. We’ve started evangelizing every day. Unless the day is just so jam packed already. That there’s no way, but at least for 30 minutes a day, we’re going into the city by our, by our town. Why actually we’re in a city too, but in the bigger city, besides our city, we’re evangelizing and the other day we were out there praying for people and someone walked by and their shirt just said it so well, what the issue is at the heart, it was just the word, unapologetic, unapologetic, unapologetic, like seven times down the shirt, like a thank you, take out bag unapologetic. And I was like, that is the rebellion of the flesh, perfectly worded on a shirt, walking down the street. Like that is why people are where they’re at in

Ashley: And I feel like people should like for believers, at least when they’re pro self love new man, I think they should really think about 2 Timothy 3, 1-5 where it says there’ll be terrible times in the last days where people will be lovers of themselves proud, boastful and grateful. I mean, does that not really?

Shea Watson: Keep reading it because guess what?

Ashley: Yours might be better because mine is on the tiniest screen

Shea Watson: Let’s do this. Cause I had that verse up. I’m like this speaks to at times, but understand this, that in the last days there will come. Times of difficulty for people will be lovers of self lovers of money. Proud, arrogant, abusive disobedient to their parents. Ungrateful unholy, heartless unappealable slanderers without self-control brutal, not loving good treacherous, reckless swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure. Rather than lovers of God having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power avoid such people just like sums it up right there.

Shea Watson: Right? Like it just kept going like lovers of self was like, oh yeah, see self-love. No, the rest just describes the movement. Just like plain and simple. Yeah.

Michelle Watson: If you’re convinced someone that doesn’t have, God, can save you and that what they do to help you is good enough when you have access to the word about we are, we do not live. Most of us. We do not live in a place where the Bible is inaccessible. You have access to it. Anyone who can actually listen to this podcast has access to the word of God. And if you have access to the word of God, you do not need to go to someone who does not know the word of God and does not trust in his power and expect them to be able to do anything that will actually

Donovan James: And you guys have just pretty much just busted this thing wide open. But if you, if you really look at self-love and you boil it down, it’s really Satan’s ploy for every single other religion except Christianity. Every other religion tells you, you can work your way to heaven. Every other religion says, if you are good enough, you can get there. Or if you do these things or make these sacrifices, you will be worthy to go to heaven where Christianity is the complete opposite of Satan. And his point is to tell ourselves that we’re good enough. Christianity says we are nothing and Christ had to come and sacrifice his son because we are nothing and we cannot do it. So just boiling it down. It’s like falling into this low self-love is basically just falling right into Satan’s Palm where we think we can actually get to heaven on the merits of our sinful efforts. And every time someone’s like, oh, you just hate yourself. Then I’m like, I don’t need to hate myself to know that I’m a sinner. Christ died on the cross for me because I was literally going straight to hell. And now it’s like, I know that I am nothing without him because he literally died for me. So it’s like, I don’t need any myself to feel this way.

Ashley Okada: Right, right. I’m pretty like, I don’t want to, I’m not happy. I don’t think about myself. Like I don’t sit there for hours on end contemplating who I am and how to make myself better anymore. And I used to do that anytime I was alone. It’s been good.

Michelle Watson: Yeah. It’s just, I focus so much on helping others and how do I help others? I bring them the gospel. I walk the gospel out to them, you know, I think that’s where it comes down to. And don’t shut down the people who are sharing the gospel with you all the love in the world.

Shea Watson: It’s like, it’s like, okay. So our progression, like Michelle would use to just beat the heck out of herself right now is the spiritual head of the household. I was like, uh, no, that’s not healthy. And I’m that husband that will, and you know what though? She sits with her. Did you love it? Or did you hate it? Did you love it or hate it? What’s your question?

Michelle Watson: I confess to everyone. I go down rabbit holes a lot. An, I recently went down one into a new movement and I’m not even gonna call that movement out. Cause I think it’s more important to teach. Y’all how to actually discern than to call out individual things. But pretty much the hallmark Donovan said it, the hallmark is, is the way they’re trying to paint Christianity. Are they trying to turn Christianity into every other religion? Because that’s what happens suddenly. It’s like, praise God for grace, you are saved through faith. But then if you don’t work your way to heaven as if you didn’t have grace, you’re not right. And I’m just like, I think there’s, there’s a, there’s a difference. There’s a lot of nuances, but it comes down to what did Jesus do? It’s about him again, it’s not about me. If you start making it back about me, then that’s the ploy of the devil. Like y’all said, it’s his whole, I forget who said it, but his whole purpose is to make you look back at yourself, whereas God it’s to look to him. Right? And so when someone is coming at you with a so-called gospel, that makes your point back to yourself, right? That is a self-obsessed gospel. No matter how much they praise grace if it comes back on my past by faith, it’s a self obsessed, right. Gospel. The working with like the fruits of salvation. Yes. But that, but that is for me to work in fear and trembling with my Lord. That is not for you to build into the gospel.

Shea Watson: When you were beating yourself up all the time. And your husband and your husband was bringing in like word of God, doctor, you hated it. I mean, it wasn’t the easiest thing to swallow.

Michelle Watson: It was bitter. But uh, like I, I think if you pray for wisdom, you end up with enough in you that when it’s something you don’t wanna hear because it also says that people will turn to those who tickle their ears and the wisdom helps you care more about the truth than the ear tickling. So even though I didn’t feel you’re tickled, right. I didn’t feel all warm and fuzzy when he was dropping truth on the, I still felt loved. I felt bitter to a degree. Cause I was like, oh, like why can’t what is right. Also, make me feel fuzzy. But I knew better. I knew that that was love. I could recognize already that that was love. He wasn’t trying to waste any time or leave anything up to interpretation. He was going to, even if it hurt our relationship temporarily, he was going to tell me what I needed to hear in urgent terms to get me back in the direction I needed to be.

Michelle Watson: And even when I was on the bed crying, I was crying out to God and I was still praying for wisdom, even when it was hard to open up the word of God because I knew that if he, as his word says, ask for wisdom, you’ll get it. Well, then that means eventually I’ll have asked for enough wisdom. I will be wise enough to open my Bible, even when it hurts and I’ll be able to retain and grasp on what I’m reading. So if nothing else, if it’s just like, I can’t even bear to read his words right now, ask him for wisdom and just keep asking. And one day that’s going to bear the fruit of opening your word and it’s going to speak in the way that it needs to. And you will no longer think what we’re saying is crazy. If you happen to think what we’re saying, it sounds crazy or insensitive, like trust. We’ve all been in that broken place. And yet we aren’t like that. Yeah. And y’all, I didn’t beat her with the Bible. It was all done with love.

Shea Watson: So, so in your guys’ lives, right. Donovan, we heard a little bit Ashley though. Have there been times when you’ve had to swallow the truth
Ashley: Yeah feel like I used to be a very insecure person about a lot of things, whether it was personality or just the way I looked or, you know, like even going to churches and stuff where, you know, I was the only person of color some of the time and you know, I didn’t look like everybody else, you know, just like questioning those things about yourself. Like, oh, I was blind, you know, I’d be better off and more people would like me, you know, just the basic stuff. And then like really thinking about it. I was like, like, am I really questioning how a perfect God made me? Like, who am I to question perfect guy? The like, what the heck? And you know, like, just like really letting that sink in. And like, I don’t live for myself or my feelings of how I feel I should be living for Christ.

Ashley: I was literally only put on this earth to bring him glory. So all the other stuff about how I look or how I feel, but it doesn’t even matter. Cause it’s not about me. Like my looks have nothing to do with anything of the importance of bringing glory to God. So like, why is that my focus? So like really just like getting myself in check and I feel like no one like I wasn’t very vocal about like my insecurities to people, but I feel like just as I’ve grown as a Christian, I’ve realized like I don’t really need to like focus on these things because as I grow in loving God more than I focus less on myself because I realized what my purpose of being here is.

Shea Watson: So that would be, that would be one of your points right there. Spend more time focusing on God than focusing on yourself.
Michelle: Save your love over self-love

Shea Watson: And Donovan for you, When you were going through your depression, you know because that’s a real thing. I mean, it’s, you know, I will never be the Christian that sits in and says, oh man, I mean, you got you, you grab a hold of God and you get through it, you know? So how did you, cause you said that you know, you turn to other things, how did you turn that corner? How did you start sifting out the worldly and start purifying out the word?

Donovan: Yeah. So during that time, like after everything had happened, but after the immediate, uh, after the immediate challenge had kind of settled itself and I was still kind of just sitting in that depression, I, I mean, there was a bunch of stuff that had happened in the interim. Like I had lost 30 pounds in two months just cause I wasn’t eating. I shaved my head because I didn’t want to look like myself. When I looked in the mirror, I would feel like I was something else or someone else. And it was just very extreme, just like I don’t even want to be inside my body and I don’t even want to be a part of this anymore. And I don’t, I wouldn’t say I was suicidal or anything, but if I were to have died, I would not have cared at that very moment in time.

Donovan:, I think the main thing was just my self-consciousness of going to church. So during that time I was living on my own and it was kind of just like a go-to go to work, sleep, repeat the cycle for a couple of months. And it was kind of one of those things where I knew I had to be back at church, even though I didn’t want to be there. I knew it was what I needed. And going back to church was the best decision I ever made because just being under the word of God and hearing the word preach and reflecting on all these troops did help me to round that corner to what Ashley is talking about of focusing less on myself. And once I hit that rock bottom and kind of realize like, okay, so what now? What do I do now? I’ve exhausted all these options.

Donovan: I’ve done all these things and you’re trying to make me not me, but that doesn’t work because I’m setting my conscience in my brain is going to follow me no matter if I change address, if I wear different clothes, if I cut my hair, no matter what I do, my sin nature in my flesh is going to follow me and I need something that’s going to keep me from that. And the other thing that does that is Christ. So being in church and reflecting on his word and remembering his promises, and I think of Philippians 1: 6, where it says he who started a great work in, you will complete it. And that’s the first, one of the verses that I heard. I remember in a sermon that really got me and just kind of like sparked that, that fire again, to remember that it’s not about me and not everything is in my control and that the Lord is going to protect that work. Whether that takes 10 years or a hundred years, I’m going to get where the Lord wants me to be, regardless of how much I love myself or how much I love the current situation that I’m in, all that is all that is pickle. All of that fades away, just remembering what is true, remember what we know to be true. I think a lot of times we conflate what we think and what we feel versus what is actually true. We have to weigh those two out because what we think of what we feel is oftentimes going to be situational emotional and not based on truth. What we know to be true is Christ’s word, the Bible Christ coming to die for us, the gospel, all of those things we know. And it’s focusing on what we know because that truth remains the same.

Shea Watson: I like that when people come and they bring the word out and of course, you didn’t necessarily say it this way, but obedience. Right. You know, I think that in those moments, I, I say this a lot, probably said a lot too much on our shows, but, there are times when we don’t feel good there are times when we’re going through that hard depression, there are times when we’re looking at ourselves and beating ourselves up. And of course, those are usually the times that we revert over to self-love like, I’m going to make myself feel better. I’m going to do this. I’m gonna go get my hair done or I’m going to go, you know, Donovan, by the way, I was able to praise God. I haven’t shaved my head in like seven years. I had done that several times in my life. But you know, it makes me think, of 1 Peter 1: 14, where it says as obedient children, right?

Shea Watson: There’ll be conformed to the passions. See, there’s that feeling that you’re talking about? You know, my feelings, how I feel, how I am my self-absorption, right? And of course, it says the passions of your former ignorance and you came to God and obedience, like, you didn’t even want to go to church, but you were in church. You know, you might not have been reading the word of God and like digging deep for 10 hours a day, but it was getting in there. And you know, in our struggles in our times when we’re, when we’re going through stuff, when we’re going through pain or dealing with something maybe traumas or, or whatever it is that, that make you revert into this idea, that you can fix yourself by doing all these wonderful things for yourself or saying that you’re something that you’re not, I need to turn to God and we need to grasp ahold of that.

Shea Watson: Michelle said it the other day, she heard it somewhere where it says, grab a hold of the tree, the tree being Jesus, just hold on. Just hold on. As the storms are flying all the way around, you know, flying around you and just, you know, ripping up everything. You can take it to the boat. If you want a biblical example, Jesus was sleeping during the storm. I just let you all know Jesus slept during the storm. So when we’re in this self-love idea, maybe it’s time to love the father. Yeah. Right. Maybe it’s time. And it goes back to my original verse. Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, look that’s number step that’s. Step one. Love your neighbor. As you love yourself, watch this. I guarantee this. And I do teach this. If you love God and you learn that love that God has, and you start to, as Donovan said, you go and you start to pour it out, put it out, and ask you to put it out to your friends. This love to the person who might spit at you on the street or the person who I get hugged by also tomato entities downtown. All the time. I get kisses on my cheek. I get pressed in the forehead. Like they’re trying to do some demonic prayer on me while I’m praying for them. It’s amazing. I mean, one day we’ll get into that an episode, but, you know what? I hug them. I love them. And let me tell you something to turn around. It did in my life when I started to stop being self-absorbed and started to be selfless towards others and really giving this love to them. Yeah,

Donovan: Absolutely. I love that. Because one of the things that you mentioned is just like, almost kind of force-feeding yourself in a way, because, and we were actually just talking about this on an episode that we just recorded. Either you will not go to the Bible because you don’t want to see what’s in it or going to the Bible will keep you from doing those things that you’ve been doing. So it’s kinda one of those where you have to just get into it, force yourself to do it because that’s what we’re called to do. We’re called to obey. And once we get there, that’s the only thing that’s really going to reignite our passion for the word. And for Christ, you can think a lot of times we get into those slumps. And like, I just wish I could feel like going to church. I just wish I could feel like loving God today. And that feeling isn’t going to be some just like whimsical thing that just comes upon. It’s like, oh no, I love God. It’s no, you have to put in that work. Like you’re saying Shea, you got to go out. You got to love people. You got to go out and go to church. You got to go out and read the Bible, dive into his word, see why he’s so worthy of your love, all of your love, and that is what’s going to bring you to that about-face where you can really start to see that dramatic change

Michelle: It’s related. Because I think it speaks to the power that I don’t think the devil wants us to realize. And then this would be my last thought, but this has stuck with me since I first read it. I read it before I was a believer and it stuck to me this whole time. So most of our listeners might not know who Penn and teller are, but they’re like magician in Vegas. Okay. Yeah. And, one doesn’t ever talk and the other one does, and one’s tall and one’s short and you know, et cetera. But they had an interview once and this guy had gone up to Penn, the taller one. I think he’s at HoloLens anyway, had gone up to him and shared the gospel with him. And in an interview, he was talking about that. And he said when someone was like asking him, so what are you, how do you feel about people who proselytize?

Michelle: How did you feel about that interaction? And he said, he said he doesn’t respect people who don’t proselytize or don’t evangelize. He said I don’t respect it at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven and a hell and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever. And you think that, that it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward and atheist, you think that people shouldn’t prioritize, you know, just leave me alone, keep your religion to yourself. How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that if I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you and you didn’t believe it, and that truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle you.

Michelle Watson: And this is more important than that. And when we, when the devil has us focusing on ourselves, we’re less likely to go out and share. Because when you focus on yourself, you’re focusing on your comfort and it’s uncomfortable to go get rejected. It’s uncomfortable to go sacrifice, you know, having lattes with your friends to go out there and hold a sign or, or pass out tracks or, or just strike up a conversation at the grocery store, someone it’s, it’s awkward. It’s not self-preservation necessarily. He wants us to focus on her. The Lord has focused on me because if you focus on him, then you realize what’s actually at stake and all those little things that are wrong with you that are actually, I mean, like not to make light of Synthes, things that are wrong with you. God’s like I took care of that. Now go share that good news with someone else.

Michelle Watson: Because even someone who still claims atheism to this day, he still hit it on the head. We know the truth. And we, when we focus on the self, we get very distracted from the great commission. The great commission brings us purpose and delivery. It delivers us out of these trappings. And so that just stuck with me. But before we go I’d love for you guys to let people know how they can get in touch with you, both the podcast and in your individual accounts. And we’ll link it all in the show notes as well. But go ahead and let people know. You can find our podcasts anywhere. We listen to podcasts. We’re on Spotify. We are on apple podcasts, all that good stuff. We have a website where you can look at, listen to all of our episodes. We also have a YouTube channel where if you want to see our beautiful faces, I’m just gonna want to see our faces.

Donavan: We have a YouTube channel as well, where you can enjoy the video version of our podcast as well to readjust individually. We’re both on Instagram. That’s really the only social media that I have. So if you do want to reach us, we are on Instagram, not only with our bloom account, we have a bloom Instagram page where we post all our updates, all our teasers updates and you know, all that good stuff. And then, you know, more personal, we have our own accounts as well, which we can get those counts on as well. Awesome. I’ll be linked in the show notes.

Donovan: YOu know, you can always just sit there and, well, I guess it would be cool to call yourself a, so I’ll do this for you. Instead of saying the lovely faces, these faces that are like angels

Shea: We do a question that week, this week I’m gonna do it. I want to say something for everyone that’s listening. Cause I mean, this has been a hard episode. Yeah. Perfect. Love casts out fear. Perfect. Love can cast out anxieties. Perfect. Love can cast out depressions. That can, but we gotta trust in that love. We gotta believe in that, perfect love does that. So this week, what step can you take today to pivot the focus from self to save you? And we’d love to hear from you and just, just get on, get on our website and we will get to those answers.

Michelle Watson: Yeah. Check us out@thepantrypodcast.com. You can send us audio versions of your answers, which would be super cool. You can also just type them up in a comment on Instagram, Facebook, or our website. Even that would be a challenge to type it up on Tik TOK with like five characters at a time, but you could do it. It teaches you brevity. But yeah. So, this has been an awesome episode. Thank you guys so much for being here. We love hanging out with y’all.

Donovan: Thank you so much for having us. This has been a blast and you guys, your season two starts, I think this Wednesday, right?

Donovan: Yes! August 11th is when bloom season two officially is back. We have some really good episodes down the pipeline. So make sure you guys check us out.

Michelle: Yes. We will be linking to their first episode of season two in our show notes. Cause they both dropped on the same day, which is epic. That’s God right there did not plan it. So yes! So until next time y’all

KEYWORDS: SELF LOVE. SELF CARE. BIBLE VERSES ABOUT SELF LOVE. WHAT IS SELF LOVE. WHAT DOES SELF LOVE MEAN.