The Best Self-Care in the World - Louie Giglio

0:24 And oh my goodness, was anybody here last Sunday for the kickoff of this collection? Oh my word. The best talk on parenting I've ever heard. Shelly and I both were listening to it and we're like, I have never heard anything better than this on parenting. If you are looking for encouragement in raising kids, go and listen and re-listen to Dr. Crawford's message from last week, Shaping the Next Generation. Can we just thank him for that phenomenal word, by the way? He has such a way, doesn't he? He just eases in. He just eases in. And then he's got all that force, and then you're like pinned up against the wall going, okay, yes, I agree with that. The Holy Spirit's working now. I believe it. What a word. What a word. And today we're taking a different angle. We're not necessarily going in any sequence through this series or this collection, but we're going to touch down on lots of different kinds of relationships. And today, we're talking about the most critical relationship that you have apart from your relationship with God. The most vital relationship in your life apart from your relationship with God. And it's not your relationship with your spouse if you're married.

1:42 It's not your relationship with your closest friend, your co-worker, your parents. It's not your relationship with your children, your workout partners, your business partner, your pickleball partners. It's not your relationship with your neighbor, your accountability partner, your counselor, your ex, your boo, your siblings, your ladies group, your golfing buddies, your trainer, your mentor, your doctor. Hmm, who's left? You. You. The most critical relationship in your life, apart from your relationship with God, is your relationship with yourselves. You are not going to believe this, but check this out. Recent studies have shown that 100% of people spend 24 hours a day with themselves. 100% of people.

2:46 That is a high percentage. Spend 24 hours a day with themselves. You spend more time with you, obviously, than with anybody else. And your brain is feeding you 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day. Real research shows that 80% of those thoughts are negative in nature and 90 plus percent of those thoughts are repetitive, meaning they reoccur day after day after day. Now that is some serious research right there because it's saying that the majority of your thoughts on a reoccurring basis being brought to you by yourself are not positive thoughts. So if this is true, how are you getting along with yourself? How are you coping with you?

3:46 How are you dealing with either the self-ishness, amen? No, just one laughter. the self-loathing, the self-hatred, the self-destructive behavior, the self-criticism, medicating self, coddling self, or the self-centeredness, or the self-promotion, or the self-serving nature or the self-dependent spirit or self-awareness in general. How are you coping with you and why does it matter? Well, it matters because if you are not in a healthy relationship with yourself, it is unlikely that you're going to be in a healthy relationship with someone else. Secondly, it matters because God's plan and purpose is for those around you to experience the transforming love of God through you.

4:56 In other words, a very small percentage of the people around us are going to find the love of God through some mystical experience. They're going to find the love of God through people. Therefore, it really matters how you're coping with you because number three, you are most likely to love others the way that you love yourself. This is the axiom of the Christian faith. In Matthew 22, hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together, and one of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question. And thank you so much for this guy who thought, you know what, I'm an expert in the law, and this is going to be amazing. I've got Jesus, and I'm going to really put him on the stand.

5:49 He says, teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Now, almost everyone in the building today knows what Jesus is about to say. He replied, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor, here it is, as yourself. all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments now I think it's interesting that Jesus didn't just stop with the first commandment because if he had loved the Lord your God with all your heart and your soul and your mind that he could have been promoting a very internal personal intangible and unobservable faith it's just me and God and I'm loving God with all my heart over here and don't mind me and I won't mind you.

6:48 I'm just over here loving the Lord. That's the most important thing, right? He said no. And there's a second thing and it's as important as the first thing, love your neighbor as yourself. In other words, Jesus wanted us to know that the love we have for God and with God is to be demonstrated in the world. It's to be visible and tangible in the world as we love our neighbor as ourself. In other words, our mission in life hello is to be the agents of the love of God to the world. Our mission in life is to love our neighbor as ourself, meaning our neighbors will know God's love by the way that we love them.

7:41 Man, I love that moment right there. I'm just going to let it sit. That is what you call tension in a room. all of a sudden we realize collectively in this moment that there is not some magical way that God changes the world but that Jesus said it as clearly as you can you want to know what's most important love God with everything you are oh and there's something just as important as that is important love your neighbor the same way you love yourself these two things sum up all the law and all the prophets. Conclusion, the world is going to know God's love by the way we love them. And at the end of the day, that kind of begs the question today, how's that going to go for our neighbor? Is it going to go well for our neighbor? I think there are two big dangers here just right off the bat. The first one is that I could love my neighbor better than I love myself.

8:48 Anybody doing that today? I'm extending them grace. I'm extending them understanding. I'm giving them a second chance. I'm extending them forgiveness while at the same time, I'm holding myself to this unattainable standard. And I just beat myself up every time I fall short. and I take cookies over to the neighbor and say, hang in there, man, and then I get back in the house with me and say, you are so stupid. Why can't you get it right? The second problem or, you know, track we could get on is that we love our neighbor worse than ourself. In other words, we receive, we've talked about this before, the mercy of God with the shovel, like you know shovel it in thank you lord thank you jesus this is amazing grace and then we dispense mercy to our neighbor with a teaspoon there you go have just a tiny bit of mercy thank you lord back it up beep beep beep beep beep beep and then our neighbor messes up and we're like the eyedropper may drop one drop.

10:08 See, we've got to get it right because we don't want to love our neighbor better than ourself and we certainly don't want to love our neighbor worse than ourself. The goal is that we will love our neighbor as ourself with a healthy, life-giving, grace-filled, truth saturated freeing empowering healing love that's the goal and for this to happen then we've got to get the love yourself part right and at this point I feel like the culture wants to give a hearty amen we've got to get the love yourself part right to which the culture says that's what we've been trying to tell you. Self-care is the way. Have you ever seen a buzzword take hold so fast as self-care? I did the research. No one ever used the word self-care before 1950, and that was in the medical community. Didn't break out of the medical community of the 60s and 70s, and didn't really even hit, you know, sort of like the radar until after 9-11. And after 9-11, in a PDSD world, people were looking for self-care. But self-care really moved into the mainstream after the election in 2016, after which, interestingly, the word self-care were Googled two times more than in the years prior.

11:38 And now, according to Inc. Magazine, 2023, in America, self-care is a $1.5 trillion industry. So I think we just got everybody's attention when we said we gotta get this thing right and we gotta love yourself. People are like, thank you very much for getting on board with that. I wanted to know what's going on in the self-care world, so I did my research, the best place I could figure it out. I went to Instagram and searched hashtag self-care. Some of you will want to take a snapshot of this one and get it framed. It's okay if you are overthinking it, if you made a mistake, if you don't know what to do next, if you feel a little sad, if you need to rest today, which was interesting. I get all this. I'm totally in this whole ... Yes, I might be overthinking it, and I might have made a mistake, and I might need to rest today, but I was like, yeah, but what if you have to go to work? Anyway, that was a secondary thing. It's okay if you have your own boundaries, if you don't know the answer, if you're struggling to stay positive, and if you feel insecure today, that's okay. You might want to choose one of these if that's you, the self-care menu. You can stretch your body. It only takes 10 minutes. You can drink a glass of water. It only takes five minutes. I've took a slow drink, but hey, large glass.

12:53 Still got time? And I'm not making fun. Honestly, I'm not. You're looking at a guy who's learned how to do breathing stuff for the last 10 years, so I get it. Step outside for some fresh air for 15 minutes. Listen to a relaxing song. Write in a journal. Practice gratitude. Only for five minutes, though. Light a candle. Very briefly, they're talking about lighting the candle, not enjoying the candles. It took me a minute to light it, but that's it. You're done. All right. Make yourself a warm drink. Reflect on your goals. Listen to a podcast. Watch an episode of the show you're watching. Cleanse your space. Create a vision board. Cook a delicious meal. Man, a couple observations. One, there's a lot of things you can do to care for yourself and to get this love yourself thing right. So that your neighbor then can benefit and know God.

13:48 But the other observation I had was this takes a lot of time. So how then do you and how do I put self-care in a place that it really comes true for us? Maybe to ask the question a different way, what is the best self-care available? And Jesus is giving us the answer. The best self-care, and please, let me just back up and say it one more time. take a warm bubble bath, put on some relaxing music and light a candle. For crying out loud, take a break and walk outside. All these things are good things. But at the end of the day, I think Jesus was aiming at something slightly more transformational. and what he was aiming at is found in this, and I believe if we can unpack this for just a few minutes, that the ultimate love of self is to find oneself in the love of God.

14:56 Let me say that one more time. The ultimate love of self is to find oneself in the love of God. Jesus said the most important commandment is this Love God with all your heart Now if we're honest today That feels like a little pressure from the jump Okay now I've got to figure out how to Get up enough stuff in here To love God with everything I've got That's the most important thing But this is not necessarily the whole story Because there's a step before loving God that I believe is the critical step in loving God. And we find that in 1 John chapter four. Dear friends, let us love one another. This is the whole idea that we're talking about today. Let us love one another.

15:49 Love your neighbor as yourself. For love comes, say it with me, from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love. Now you're going to hear that quoted many, many different ways from many different voices. This is how, here's the context around that. God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love. This is the part I want us to see. This is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

16:54 And why does it matter? Because no one has ever seen God. but if we love one another God lives in us and his love is made complete in us your neighbor has never seen God and neither have you but your neighbor can see God by the way that you love them and that's going to happen proportionately I believe to your ability to love yourself and find yourself in the love of God. So you don't have to start today with, oh my goodness, this new commandment, I got to love God with all my heart, all my mind, and all my strength. Jesus is reaching back to Deuteronomy for that phrase. It's the Shema, the summation of faith to the Jewish mind found in Deuteronomy 6. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength. And another place in the Gospels adds to it another dimension as well. All your heart, all your mind, all your strength, all your hands, everything about you in life. Love God.

18:09 But God is saying, yes, that is the greatest commandment. And it's possible when you realize that I first loved you. And I think what God is wanting us to understand today, that to embrace this idea of self-love or self-care at its real heart is two things. Number one, it is to let God love you. it says that he loved us first by showing us a powerful love and giving his son for us but that was what God did and it only matters in your life in terms of transformative power to the degree that you let God then express that love to you and you receive it and believe it when you can truly say, I am valued, I am wanted, I am prized, I am pursued, I am chosen, I am forgiven, I am delighted in, I am loved.

19:28 it matters that you know that you are wanted so that then you can express to your neighbor how much God wants them. I've shared this story a lot. My sister and I's dad went through a terrible brain virus and brain surgeries and complications and stroke and disability. and midway through that seven-year process, he'd had another brain surgery and we were sitting in the hospital at Piedmont Hospital together and I was trying to share with my dad, a man who I think had faith and I was told that he had faith and when we were kids, he'd come along to church some, but that had stopped a long, long time ago. Was raised in one denomination, now kind of married into another denomination and I'm sitting there with my dad trying to explain to him, share with him, and implore him how valuable he is to us and to God.

20:28 And my dad, towards the end of life, a brilliant person whose fingerprints are all over this city, who even at Cumberland, where we have a gathering just down the street from Cumberland Mall, a place, my dad did the original logo for that mall. The doors opened on that mall, and everywhere you saw the logo there, my dad did it. Brilliant man, hilarious person, such great intellect and wit and ability to communicate in such a phenomenal way. And he looks at me sitting in this hospital room and he said, no one ever wanted me. And nobody ever loved me. And I don't believe God wants me. and I don't believe God wants me either.

21:19 Why? Because his neighbor, his parents didn't want him. At least in the season and circumstance of life and his childhood, they couldn't manage that. And so he got passed around from relative to relative, went to three different high schools in the same city. had an amazing wife, incredible friends, phenomenal career, two kids who adored him, but he still couldn't shake it. He had accolades coming out of his circumstance, he was extraordinarily successful. A graduate of Auburn University in a national championship football year.

22:13 but he couldn't shake it. and he couldn't let God love him, even though God had shown him a love that transcended everything that had come against him. And if you and I are going to really, truly ever care for ourselves, we're going to have to by the grace of God let God love us and come by the grace of God to the place where we say out of the love of God, I am valued, I am wanted, I am prized, I am pursued and chosen, and I am forgiven, and I am delighted in, and I am loved.

23:22 And we've got to break ties with the enemy who's saying to us, oh, not you. Don't you get all up on a high horse and start thinking all these wonderful thoughts about you. That's not humility. The way of Jesus is humility. So get down and get off and shut up.

23:45 And I'll tell you what humility is. Are you ready for this? Humility is agreeing with God. And I pray today against the spirit of pride that is masquerading as humility. It's the self-loathing that makes you think that you're humble, but really it's just an affront. And it's you shoving it back in the face of the God who's been loving you your whole life. The second thing, if you're going to ultimately find yourself in the love of God, You've got to center your whole being around him. You know, it's interesting thinking about our relationship with ourselves. Back in the garden, God was in the garden, but Adam and Eve and their hearts were convinced that they were at the center of the garden. And somehow this has to shift at the foot of the cross where we realize, no, we're in the garden.

24:42 We are in the place of God. We are at the place where we can walk with Almighty God, but we're not the center of the garden. And therefore, I want to love God with all my heart, all my soul, all my strength, all my mind. I want to love God, and I want to center all of my life on Him. Because I believe a healthy relationship with myself means reframing where I fit into the world. And as long as, just let me say it, self-care puts you at the center, it is not much care at the end of the day.

25:26 As long as self-care puts you at the center, you are missing out on the very thing your soul is longing for, which is not a candle and is not gentle music. It is a God who is central in everything and in you. That's what your heart was made for, was for that God. And so what do we do? Let me give us seven things and I'll do it really quickly. Number one, to believe God's love for you. I'll just say it again. Number two, to accept your story.

26:08 Some of your stories are beautiful. And some of them are terrible. And part of your struggle is your story. but you have a friend. He was born of a virgin under a suspect situation.

26:32 Came to be in a cave in a trough. There's no baby shower. had to flee to Egypt with his family, grew up completely misunderstood, eventually pursued a great call on his life, and though he did the most phenomenal things any human being's ever done on earth, died the most agonizing death that anybody's ever died. The story was terrible in terms of the good old dream.

27:12 And maybe that's your story. Got off to a bad start from the jump. All kind of twists and turns and betrayal and loss and frustration, things that don't add up. Abandon. Maybe you cried out in your life, my God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? but at some point in the love of God, he wants to give you the grace, the power to accept your story. That's my story.

27:49 How amazing that with that story, my declaration is I am loved by God, even with that story. I am loved by God, and I accept that story. I'm not gonna hide it. I am not gonna minimize it. I am not gonna sweep it into the closet. That's my story and I'm gonna accept it. And here's what I'm gonna do out of the fact that I know that I'm loved and I'm gonna accept my story. I'm gonna choose to love myself. even with all the scars and the labels and the stigmas, the shortcomings, the good, the bad, the ugly, I'm going to choose to agree with God.

28:46 And if God Almighty loves me, I love me. that is self-care. It's to say, I love me in the love of God. Number four, forgive yourself. as he has forgiven you. number five let his love shape you into the person he's created you to be it's the love of God that shapes us into the person he created us to be and six I want to encourage us to speak the truth to ourselves in love Ephesians 4 he tells us to do that to our neighbors speak the truth to your neighbor in love so say the truth yes but say it in love represent what's true and right but do it in a way that's loving and he's saying and do that to you as well love yourself that way tell yourself the truth look yourself in the mirror and say you know what we can't do that you know what that's not going to work you know what we don't accept that here in our household I told my neighbor that real strong, but I needed to come over here and tell myself that. We don't act like that in our neighborhood. We don't act like that in our family. We don't act like that in our city. We don't act like that in a civilized world. I told my neighbor that on his Instagram post.

30:22 but I need to tell myself that. You're a child of God. You don't act like that. You're a son of the king. You don't talk like that. You're royal and loved and valued and accepted and believed in. We don't act like that as the children of God. And then number seven, And that gives me the opportunity to overflow into my neighbor, to see them.

30:51 And you got the Robinsons over here probably in your mind. And it might be the Robinsons, or that family that moved in that you don't know their name yet. It might be them. But Jesus was really talking about people who don't have any benefactor. They don't have anybody thinking about their eternal well-being. and they need an eternal benefactor.

31:18 They go, you know, everybody else at our company thinks about you and your performance. Everybody else thinks about you and your position. Everybody else thinks about you and what you can do for them, or everybody else at our little group thinks about you because you're funny, or everybody else thinks about you because you're always there. But I'm thinking about you because you need an eternal benefactor. You need somebody who's thinking about your self-care, and you finding yourself in the love of God. So I'm going to see you, number one. I'm going to pray for you. I'm going to meet your needs.

31:55 It's like my friend Dave, who was driving his friend, who he was trying to love in the same way God loved him, driving him hour plus consistently to get health care. Hey, I'm going to miss the meeting today. I got to take my friend to, and he'd say where, to have another procedure. I was like, wow, that's how you love your neighbor as yourself. You realize somebody drove you to healthcare. Thank you, Lord. Man, I'm going to drive my friend. That's my mom taking Mrs. Jones home after church at First Baptist Atlanta, Peachtree and Fifth. We lived in Smyrna. She lived way out on Concord Road in the boonies, which is now the, you know, in town. I drive my bike out there to get a good bike ride in. But before time, Mrs. Jones lived way, way out on Concord Road.

32:57 And I'm telling you, we were churchgoers. And if you needed a ride, just ask Martha Jean. And so it was a good 30 minutes going and coming for us to take Mrs. Jones home on a Sunday. We did it every Sunday until that wasn't an option anymore. The best part of it was is Dr. Stanley's birthday would come around youth camp time, Heath, and Mrs. Jones would make him a red velvet cake every year. And Andy and I would take it to youth camp and eat that thing like every night at youth camp for a whole week. I don't know if Dr. Stanley ever got a red velvet cake, but Mrs. Jones is going to get credit in heaven.

33:36 And the cake arrived in my mom's car. because that's how you love your neighbor as yourself. You simply assess what they need and then you do it. it's not complicated. You love them where they are and accept them where they are. You don't have to agree with all their conclusions to love them where they are. Amen. And you don't have to agree with all their conclusions to accept them right where they are. Because heads up, God loves you right where you are. And he doesn't agree with all your conclusions right where you are today. But he loves you right where you are. and the way that he wants to move you into the person he's created you to be is by loving and accepting you right where you are so that you can know the love of God lastly these few things extend grace to them forgive them if necessary and encourage them with the hope and the vision that God has for their life so what is God wanting us to step into today. Believe God's love for you. Accept your story. Love yourself. Forgive yourself. Let his love shape you into the person he created you to be. Speak truth to yourself in love and let that overflow into your neighbor. We close today and there's just so much here, but I really had somebody on my heart while we were in worship earlier as we were singing together. And it was just a person who's in this gathering today who's lived so much of your life with regret.

35:21 And I'm not a counselor. I'm not an expert on anything except being a human being. And I do understand that we all make mistakes and that there are consequences to our choices. but regret is the negative lingering effect of the inability to receive the forgiveness of God. and I think today there's somebody in this gathering that God is saying to you not only do you need to be kind to yourself and forgive yourself not you forgiving yourself out of yourself but you forgiving yourself out of the forgiveness that God has forgiven you with forgive yourself And let the regret go today.

36:19 and just admit it, I can't change it, but I can move on from it. I can't change it, but I can, by the grace of God, move on from it. And just to say today out loud to yourself, I don't believe it's God's will for me to be paralyzed by regret for the rest of my life. I believe it is God's will for me to get up out of this regret and accept his forgiveness for my life and to move forward with God, loving him, centered on him with all my heart and my soul and my mind and my strength so that ultimately I can be his answer to my neighbor. and I can show people on this earth who...