You know you hear a lot about self-confidence, and we talk a lot about it here because that's a buzzword that people think that's the catchall for, you know, feeling good about who you are.

But when I was studying self-confidence in the Bible, I kept coming back to love, and in the New Testament, there are two primary commandments; the 1st is about loving God with your mind, your body, and your soul, and in the other one. It is to love others as much as you love yourself, and a lot of times, we talk about loving other people, but we don't.

Get down to the nitty-gritty or what I think is the nitty-gritty of that commandment that God talks to us about. He says that we have to love others as much as we love ourselves.

And so, a lot of times, it's in the church community or even in the world. It's like, well, you know, if you love yourself that you or arrogant, or you're selfish, or you know you shouldn't be that way. That's not the proper way to be. You get a lot of shame from it, and there is balance. Don't get me wrong; we can get too far into just putting our needs above everything else and not considering anybody else and not coming to an understanding of that when you have.

Ship with other people. There are certain things that there's a given a take, but primarily if you're not taking care of yourself.

You are not taking great care of other people, regardless of if you're selfless or not.

And so I want to talk about that right now talking about, you know, treating people.

Typically we treat people that we supposedly don't care for and that aren't our family, friends, or loved ones better than we treat our loved ones. That's an interesting concept because excellence is supposed to come from the inside out and those that are closer in your circle.

Should get the majority of the love the most significant benefit of the love and from them getting the greater benefit of your love. They're able to utilize that love and.

Give out more love to their circle, so it's kind of like an explosion is a blast radius. You know those that are closer to where the bomb was detonated. There's most of where the damage is, and in this situation, they'll be most of where the love, compassion, understanding, and care should be. Many times that's not the case. We give so much outside of our family outside of ourselves outside of our inner circles to people that are around us.

Yes, when we come home, when we are finished with our day's work, we are so exhausted, and we don't have anything to give to those people or children or family or loved ones or friends. And most importantly to ourselves, because we can't continue to give out to other people if we are empty. If our needs are not met. If we don't know who we are or haven't done the things that we need to do for ourselves, giving out to other people is basically.

Vein, as far as I'm concerned, it's fake. It's like this thing that I found out about, like McDonald's, that the cup sizes are all exactly the same. It's not real; it's an illusion. You know you're not really giving the best part of yourself. You're not utilizing the best part of yourself because you are empty.

And so.

The first person that you're supposed to love outside of God is you.

You know we're taught. As I said, we're taught that loving other people you know is really important, and it is. I'm not saying that it's not.

But we're really not taught about self-love because if we have an awareness and an understanding about loving ourselves.

Then they'll be disciplined. They'll be happy. They'll be goal attainment. They'll be rest and relaxation.

You know there'll be so many things because we know that we have to take care of ourselves, start to enjoy,