The Missing Ingredient to Happiness: LOVE YOURSELF First!

Main message: The way you love others mirrors the way you love yourself, so to love people as Jesus intends you must first learn to love yourself the way God loves. Learning to love what God loves — including you — is the key to authentic, unconditional love for others.

Key points:

• The familiar command to love your neighbor often misses the crucial phrase "as yourself."
• You naturally love others in the same pattern you love yourself (conditional, performance-based, etc.).
• If you receive love with conditions, you'll give it with conditions; Jesus taught, "freely you have received, freely give."
• To change how you love others, intentionally learn to love what God loves and adopt God’s unconditional pattern of love.
• The hardest part of that process is learning to truly love yourself.

Scriptures mentioned: Mark 12:30-31, Matthew 22:37-39, Matthew 10:8