If you want a balanced life, you will discover that it is important to love all three.  The more you love the more you will want to please.  If you only have self-love, chances are your life will have many missing ingredients.  You may love God and others and not yourself.  We have learned that if we do not love and respect ourselves it is difficult to love others adequately.

Is your life under control?  So many people lack contentment and a feeling of love in their lives.  They feel unworthy, they fear failing, lack purpose, have many unfulfilled needs, don’t get any breaks, feel inferior, lack knowledge and the list goes on.  As our world seems to be going through one crisis after another, so many are just financially holding on and many people are really struggling.  As a result they find little to be content about as they appear to have little control over what’s going on in their lives.  Feeling unloved, unworthy, worthless and not respected could possibly lead to being suicidal.

What do you need in life to make you content so you can love yourself?  Could it be you really don’t know who you are?  Many times we become who our parents or others tell us we are!  Who do you depend upon to take care of you?  Is it the government when you retire?  Or, is it your employer’s pension, family or your personal investments?  Do you ever put God first on your list to help meet your needs or does He come in last?  Here is what the Bible tells us: Philippians 4:11 – 13 – “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.  I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”   Is your life content or is it out-of-balance unable to properly love?

Many couples fall in love with each other while dating and will do almost anything to please their fiancé.  Once they become married they may fall out of love and no longer wish to please their spouse.  Thus, divorce results.

Ephesians 5:28 – 29 – “In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself.  No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church.”  Wives are told to encourage and respect their husband and allow him to be the family leader.

If we want true balance in our lives we need to take the advice given in Scripture:  Matthew 22:37 – 40 – “Jesus replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’   This is the first and greatest commandment.  A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’   The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

The first and greatest commandment is to love God.  It sounds to me like we are to love God first, then ourselves and others equally.  Whoever you love the most they will be the one you will wish to please the most.  What has helped me from yielding to temptation is not wanting to displease God.  To please God I want to live a respectful lifestyle.  I know He will be pleased if I live a holy life.  That doesn’t mean I don’t sin because I miss the mark from time to time.  However, the Holy Spirit checks me from deliberately sinning.

I believe the closer our relationship is with God or Christ, the easier it is to deny one’s self.  No matter how important selfish desires are to ourselves, we must not reject God’s ways just to please and satisfy ourselves.

I Thessalonians 4:1 – 8 – “As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.  For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.  It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before.  For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.  Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.”

Living to please God must be every believer’s priority.  God requires each Christian to turn they lives over to Him.  We are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.  We are told to become sanctified and holy.  Sanctified means to separate ourselves from the world and give ourselves to God.  We are told to prepare ourselves for heaven in the way we live.  The Bible teaches us to let the Holy Spirit take our sinful, self-centered nature, our old habits and behaviors and let them be transformed to emulate the life of Christ.  It all works best when God is the most important one to please.  However, do not forget the importance of loving self and others.