Lesson 1: Healing Your Heart

A broken heart is something everyone experiences. However, when we ignore our brokenness, it will progressively become more dysfunctional and impact our ability to give and receive love in a healthy way. This lesson will help you identify areas of unhealed brokenness within your heart. It will also teach you how to receive God's love, love yourself as God loves you, and love others as yourself. Also, you will gain a better understanding of your identity and learn to walk in who God has called you to be. To complete this lesson, read the material in the white block, and complete the video teachings and reading assignment below.

The Flow of Love and Knowing Your Identity

A lack of self-love is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for many when it comes to personal growth and healing. We all have heard the phrase, “You must first love yourself before you can love someone else.” Unfortunately, many don’t love themselves, and worst yet, most aren't even aware that they lack self-love. As a result, such people carry a “love void” in their hearts that they have little understanding about how to heal. A lack of self-love is one of the biggest struggles people face. Self-love is not just "taking good care of yourself", it is much more than that. Truth is, we can’t effectively love God, ourselves, or others until we first receive Father God’s love through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This is the truth most people reject, and because they do, they lack true self-love. Failure to receive and apply God's love, forgiveness, and grace can leave us susceptible to self-hatred. Paul warns us in 2 Corinthians 2:11 to not be ignorant of the enemy's devices, lest Satan should get an advantage over us. Therefore, it's important to be aware of the enemy's two areas of attack.

These two areas of attack are:
1) Trying to prevent us from receiving the love of God,
2) Keeping us ignorant or confused about our identity (according to God).

When we don't feel loved and don't know who we are it can be very easy to fall into self-hatred resulting in addiction, depression, anxiety, rejection, codependency, failed relationships, and so on. When we are not grounded in these two areas, we will experience a “void” in our hearts. And, because what is empty seeks to be filled, we will be driven to fill this "void” temporality in counterfeit ways - with someone or something else - until we learn that only God can fill that need for love in our hearts.

How Does God Show Us His Love Today?

Romans 5:8 tells us that, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Only when we first receive God’s love are we then able to love ourselves, others, and God freely, apart from religious striving and performance-based living. We receive God's love and grace by believing in what Christ did for us on the cross. How that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day according to scripture as atonement for our sins (1 Corinthains 15:1-4). God’s love is present and available to us to draw upon daily because we are reconciled to God “in Christ”. The truth is, we can’t love ourselves, others, or God from an empty heart, therefore, only when we first receive God’s love through the finished work of Christ (believing in the gospel) are we then able to love God, ourselves, and others back with great gratitude, respect, joy, and eagerness.​

Loving Yourself the Way God Loves You
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1 John 4:19 reminds us that, “We love him, because he first loved us.” God is the initiator of love - He IS love! To truly love yourself, you first need to receive love from the source of love, and this is God Himself (the one true living God and not a false god). Loving yourself begins by receiving the unending, unconditional, forgiving love God offers you “in Christ”. Then, when you allow His love, grace, and forgiveness to work in you and through you, God’s love will fill that “love void” in your heart. When you receive and experience God's love in your heart (by grace apart from religious striving) there is tremendous healing and freedom that occurs. Then, the flow of love will naturally play out, 1) you continually receive love from God as your source of love, 2) you let that love work in you, and then 3) through you by sharing that love with others (see Illustration 1 below). When you are able to freely receive and give love in this way, the need of your heart for love is satisfied and brokenness is healed.

Illustration 1 - The Flow of Love

We know that we have received God’s love when we can love ourselves properly. When we can see ourselves as God sees us - and this is reflected in our thoughts, words, and actions - then we know we are plugged into and are being fed by God’s love as our primary source of love. A healthy acceptance of ourselves is when we can accept ourselves without strings attached. It's being able to honor our feelings and needs in healthy ways without diminishing or shaming ourselves. It means meeting ourselves where we are at and being at peace with ourselves. Self-love means being rooted in a sense of belonging that is not based on achievement, merit, position, or performance. It means we are able to stay grounded in “God’s acceptance” and we feel safe. It means our sense of self-worth is rooted in knowing who we are "in Christ" (see Illustration 2 below). It's shifting out of a posture that says, "I perform FOR love" to a posture that says, "I perform FROM love".
 
Self-love IS:

• Being patient and kind with yourself in thought, word, and action
• Honoring yourself and accepting where you are at without shame or judgement
• Loving yourself because you KNOW God loves you “in Christ”
• Being able to give love freely that is not performance-based
• Having your self-worth and identity rooted in God and not the opinions of others
• Not being hung-up on your flaws or failures
• Being at peace and feeling safe in your own skin

 
Self-love is NOT:

• Self-centeredness – selfish, self-idolatry, egocentric, narcissistic
• Self-indulgence– indulging in unhealthy experiences or habits that don’t bring life
• Self-exaltation – seeking attention to try and fill the void in your heart
• Self-pity – victim mindset, poor-me attitude​

Illustration 2 - New Identity "in Christ"

6 Stages of Spiritual Heart Disease
 
Like it or not, everyone has experienced a broken heart that needs healing. This is because no one has consistently received love or given love perfectly. For this reason, it is vitally important that we stay “heart engaged” and not let our brokenness progress to the point of developing a numb and checked-out heart. We need to have the courage to face our pain, and choose to remain open to give and receive love. Below are the stages that brokenness in the heart, if left unhealed, will progress through:
 

• Stage 1 –  The Broken Heart: Happens when those who were supposed to love us didn’t, either through harmful actions against us or because they neglected us in ways we needed.

 

• Stage 2 – The Fearful Heart: Brokenness that gives way to fear and insecurity. Not feeling secure in who we are or where we are heading. A heart full of fear gets trained to avoid any past pain from recurring. Only love can cast out fear.

 

• Stage 3 – The Angry Heart: When fears remain intact, the stress and insecurity of this fear gives way to anger. This heart posture will defend our brokenness and become a defense mechanism. Most often an angry heart is the result of a past wound that has not been addressed. This can cause a person to become very hostile and bitter toward themselves and others.

 

• Stage 4 – The Hopeless Heart: This is the exhaustion phase when one becomes depressed and drained from walking in the brokenness, fear, and anger. Irritability is high and faith is worn out. Hope weakens and gives way to an increase in negative thinking. A loss of hope makes the heart spiritually sick and can make the body sick also.

 

• Stage 5 – The Hard Heart: This occurs when the other stages are ignored. At this stage a callousness has formed on the heart and believing becomes difficult. Words of encouragement or hope are hard to receive, and it takes a softening of the Holy Sprit and a willingness in the person to overcome this. This heart posture resists any transformative work of God. Humility towards God and others is required to break free from this.

 

• Stage 6 – The Numb Heart: This is when a person “checks-out” emotionally and becomes numb in his or her heart. This can occur during intense moments of pain. The result is becoming numb to everything. There is very little heart engagement, and it’s like he or she is physically there but absent emotionally. Such a person has given up taking care of his or her heart, or never did to begin with. The pain is so overwhelming that checking out is the only way he or she can seem to cope. Inside such a person is numb.

Assault on the Mind

The scriptures teach us that the spiritual battle is in our minds. This is why we must be mindful of our thoughts, especially the thoughts we have towards ourselves. If we have ever experienced seasons of low self-image and a lack of self-love, then our minds were under attack by the enemy. When we come into agreement with unbiblical ways of thinking about ourselves, or have misbeliefs that need renewing, our ability to love ourselves (and others) in a healthy way is under assault. The other assault on the mind takes the form of ignorance or confusion about our identity (refer back to Illustration 2 above). Only when we are grounded in who we are does it becomes much harder for strongholds of self-hatred to take affect in our lives. Below is a listing of signs that self-hatred is operating in our lives.

12 Common Signs of Self-Hatred

1. A regular inability to have fun and enjoy life.
2. Difficulty being comfortable when looking in the mirror or seeing a photo of oneself.
3. Struggles with a very negative outlook on life and relationships.
4. Chronic irritability and moodiness.
5. Others feel an underlying anger coming from you.
​6. Constant overwhelming battles with discouragement, depression, and despair.
7. Can do for others but struggles to do for oneself.
8. Being celebrated and loved on by others feels uncomfortable.
9. Receiving affection is challenging.
10. There are deep patterns of being driven and motivated by perfectionism, performance, and people pleasing.
11. There is an overall inability to connect from the heart in relationships.
12. Prone to addictive habits, stemming from an inability to love oneself.

Unworthiness

Unworthiness is another area of bondage that takes root in our hearts and minds when self-love and a sense of identity is absent. Unworthiness has to do with the way we feel about ourselves. Those who carry unworthiness have a poor view of themselves (low self-worth) and hold a lot of unresolved shame. Breaking free from unworthiness means healing our shame and accepting and loving all the parts of who we are despite whether or not anyone else does. Only God can transform us from the inside out and place in us a self-worth that is based on how he defines us. A God-centered self-worth is rooted in what the word of God says about us. Even though the world bases self-worth on what is seen on the outside (e.g., physical appearance, wealth, status, achievements, career, etc.), we serve a God who bases our worth on the identity we have "in Christ". When we allow ourselves to agree with lie of unworthiness, we cut ourselves off from our God-given destiny. In order for God to use us at our full potential, we need to overcome feelings of unworthiness and KNOW who we are in Christ.

The enemy loves to attack our self-worth. He will use anything to get us to hold onto past sins, disappointments, failures, and unforgiveness. Such thoughts and feelings arise when we don’t accept the forgiveness and grace that God offers us. We need to break agreement with such thoughts and feelings and learn how to receive God the Father’s love and forgiveness. God has wiped the slate clean! He doesn’t want us holding onto our past sins and mistakes.

Hurtful and abusive words spoken to us as children can affect our self-worth. Believers who struggle with unworthiness often times have a difficult time accepting Father God's love. This can be because of a damaged relationship with their earthy father because the way we relate to our earthly father often times is the same way we will relate to our heavenly Father. This is why it's important that we keep in mind "hurting people hurt others" because they themselves need inner healing and don’t know how to process their own difficult emotions. As a result, they tend to put others down or speak abusively to them. As believers, we need to pray for such people and extend them forgiveness.
 
Ways unworthiness may show up:

• An inability to receive from others (a receiving problem)
• Victim mentality
• Pauper mentality
• Difficulty saying, “I love you” in the mirror
• Focusing too much on the negative
• Not letting go of the past (e.g., sins, disappointments, abuse, mistakes, etc.)
• Placing more importance on the outward person (e.g., appearance, possessions, status, etc.) rather than the inward person

 
Tips for overcoming unworthiness:

• Allow yourself to receive joyfully and understand that it is God doing the giving!
• Learn to love yourself for who Christ made you to be
• Understand that your self-worth is based on who you are "in Christ"
• Focus on how you want to be now rather than the failures of your past
• Allow yourself to be forgiven of past sins
• Renew your mind with the scriptures
• Know you are loved and wanted by Jesus!​

Read the chapter below titled Unworthiness from the book "Unshackled" by Kathy DeGraw to learn more:

​The video lessons and reading assignment below will dive deeper into the topic of self-love and becoming grounded in your identity in Christ.

Video Teachings: Love & Identity

Reading Assignment

• ​Read (or listen to the audiobook) God Loves Me and I Love Myself​, by Mark Dejesus, and answer the questions at the end of each chapter.