In this week’s episode, I’m diving deep into a question that we don’t often ask ourselves: “Are you being kind to yourself?” Not in the sense of pampering or indulgence, but in how we speak to ourselves, care for our mental and spiritual well-being, and confront the challenges life throws our way.

After a busy few weeks on the road and dealing with personal struggles—including trying to write a book and battling spiritual attacks—I found myself caught in a cycle of negative self-talk. From questioning my role as a husband and father to feeling overwhelmed by ministry work, it seemed like the devil was hitting me with every doubt and lie he could muster.

But here’s the truth: God doesn’t want us to live in that darkness. He calls us to renew our minds, as St. Paul says, and to take every thought captive to Christ. In this episode, I share the powerful moments when God intervened, reminding me of my worth and guiding me to be kinder to myself. I talk about the importance of resting, leaning on God’s grace, and breaking free from the lies that make us feel unworthy or inadequate.

We also explore how these personal struggles affect not just ourselves, but those around us—our families, our friends, and our communities. When we’re not kind to ourselves, it’s hard to love others as Christ calls us to . . .

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 Welcome back to the pew. Everybody. I’m your host, John Edwards, and I’m excited to be bringing you another episode of just a guy on the pew this week. Now, folks, I’m really excited because I just got back from a trip to the West coast. I was in beautiful Folsom, California and a wonderful Paris, St.

John the Baptist shout out to all of you, man. What an amazing restored parish mission. And what an amazing men’s group that’s launched there. I’ve been working with Tyler and his group of guys his guys that he found to build a leadership team for a year. We’ve been training them and having multiple training sessions on the four pillars and what they are, what they mean, why you should run them, what they could do for your parish, right?

We helped him build that team and train them for their different responsibilities to run those nights. And just to be able to go this weekend and see it all come to fruition was amazing It was a super well attended mission. It was packed. There were tons of people everywhere Tyler had a bunch of guys sign up for the group.

They’re going to kick their group off this thursday So please pray for them for their leadership team and for all the men that will be in attendance Also, there was a woman there named trista shout out to her and her group of women They are using the mission, the restored parish mission to reignite, to relaunch their women’s ministry.

And man, they had a ton of women signing up for that too. It was just amazing to see. So thank you to everybody there that helped with all the food and serving one another and put the tables out and the chairs and all the things. It takes a village and all of y’all showed up. for a wonderful event, folks.

This is what we’re doing every week for the last three weekends. Now in a row, I’ve been to two places in Indiana, South Bend and Muncie. Now I’ve been to Folsom. We’re going to Scranton next weekend. We continue to travel and be invited to these parishes and to these conferences and to these leadership summits to change the hearts of men to, to call men into more.

And that’s what we’ve been doing. And sometimes along the way we get to help women too, which is a great bonus. But folks, people are being. Minister to through this ministry. They’re being lit on fire for the Lord, whether it’s through the missions, through the conferences, through the leadership summits, through these men’s and women’s groups that are being launched through the podcast.

The Lord is just using this ministry to touch a lot of people’s hearts. And so if you want us to come to your parish, if you want us to do what you just heard me do with Tyler, right? Walking through from step one to put boots on the ground in your parish, that’s, what’s different about us. We’re not just sending you a DVD set and a binder and saying, good luck with it.

We hope that you have success. We actually come to your parish trying to be modern day St. Paul’s right to come there and to teach what we know works to help you launch life changing ministries to men and women in your parish. And to help you every step of the way that’s what’s different about this ministry and that’s why It’s working in urban places in rural places in large parishes and small parishes in big diocese and small diocese It works everywhere because it’s about the model and teaching people to accompany each other not about a series a content series Or whatever else those things are needed To be successful, you gotta have the things that we’re teaching people around the country to do.

So folks, if you want us to come to your parish, go to our website at JustaGuyOnThePew. com. You can sign up to have a call with me there. You can fill out the form, give us your information, set up a call, and then we can start working with you and your parish. Folks, we are booking up right now through 2025 and 26 to go and do these wonderful things.

So if you’re interested in us, go today. Go and click those buttons on the page that allow you to sign up and get in a conversation with us so we can start planning to help your parish in the near future. Folks, look, also, while you’re at the website you can do a lot of things. You can subscribe to our podcast on any of the audio podcast platforms out there, any of your favorites.

You can subscribe to our website. channel, which I suggest you do because then you could see us and watch us and listen to us as well. You can buy merchandise. We have our rosaries and coffee mugs and koozies and fishing shirts and t shirts and all that stuff can be found there too. And then the most important thing you can do there folks, is you can donate to our ministry.

And that’s what I want to ask you to consider right now. I want you to consider becoming a monthly partner in the pew. Everything we’re doing is helping to change lives, whether it’s through the podcast, through these missions, through the leadership summits that we work with the diocese and these individual parishes, everything we’re doing is helping people and it just, I don’t say that unhumbly, but I see the emails that come in every weekend, people are coming up to me and they’re sharing this, the impact that the ministry has had.

Folks it’s getting to the point now where I can’t do it by myself I need to bring on other people and I have people interested in joining us But we need the donations the revenue to be able to bring them on they have to support their families and in order to do that. We have to be able to pay them And so right now we need your help.

We need your support, not only to bring on people, but to continue to grow everything that we’re doing, this reaches people so you can become a monthly partner of the pew, which means someone who just commits to support us on a monthly basis, whether it’s five bucks or 500 bucks or anything in between, all of it counts.

And every bit of it. It helps us build up what we need to go out and get the resources we need to continue to build things to help people and to be able to go more times in a year to build these ministries and parishes to grow our staff and to make that possible. So folks, if you’ve given to us in the past, thank you for that.

If you haven’t yet and you’re considering it, please consider doing it today. You can do it at just a guy on the pew. com. There’s a donate button on the side of every screen with a little heart there. You can find it in the menu at the top of the website as well, or you can go to the show notes on YouTube or on the audio versions.

And there’s a link there that takes you right to our donor box website, and you can choose to give to us monthly there. Please consider it because we need your support now more than ever so we can continue to do the work God has called us to do so Thank you folks again All that can be found at just got in the pew.

com whether you want us to come to your parish Or you want to start supporting us, you know pay it forward, right? That’s what people say if you’ve been helped consider helping someone else and allow you this ministry to help you do that So thank you for your time with that folks I’m in studio this week by myself not by choice but it was a two day trip, out there and back left on friday and came back on Sunday evening, got home about five, five 30.

It’s Monday now, as I’m recording this episode for this week. So I didn’t have a lot of time to get with Victor to get on the schedule, to do an episode, but the Lord had some things that. I experienced in the past week, in the past month that he just wanted me to share with you and so I wanted to just ask yourselves a question, ask all of you a question out there that I really have come to understand a question that I could answer one way myself, if that makes sense.

And that question is, are you being kind to yourself? I know it sounds simple and you’re like, Oh, what do you mean, John? Am I pampering myself? No. Are you being kind to yourself? And the way that you treat yourself and the way that you talk to yourself and the way that you take care of your body and just your mental state and all those things because folks, I got to tell you I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but over the last three or four episodes we’ve been talking about desolation and we’ve been talking about, patiently waiting on God and then how to take action.

When you’ve heard the voice of God in your life, or when you know that he’s telling you to do something, how to then get up and let the waiting be over. All those things came from a place I’ve been in my own life lately. I started to write the book and I guess I thought that would be a breeze and it hasn’t been, it’s been difficult.

I have a lot of things I want to say, but how to say them and how to put them in things and what matters, what doesn’t, and where to even begin and where to go from there. It’s all a lot more difficult than I thought. And then of course, anytime you try to do anything good for anybody it’s always difficult, right?

So writing a book, of course, I’m going to experience a lot of spiritual attacks. And even this podcast, this is probably the 37th take just to get started to get to this point on this podcast. And the last it’s been 34 minutes since I started it and here I am just now seven minutes into this.

So you can tell you how long it’s been, I’ve been trying to get this going. So we’re all getting in a place where we can be under attack. And I certainly have been lately myself. And. As I always try to talk about things. I’m not trying to make the show about me, but all I know is to talk about my own experiences because I know I don’t experience these things alone.

Every time I’m on the road, people are always going, man, that talk on identity and how to speak to yourself and renewing your mind. Like it just, it brought me a lot of healing and it’s teaching me a way to, to deal with the negative stuff in my life. And folks, so many people are there right now. All you have to do is look around at the world.

The world’s a very unhappy place now in a lot of like even in church Sometimes you go and people are just negative, right? And why is that? It’s because a lot of us were not being kind to ourselves where we have the negative self talk We have the negative self images, right? Like i’m always hearing women and people around me going.

I hate the way I look I hate the i’m that how out of shape i’ve gotten I don’t like anything about myself and then we all know the way that we allow the devil to talk to us in our heads and We can just take a baseball bat to ourselves and just beat ourselves by the way that we think and the way that we talk about each other and We talk about ourselves to ourselves.

I should say not about just each other but to ourselves and Certainly, that’s what i’ve been doing lately I’d gotten to some pretty depressing places and you know was praying my way through it and trying to and still doing all the things that And I try to do in my life to to grow in my relationship with the Lord, the daily mass adoration the liturgy, the hours individual, just one on one prayer with the Lord.

Meditative prayer, all those things and trying to do things for other, I was others. I was doing all that, staying in my men’s group and contributing there. But man, it was, it’s just been a rough time lately and I’m starting to come out of it. Thanks be to the prayers of all of you and to just God’s grace.

It’s never leaves and just friends in my life that have helped me shine lights on a light into the places where there’s been darkness and that’s really what we have to do in those moments. And, I want to talk about it for just a minute. I’d been in these places and when we get negative with ourselves and we just start giving into all that negativity.

And not only do we start to just bring ourselves down, but we start to bring everybody around us down too. That’s the thing. We think that we just get caught up in our own mess and we’re trying to put on these smiles and these facades that everything’s fine, and yet it’s still hard to be that way, right?

You can be short with others. You can have a short temper and a short attention span and patience, and I know over the last month, like I haven’t been the husband and father that I should have been. I know that I’ve been there physically, when I wasn’t out of town. But a lot of times when my children and my wife was talking to me, my mind was still stuck in the things of the ministry or stuck in the things I was thinking about myself, the way I was feeling about myself.

And I wasn’t really ever present to them because I was just stuck in this like quicksand of my own mind and of the situations of my life. And really lost sight of a lot of the blessings and things like that. And that’s what can happen when you allow yourself to get to those places where you’re just, everything, like it starts off with one thing that’s bad and then another thing and another thing.

And next thing you know, you’re swirling down the toilet bowl of your life, or you’re running down a rabbit hole and. And just keep going and going deeper and deeper into this introspection into this And this negativity sometimes that we could find there and so You know That’s why I asked the question.

Are you being kind to yourself? Because when we get in those places generally we’re not first of all, we’re just beating ourselves in our mind Making agreements with the devil. You’re not enough. You never will be you see you’re not a good husband You’re not a good father. You’re not a good disciple.

You’re not a good evangelist in my case, right? You’re you’re you’re a fraud you’re a fake nothing you do is ever good. You can’t write this book, even though you’ve been trying, see, you’re not supposed to, so you might as well quit. Those are all the things I was hearing and then just agreeing with even though I didn’t realize I was agreeing with them.

Sometimes I would catch myself just nodding you’re right, I’m not good enough, and why am I even trying? And man, is this never going to get better than this? Like, how come I can’t ever just get all this negativity out of my mind? And folks we’re broken and we’re fallen. The negativity is always going to be there, but it’s what we do with it.

That makes the difference in the world. And as I said, I’d reached out to several friends, my friend, David, I’ve mentioned several times on here and I talked to him, on the way to South Bend a couple of weeks ago, and it was a very great conversation where. He started preaching truth to me about, who I was and what kind of man I really was and why I did the things that I do and reminded me that I’m not this piece of garbage that I’ve been telling myself I was lately.

And we’ve all been there. Like I hear sister Miriam, James Hyland, talk about that stuff. I hear dr. Bob talk about that. I hear Christopher talk about that stuff, so everybody deals with it. It’s not like we’re all Just these amazingly wonderfully formed. Got it all figured out evangelists that never struggle we do And that’s what I love about this show is I can share that with you so that you have hope like You don’t see me and go man.

Well, john edwards is just perfect got it figured out. So what’s the I’m, nothing like that. So what’s where’s the hope for me? Hopefully this gives you hope that i’m not perfect and i’m broken just like everybody else And it’s our brokenness as a friend recently told me that qualifies us it’s what qualifies us to do the things that God’s called us to do. And so our brokenness doesn’t have to be a hindrance to us. It doesn’t have to be a ball and chain, right? We don’t have to be shackled to this negativity in our life through it. We can be that way if we allow ourselves we can certainly allow ourselves to be taken to a spot to where it’s just like Woe is me and we’re never going to be better than that.

But the thing is, we drag ourselves down, we drag everybody else down with us, right? And that’s what the devil wants. I’ve said multiple times on here. He’s like a sniper, man. And he doesn’t shoot you in the head, doesn’t shoot you in the heart. He’s not going for an instant kill. He shoots you in the gut where you slowly bleed out over weeks and months.

You’re miserable and you’re in through that miserableness if that’s even a word Like through your pain and the darkness and the suffering you’re going through you bring other people down with you And that’s the bad part of it. Jesus said to love others as we love ourselves so folks if we’re not loving ourselves at all if we’re not being kind to ourselves if we’re Not doing the things we need to love ourselves then we’re gonna bring down everybody else like my wife and I got in a lot of fights over the last month and it was basically me because she was Like lamenting and she was not just lamenting but what’s the word i’m looking for?

She was just begging me to come out of this nonsense that I found myself in right this negativity that i’d let myself get To and I would argue with her and I would fight with her and it would bring her down It would bring the kids down right? And that’s the kind of person I don’t want to be, right?

It’s another way of sometimes being self centered, like you’re the only one with problems and everybody needs to look at your problems and people need to feel sorry for you. And that’s the kind of place where you get when you’re in that negative place. And man, that’s what you can’t, if you’re not loving yourself well, you can’t love others.

That’s what I started to realize, it was like, dang, man, this isn’t just affecting me. I’m bringing other people down because I refuse to come out of this place. I’m refusing to love myself while I’m refusing to be kind to myself. And some of you may listen to that and go, dude, that sounds like some, new age self help stuff.

No, it’s not. We have a choice and I’m very lucky to have Dr. Bob Shutes as a friend in my life because I reached out to him this past week. He’s the one that’s helping me publish the book and working on the book with me. And I called him. I’m like, Bob I’m struggling in this book. I feel like a total failure.

I can’t do anything right with it. And, you’re asking me to do these healing men’s conferences and I’m realizing like just how still broken I am and I was just pouring all this out and he’s John, that’s all of us. And he’s yeah, every time I write a book, I go through that same kind of thing.

Every time I try to do something good for somebody that there’s the potential for those things to come, those attacks, right? It’s just part of the spiritual warfare of trying to be the person you want to be and trying to live as a disciple of Christ. And his point was, it’s not just whether you’re doing those type things and you’re some, you Evangelist or a teacher or a priest or a deacon or someone in that in those, capacities for the lord But everyday people are just trying to be good people Right for their husbands, for their wives, for their children, for their friends, for their church community.

And so I was talking to Bob about this. He’s John, you have to be kind to yourself. He’s you’ve been on the road like the last four or five like weekends out of six or seven. Like you’re traveling a bunch and you’re doing the work the Lord has but what do you do when you get home? I was like I spend Sunday afternoon with my family and then I get right back to work Monday.

He’s John, you need to rest. Like you’re working seven days a week and you’re wondering why you’re dealing with all these battles and these difficulties because when you’re never slowing down to rest, you’re never slowing down to take care of yourselves. He’s and I know you have that thing that all men have and a lot of people have is if I’m sitting down, I’m not doing anything and if I’m not doing anything that I’m being wasteful, right?

Like I need to make I need to cut hay while the sun shines, right? Make hay while the sun shines and while yes We need to stay busy and all those things that we talked about a couple weeks ago We also have to have time to rest like we have to have time to rejuvenate like we’re not machines You can’t just go And so that was one of the things that he pointed out was like john You gotta rest like and that doesn’t mean Okay I won’t look at emails today and then go do something else or Go do all the yard work that you need to do that day because you’re taking off he’s like you need to sit down and just and watch your favorite show or read a book you like or Just nap or rest and that always has come across as like lazy and self serving to me, but it’s not it’s what we need to rejuvenate right so to be ourselves in that way and then This is really what I wanted to talk about in this show today Like I want this is one thing that he stuck with me and I actually had an opportunity To practice it this very weekend as I was traveling to fulsome, right?

So he said john here’s the thing like in these moments when the attacks come we have a choice He said to either love ourselves well or to hurt ourselves even more. Because what happens is like the devil knows the places you’ve been wounded before. Maybe it’s criticism from a parent. When you were growing up, you were always told that you’re lazy or you’re always told that you don’t work hard enough.

You’re always told this about yourself or this about yourself. And so whenever anything happens, like your mind goes to those places of wounding, right? Your mind goes to those places of critical criticism. See, they’re right. I’ve always been that way and I’ll always be that way. There’s no hope for me. I might as well quit trying to be better because I’m always going to be X or I’m always going to be Y or I’m always going to be Z because that’s what I’ve been told by these people or by these teachers or these coaches or my family or people I work with all my life.

And so when the negativity comes, when the devil tries to attack us, he attacks us in those places where we already have wounding, right? Those places that we’ve never dealt with, right? That we’ve never looked for healing with, we’ve never allowed the Lord into. And he’s so sometimes when these attacks come, The Lord allows them because it’s an opportunity to go back at those places of wounding and to really look and try to heal those And when bob said it to me, it’s just so powerful because he’s right like we have a choice It’s what saint paul means by renewing our mind.

Like we don’t have to just focus on the negative We don’t have to just be neurotic about those negative things when they come we have a choice of letting those go in one ear and out the other we do it all the time with the good stuff People tell us good stuff about us all the time.

We’re like, oh, thank you I appreciate it. And then we never give it a second thought in those times of negativity That’s not the truth. This person the other day told me they appreciated me. They affirmed me in what i’m doing They affirmed me in who I am. Oh no, that’s nothing. I need to focus on this negativity That’s the way we can get but bob brought to bond again He’s no you have a choice like you don’t have to You don’t have to do that like you could choose to love yourself in that and I was like How and he’s like by being kind to yourself rest when you’re tired, right?

When there’s when those negative things come and they’re lies call them out for being lies Renounce those lies that announce the truth take them to Jesus. All right, give them to him That’s what st. Paul means by take every thought captive and obedience to Christ take that thought hold it go That’s not the truth and then give it to Jesus so that Jesus can give you the truth back he can love that truth back into you. But folks, so many times we don’t do that. In a moment of struggle or suffering, we, it’s really about how we’re going to treat ourselves. Are we going to continue to just wake up every morning and walk up, say, Hey Satan, and he hands you a baseball bat and then throughout the day you just continue to beat yourself to a pulp?

Or are you going to look at him and go, not today, Satan, not today. I’m going to choose to love myself well. You can take that baseball bat and go beat yourself up with it because I’m not giving into it today. An example of this is I was flying to Folsom, it was a long trip. We flew to Denver, had a layover there, then flying out to Sacramento’s, six hour flights or whatever.

Long day. And I had an interaction with somebody via text that’s very important to me and very important to this ministry and has been a father figure to me and just a great relationship with. And there were some things that I was asking them and I got some negative responses, just very abrupt and.

And things I didn’t expect and immediately like I felt rejected and I felt abandoned, I was like, okay See look they’ve left you too, or they don’t they’re not interested what you’re doing either or they’re not going to help you either and that’s really where i’d been like the lord’s not helping me with the things I need in my prayer life and the way that the consolations I need and the affirmations and I’m not, he’s not helping me with this book.

And, in, in we’re struggling to find the funds and the things we need to really grow so that I can bring on other people that I’m not wearing myself out, having to travel every weekend and being gone from my family every weekend just to keep the thing afloat, right? All that stuff was coming and I just felt rejected and abandoned in another way.

And. I was walking through the Denver airport. I’d stopped to get a donut or something I had in the bag and I was walking to my gate and I just stopped right there I was like man, this is one of those moments bob’s talking about. Dr Bob’s talking about like I feel this just woe is me and this self pity and this negativity and this whole demeanor Like, coming on, demeanor change coming on right now.

And I’ve got a mission to do. I’ve got to go out to this parish and be the person God needs me to be. And the people need me to be. And see this through. And I can’t go in there with this mindset. I got to my gate and I got on the plane and I got seated. And I just sat there and I started to pray.

Because I still was feeling those feelings come on and the anxiety that comes with them. And the craziest thing happened like all of a sudden as I was praying the Lord came in this experience I was like Jesus. What do you want to say in this moment? What do you want to say to me? And so I had this prayer experience.

I’ve never really felt by myself I felt it working with dr Bob or others when we’re praying healing prayer But I was sitting there and all of a sudden I saw like an eight year old version of myself and it was a specific picture I remember just I was a little chunky and you know walking around in sandals and this old he man shirt I used to wear and Just look like little me and as I was standing there I walked up and this younger me was standing under this tree And oddly enough it resembled the trees that are in bob’s book like be healed and some of the other ones he’s always talking about how you know this tree above the ground with your sins and all this stuff And so I was just under this like fruit tree And I walked up and when I tapped the younger my younger self on the shoulder he turned around he was crying and he just looked scared and afraid and alone and I could just feel all that coming from him the rejection the abandonment the here we go again It’s coming again, and I know it in the fear and in the moment like I could see How these things make me feel they make me feel like a scared little boy, they make me feel like helpless they make me feel abandoned or rejected and so in a moment like I just felt this great love for this little boy and then I needed to care for him for my younger self and I knelt there and I just embraced him and as I did like I started to cry like physically You And the chair just tears were running down my face and I was telling my younger self as I held his head to My chest the way I’ve held my son Jacob so many times.

I just said John, It’s okay Like you’re good and you’re loved and you’re not rejected and you’re not abandoned And you don’t have to feel that way i’m right here and I started to hold myself if you will in this way and just listen to him just cry and You And then look up at me. My younger self looked up at me and was just like, thank you for not leaving me.

Thank you for not abandoning me. And as I was holding him, I felt this warmth come over me, just all over me. And through him, like all of a sudden there was this light. And I, as I turned around, I looked and the Lord, Jesus was behind me. And he was kneeling down and he embraced both of us and he started To reinforce the truth of what i’ve been telling my younger self like john You’re always loved and you’re never abandoned and you’re never rejected And those things are lies from the evil one and there’s the things that you’ve allowed to bring you down lately and to convince you that you’re no good and john We made you we don’t make bad things Are you broken because of the fall?

Yes, are you going to struggle your life with these things? Yes You But this is an opportunity to preach the truth to yourself and to love yourself and to be kind to yourself. Right folks, that’s the choice and that’s how when these things start to come again and again Like we invite the Lord into it.

That’s what it means to take every thought captive I got on that plane and instead of freaking out and going down a rabbit hole I sat there and said Lord, I got three and a half hours. What do you want to do with me? And just immediately he showed up with all of that and he started to love me, you know What he wanted to do.

He wanted to love me through it and through his love. I was able to love myself it was such a powerful moment such a power experience because I was able to just see myself and just see this stuff that i’m feeling today as an adult Comes from somewhere, right? It comes from younger me It comes from places where I felt rejected places where I was made fun of when I was younger Places where my relationship with my father wasn’t that great places with relationships with women I had in my life weren’t that great just all these things that have happened to us.

We all have wounds We all have places of hurt and folks as men were told to shove them down and not deal with them and we do We’re always gonna experience things like this and we not only hurt ourselves You We hurt those around us. Jesus said to love others as you love yourself. If you aren’t loving yourself, you cannot love others Well, it sounds selfish to love yourself first, but folks if you’re not in a position to love yourself You can’t love anybody else if you’re not being kind to yourself if you’re not getting any sleep if you’re drinking your problems away And you’re always hung over or you’re doing drugs And you’re always hung over or you’re choosing other things to self medicate with You’re never going to feel physically well, you’re never going to be rested, you’re never going to have a positive attitude, you’re always going to be looking at yourself in a negative light.

And that’s going to spread like a cancer to everybody around you a lot of times I like to blame Angela for the fights or the things that were wrong But if i’m being honest with you here recently All those things came from me and my refusal to deal with things and to really sit with the lord and allow him to love me through them I was choosing to hate myself.

I was choosing to further hurt myself I was choosing to go down those rabbit holes with the devil I was making agreements with him and it was destroying everything for the last month of my life Sure, I could go and do things, but inside I was tormented and I was hurting. Folks, I’m sure there’s a lot of us there right now.

I’m sure there’s a lot of us in dark places. There’s a lot of us that are hating ourselves right now. You’ve done things wrong in your life. You’re broken. You make mistakes. You fall. You fail. But it’s not about the falling. It’s not about the failures. It’s about getting back up again. It’s about what you’re going to do in that next moment of temptation.

And I’m not just talking about temptation to pornography or drinking or whatever temptations to hate yourself temptations. To just pour it on temptations to beat the snot out of yourself. Stop doing that John paul ii say john paul ii says darkness can only be scattered by light Hatred can only be conquered by love if you’re tired of feeling the way that you do If you’re tired of the negativity and the constant battle you have with yourself And the negative thoughts where you’re telling yourself you’re a piece of garbage and you’re never going to be more than that Or you’re not a good mother.

You’re not a good husband. You’re not a good father. You’re not a good Wife you’re not a good employee. You’re not a good friend. You’re not a good disciple of Christ. If you’re spending your life telling yourself all that, then stop. I’m telling you right now, I’m trying to do for you what Dr.

Bob did for me last Friday. He gave me a gift and saying, John, like you have a choice to love yourself or to hate yourself in those moments. And what you do is going to affect everything around you. So in that moment, I took his advice and I took those things to Jesus. And Jesus came and he does what he always does when we allow him to be a part of our life.

He heals. He comforts. He releases the captives, right? He sets us free from our bonds. I sat there on that plane for a good hour, just emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically holding my younger self, consoling myself, preaching truth to myself. And for the first time in a long time. Those negative things dissipated.

I didn’t have ill will towards the person that I’d had those disagreements with that started me down this path. In fact, I prayed for them and I wished them well. And I remember that deep down those people loved me, and I didn’t know what they had going on in their life right now. May have caused them to act the way they acted, but either way, it wasn’t my business.

My business was to love myself and to love them. Guys, if we want our relationships to be what they can be, if we want to be joyful, If we want to be people that actually live the love and the discipleship that we practice Then it starts with loving yourself well, and it’s not some weird self help thing get rest when you need it If you’re doing things that aren’t good for you Stop it All right If you’re allowing the devil to get in your head and talk all the time then start preaching the truth Stop it and call jesus into the situation Because we need to love others the way that christ called us to and the only way we can do that is to love Ourselves well To meet the devil right there at that battle line and go, no, not today.

You’re not crossing this threshold. You’re not crossing the threshold of my heart, of my mind, of my household and my family, of my business, of any of that today, you’re staying out there and I’m going to choose to love myself through the mistakes and through my imperfections and through the places that I’m not perfect.

Folks, you start to do that. You could teach your kids to do that and you could save them a lot of the pain that you felt in your life too. Ever since I got back and right and ever since I had that conversation with Bob, it’s been night and day different between Angela and the kids and I’ve chosen not to spend so much time on myself and to spend much more time on them.

That’s where you go. When you’re negative, you start just centering on yourself and what was me isolate loneliness, all that stuff. But when you love yourself you start preaching the truth to yourself. You start to find that affirmation, that courage that self confidence that only comes from the grace of the Lord.

And you go out and you realize my life’s not about me. It’s about others and let me go and live well for them. Folks, that’s the question I’m going to leave you with. Are you going to, are you kind to yourself? Are you being kind to yourself? Are you loving yourself? Cause if you’re not, the Lord is bringing you an opportunity right now today to do something different in your life, something that will not only affect you, that will not only change you, but we’ll change those around you.

People will see that light as john paul ii said darkness can only be scattered by light and hatred can only be conquered by love So start doing those things start loving yourself start letting the light and the love of the lord come in your life Get out of the gutter You’re allowing yourself to be in and choose to be something different and have that choice backed up With the strength the courage the hope the love and the mercy and the grace that only comes from jesus christ Let’s take it to prayer in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit.

Amen You Heavenly Father, I thank you for this day. I thank you for the opportunities you give us to enter into difficult times. Lord, help us all to see that those moments of temptations, those moments of suffering and struggle. Are not just a one way ticket to darkness and despair It’s an opportunity to choose like a fork in the road the path that we want to go down One of self destruction and hate and loathing or of love of kindness and of building up father Are you giving us everything we need in your grace and your mercy?

All it takes is us believing in that and going out in our lives and living in each and every day I pray that those listening and myself will learn to live this lesson And to be the people that you called us to be in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit Amen