Unka Glen

inahbunag asked: How should I get to the place where I love myself? I think that’s the problem with me sometimes.

Unka Glen answered: That’s easy, just receive some humility from God. 

Now, that’s maybe not the answer you were expecting, given there’s a chance that humility is what you thought you were doing, when you were beating up on yourself. But let’s take some of these negative things you might have been saying to yourself, and see what a humble person might say in that same situation.

• Negative thought: I should be a better Christian than what I am.
• Humble Christian: It’s amazing that I’m able to act as good as I do, given how much I crave all kinds of sin. 

• Negative thought: Why do I have all these lustful desires? All I can think about is committing one sin or another.
• Humble Christian: Thank you Lord, that even though my flesh is totally pulling me in the wrong direction, that you’ve given me the strength to stay on the right path for another day.

• Negative thought: I should feel confident that I can accomplish all these goals, but sometimes I have doubts, and then I hate myself for having those doubts.
• Humble Christian: I know for sure that I will fail without you Lord. I am not up to the task, and we both know it. You put me in over my head, so I would be aware of how much I need you. I can’t do this Lord, but you can do it through me, so help me get out of the way.

• Negative thought: How could I have backslid like this? I thought all this was behind me!
• Humble Christian: Well Lord, this comes as no surprise given my past, and I’m sure you saw it coming, so what did I miss? How did I leave myself open to this? I know you were trying to warn me to go another way, so thank you for that…and I’m sorry for not listening.

• Negative thought: I should be more committed to God. I lack that sense of zeal!
• Humble Christian: Hey Lord, I feel like I’m pretty sloppy and all over the place with this Christian thing, and most of it looks like a real mess to me, but I do love you. I love you so much Lord, and I know, one day I’ll learn to do better, but right here, right now, it’s just super-important that I tell you how much I love you.  

As you can see, that sense of “should” shows up a lot in those negative statements. A sense that you should be much better than what you are, that can only be based on an inflated and unrealistic view of yourself, one that you aren’t living up to. But in the humble points of view, there’s a note of thankfulness and joy behind a focus on God, rather than self. 

The more you focus on God, and not yourself, the more you’ll be able to see yourself anew in His eyes. At that point insecurity, self-hate, and low self-esteem will be a thing of the past.

Anonymous asked: I have a question, some of my family members I live with are nudists and have recently joined a nudist club/community. They know that my faith is very important to me, but still try to get me to go with them. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I have an eating disorder, and very low body confidence. I don’t know how I, as a Christian, should react to this. Is it okay? I don’t know what to do.

Unka Glen answered: A nudist would say that the whole point of nudism is to de-sexualize the human body, and to see that clothes hide a lot of what our bodies actually look like. They might say that once you see everyone else’s curves and jiggles and whatnot, that you begin to focus less on your own body altogether and begin to see yourself as part of nature.

Also, you get to look at other people’s bits and pieces.

But other than the bits and pieces part, they do kind of have a point. We have become body-conscious as a society to an truly nutty extent. In fact, we take a measure of our identity and self-worth from our looks, as opposed to, ya know, taking our sense of identity from the fact that God sent His Son to pay for our sins, and ransom us from eternal separation from Him, and adopted us, and calls us co-heirs with Christ.

The human body is beautiful. The female human body much more so (God saved His best for last). There is nothing wrong with admiring the beauty of the human form. God made Adam and Eve and He placed them in the garden, naked and happy. No religion, no church, just walking and talking and abiding with God …and just look at the mess that we’ve made of that.

God made you. The Bible says you are His “workmanship”, in Greek, that’s “poiéma”, the same word from which we derive the English word “poem”. You are God’s poem, you are His song, you are His sculpture. You, my beloved, are God’s masterpiece. And you are beautiful in His sight. Everything else is a lie.

If you accept the truth of this, you will love your body for what it is, and accept it for what it isn’t. Just as God loves your looks, a man who loves God will come along and see your looks the way God sees them. You want to be in agreement with this remarkable man, and you, in turn, will want to see this man the way God sees him.

If you hate your body and you set out to change it, you’ll find that you can make it anorexically thin, or overly obese, but you really aren’t changing your looks all that much. And you may be wrecking your health in the meantime. Leave it to the enemy to give us an obsession that we can’t really do much about.

C. S. Lewis once said, “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” Indeed, the essential you is spirit, and you’re stuck with this lumpy, saggy, pimply, hairy, and rapidly deteriorating earthsuit. Soon and very soon, you’ll shed that suit, and throw off it’s aches, and pains, and itching hungers, and then you’ll be free. Until then, realize it’s just a suit, treat it well, and love it the best you can. It’s gonna see you through some amazing adventures.  

hscrubs asked: Hey Unka Glen, I was just wondering what you think it means to love yourself and how do you go about doing that? A re-occurring theme in my life is people saying that you have to love yourself in order to have healthy relationships with others, so that you aren’t looking to them to fill voids like unhappiness or insecurity, but then I sit and think, “What does all of that even mean and how do I do that?”. Thanks so much! [edited for length]

Unka Glen answered: Well, yeah, on one extreme you have a situation where you might begin to pridefully think too much of yourself, and on the other extreme, you get into self-hatred, and that can’t be what God wants to see in us. So let’s start further back, and make sure we’ve got the right picture. 

Jesus said “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). We’ve been grafted onto this vine. In this vine we live, move and have our being. Apart from this vine we are nothing. He is the vine, we are the branches, but it’s all one plant.

Thus being united with Christ means we can’t really judge ourselves apart from Him, we cannot accomplish much apart from Him, we cannot point to much and say, this is me, and not God, and it’s really something. So yes, loving yourself as an individual is tough, as you find yourself lost deeper and deeper in Christ. But likewise hating yourself is impossible without rejecting or denying the connection you have with God. 

Being united with Christ means that you are never alone. It means you are never incomplete. It means that you are whole and secure. Sure, you’ve got some spots that need pruning, and some wild branches that need to be secured, and lots of other areas that need work, but I can get everything I need for all of that through this connection I share with the Father.

It’s not exactly about loving yourself, or even focusing on yourself, it’s about living into this connection more and more.

I’ve received a number of messages lately from people who say they like the idea of already being in a relationship, and having someone they can be close with, and kissing and snuggling, and all that, BUT they don’t like the idea of the dating and relationship building it takes to get there.

And to this I say: oh, poo. 

Here are some some essential truths about dating:

— Half the time you realize pretty much right away this person just isn’t a good fit for you, the other half of the time you’re sitting there wondering if they’re realizing that you’re the wrong fit for them.

—  One hundred percent of the time you feel like a big ol’ nerd. You spend all night sitting there wondering if something is hanging out of your nose, and you can’t just go get it, which makes you nervous, which makes you sweat, and now you’re sitting there sweating and trying to casually check your nostrils like a weirdo. Reeeal sexy.

— Dating is scary. Or rather, plenty of people have made you feel scared of it. What if you hold hands? Will that lead to kissing? And if we kiss, will that lead to ripping each other’s clothes off, and having full-on naked animal sex? And if so, will that lead to smoking? (They always smoke after sex in the movies!)

— Your heart might get broken. There’s a decent chance that you could fall for this person and they would not quite feel the same way, and you’ll be crushed. Then you’ll end up eating too much ice cream, and listening to Adele, and adopting too many cats, and living alone forever and ever. (Or you may meet someone even better who likes you even more, who can say?)   

So all that makes a person think, well, if I could just avoid these dating dilemmas, then everything would be great. And when you go to your Christian bookstore and read titles like “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”, you figure this must be some divine wisdom. Maybe God is telling me that hiding away from the anxieties of dating is the best way to develop a quality Christian relationship.

But here’s what I’m telling you, all these crazy, scary, sweaty elements of dating are what make it great. The fact that it could all go horribly wrong is what makes it great. It’s like riding a roller coaster, they don’t give you a break pedal on that thing for a reason, because you’d use it and ruin the whole ride.

Christian relationships aren’t just a warm comfy place that you suddenly discover one day. They’re an all out battle to deny the ugly stuff inside you that you didn’t even know that you had, and to fight to build something great with this other person who is currently driving you nuts. Christian dating is an act of faith, that all these sacrifices will be worth it. But if you both take hold of this life, and drive it closer to the Lord, the rewards are beyond mere comfort.

Only the brokenhearted can truly appreciate how rare and beautiful and delicate love is. Only those courageous enough to do whatever it takes to make love work, discover all that love has to offer. Only the humble put their ego and pride to the side long enough to dare to fully commit. Only the bold go to God and say, “make me extraordinary, and lead me into an extraordinary marriage, to do extraordinary things for you.”

Anonymous asked: How do I learn to love myself?

Unka Glen answered: You will love yourself when you see yourself the way God sees you. 

This isn’t something you learn, this is something you accept. In order to accept the truth you have to reject the lies that you’ve bought into. Here are a few you may be familiar with.

— You aren’t good enough. One of the ways that the enemy gets you to swallow a lie, is to  arrange a series of truths in such a way that they lead you to make a false conclusion. Yes, you are not good enough for God to love you because of your goodness. Yes, you have done bad stuff. And all that might drive you to think: therefore God doesn’t think much of me.

Whereas the truth is, because I have done bad things, Christ died for me, taking my punishment, so there is now nothing between me and God. The blood of Christ is an exact measurement of how important I am to God. And it’s His goodness I’m going on, not my own.

— You don’t measure up, like these other people. We all can look around and find someone who’s living a straighter lifestyle than we are. We can all look around and say that someone else knows more Bible than we do. You know what I say? So what. Satan knows every page of that Bible, and even quotes it to suit his own purposes. (Matthew 4:5-7)

But I’ve taken ahold of the hem of my Master’s cloak, and I’ve been hanging on for dear life. Now, it hasn’t always been pretty, but I’m changing, little by little. I’m leaving behind some of my favorite sins and hangups, because I can’t always hold on to them and my Master’s cloak at the same time. And you know what else? I’ve watched a LOT of those straight dudes backslide while my messy little walk is still limping along.

— Just look at all the sin in your life. You know what, how ‘bout you don’t? Hebrews 12:1-2a says “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” You throw off the sin, and you keep your eyes on Jesus, not the other way around.

…All these lies will keep you spinning in circles, and they’re a constant part of your life for a reason. Nothing scares the enemy more than you finding out who you are to God. Once you see yourself the way God sees you, these lies won’t ever really stick. Once you see yourself as He sees you, then you won’t be tempted by cheap counterfeit pleasures. 

Ephesians 3:17b-19a ”I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge…”

kbgrumbles asked: Unka Glen, you rawk. Just a heads up, in case you didn’t know. I was wondering if you had any tips on spiritual leadership; I’ve been elected Chaplain of my sorority for the upcoming year and while I’m super excited about it, I’m also super scared to drop the ball. Thanks!  (:

Unka Glen answered: Ya know, I always suspected, but it’s still good to have confirmation, that I do indeed rawk. Let me give you three key principles that will help keep you relevant and on-target in reaching out to any of your friends, in any situation. 

1. Lots of listening. If you followed me around while I ministered to people on my mission field, you’d see me do more listening than talking, for sure. The more I listen, the more I understand, and the more I understand, the less I need to say, because I can zero-in on the root cause. Often you’ll hear something and think, “I don’t know what to say”. In that moment, don’t say anything, ask more questions and do more listening.

It’s okay to say, “I don’t have any idea what this is even about, but keep talking, and let’s keep looking at this thing from different angles, until we get some insight on it.” Just by you taking the time to listen, people will feel ministered to, and by you showing a deep interest in them, they’ll feel flattered. Don’t focus on having all the right answers, focus on having the right heart. And when you get stuck, ask for help. That’s what full-time ministry professionals do.

2. Earn the right to be heard. It’s an old cliche because it’s true: people don’t care what you know, until they know you care. People need to know that I don’t judge them, that I would never look down on them, and that I’m coming from a place of love. By the time I open my mouth, I want the other person to feel like I’ve truly earned their time and attention. If I haven’t earned it, I’m likely to keep my mouth shut until I do. 

3. Set them free. 2 Cor. 3:17b says, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” The Holy Spirit is drawing everyone to Himself, but something holds us back. If you find that obstacle and remove it, you’ve set them free to have a more intimate walk with the Lord. If you say, “you need to break up with that boy, because you have a sinful relationship”, well, that sounds judgmental, and far from setting someone free, it’s weighing them down with the burden of their guilt.

Jesus said, in Luke 11:46, “You experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.” So if we’re going to actually lift a finger to help this gal, we might decide that low self-esteem is the reason why she’s in this dysfunctional relationship with the guy. If you don’t address the self-esteem, then she’ll just move on to another bad relationship.

So you might say something like this, to address her self esteem: “you’re so amazing and special, and I hate to see you settle for anything less than what you deserve. When I look at you, I see someone who could have an epic life. Where you see caterpillar, I see butterfly. God looks at you and sees a princess He wants to bless. I wish you’d let God show you all the stuff He shows me about you.”

Set them free, and they’ll keep coming back for more, and they’ll tell their friends, too.  

Anonymous asked: I have something I’m struggling with and I have been for some time now. I trust others very easily (initially) and am very loving and accepting. However, I have a hard time trusting that people like me, care about me, want to be around me and be my friend. I know that I shouldn’t be so caught up in what others think or feel about me, but I know that God made us social beings and a good social support system is important. What should I be praying for so that I believe in me?

Unka Glen answered: Here’s the deal, asking “how do I stop feeling insecure?” is like asking “how do I stop banging my head against the wall?”. There isn’t much to it, you just…stop. The real question we have to ask ourselves is: what should I be thinking instead? That can be tough to work out, especially when you’re deep in your madness.

The key to dealing with low self esteem is NOT about believing in yourself. As you’ve heard me say before, the opposite of a bad idea is another bad idea. It’s the enemy that has us swinging between extremes. Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

So if this isn’t about self, then how do you navigate these relationships? How do have confidence in people, and who can be a good support system? Let me suggest you look at it this way— take all the people you know in your life, then put them into two groups:

1) People who know what you bring to the table, and value it

2) Everyone else

Only people in that first category have to potential to be a support to you. These are the people you can consider relying on. If they know what you bring to the table, and they don’t envy it, they’re likely to be there for you in a way that others just can’t. Those people will be much more likely to understand you and what you’re going through, and they’ll know how you fit into the larger Christian community.

Now, let me ask you this, could you put yourself in that first catagory? That is to say, do you know what you bring to the table? I’ll bet you don’t, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation. 

Start praying, right now, and ask the Lord to reveal what it is that you bring to the table. Maybe it’s generosity, maybe it’s joy, or empathy, or hospitality. Maybe you’re a really good cook, and you just need a mission field to point that at. Maybe it’s writing, maybe it’s preaching, or working with little kids or making people laugh. One way or another, you need to hear from God what He sees when He looks at you. You need to know who He made you to be. When you do, you’ll be bulletproof.

When you realize that as you bow your head in prayer on Earth, you raise your head in the throne room of the Almighty, and you stand as a member of that royal family, and you’ve been given a purpose, a mission, a cross to bear, and you take up that burden of love and fulfill your destiny for the Kingdom… in that moment, it’ll be fairly impossible for the devil to convince that you don’t matter. 

melina-mattos asked: Hey Unka, It’s been years since I’ve been facing extremely low self esteem. I’m actually getting better, but I still have a hard time believing people when they give me complements. I don’t like a lot of things about me, and I feel insecure when I’m around a group of people. I know that Jesus loves me, and that I’m not here to impress people, but God. But it’s difficult, and even with God’s love changing me everyday, I can’t seem to change this…. any help?

Unka Glen answered: I have an exercise I do with my ministry staff, we go around the circle, and one at a time we each give compliments to the first person in the circle. Then we go to the next person in the circle, and so on. But that’s not the exercise, the exercise is— the only thing you’re allowed to say in return is: “thank you”. The first time we did that exercise, I thought half of them were going to lose it, and the other half were going to have a stroke. Try it in your Bible study, and you’ll see what I mean.

Leaving aside the fact that saying “thank you” is just good manners, it’s really about being vulnerable. It’s about standing, unguarded, in the spotlight of love. If you’re doing as well as you say you are with your self esteem issues, then maybe this is about being open and vulnerable to letting others esteem you as well. Sure, there are some people around you that you can’t trust, and sure, some people will compliment you as a way of manipulating you. But in the end, if you know what you bring to the table, and people confirm that in you, it should have the ring of truth to it. 

Remember, humiliation is not the same thing as humility. When you put yourself down, you dishonor God, because you’re calling something He made junk, and that just ain’t cool. But when you humble yourself, you can say: “He is the Vine, I am the branches, apart from Him I can do nothing, but connected to Him, I can do anything, I be anybody. I am connected to God, and who’s to say where I end and He begins? Who or what can separate us? We are as one, and I am lost in Him.”

Anonymous asked: I’m teetering on the line that divides purity and sexual immorality. I’ve grown up in the church my whole life so I know all of the reasons why I’m not supposed to have sex or fool around outside of marriage, but I still find myself not caring anymore and just wanting to go for it. I’ve found access through friends and drinking into a new world that I enjoy. I enjoy who I am when I drink, and I enjoy the attention I get from girls in those situations. Anything to say? 

Unka Glen answered: Nope. Go for it. Probably this whole new way of life will end up being great. I mean, think of all the people that noticed that drinking and getting attention form the opposite sex felt good, and invested their time and money and life to pursuing that good feeling. Almost none of them ended up at the bottom of life, addicted, burned out, or dealing with some form of STD.

C’mon brutha, don’t ask me to talk you out of what you know to be a bad idea, if you’re determined to learn things the hard way, what can I say, except I’ll still be here to help when you’re done. You aren’t charmed, you’ve seen the consequences of chasing that life, and you can’t avoid those consequences any more than you could avoid getting wet by walking between the raindrops.

But when you’re sad and depressed, any existence that numbs the pain, while simultaneously giving you the feeling of acceptance, is a pretty powerful thing. The only problem is, it’s not a cure for what ails you, it’s just a patch on the symptoms. Meanwhile, if you find it hard live with yourself now, try waking up in a strange place having done God-knows what, and see how much harder it gets.

For you to even consider this, there has to be something wrong with your walk, and you won’t find peace until you work it out. And I’d guess that it has something to do with you feeling like you let God down. And that you despise yourself because of that, so you might as well pack your bags and head out on your own, to at least milk some pleasure out of your empty existence.

But here’s the truth: God doesn’t care about all that. He just wants you. He doesn’t want you to perform like a puppet on a string. He wants the real you. Rebellious, carnal, clueless, and wayward as you may be, He wants you. It doesn’t make sense, but heck, when did love ever make sense? 

Before you throw away your relationship with God, throw away your religion, it probably didn’t have much to do with who God really is anyway. 

jessicaaa-annne asked: Hi Unka! First off, I want to say thanks so much for your blog, its a been a real blessing to me! Now my question, I serve with the college group at my church and one of the things I have noticed with our girls is the difficulty in not allowing society to dictate what is beautiful and what is not. A lot of girls have gone through things that, in their mind, has diminished their worth, looks, intelligence etc. How can I, other than through prayer, help them see themselves as Christ sees them?

Unka Glen answered: Okay, I’m gonna give you some of my super-secret ninja ministry moves here, but keep it to yourself, this is powerful stuff… Let’s start with this: we tend to assume that when people have severe struggles, that they’re totally dug in to their way of thinking. We assume they’ve thought it out and considered all the angles, and that our only hope is to debate them long enough to discover something they haven’t thought of yet.

The hidden reality here is that if you look at most people’s hangups, even the severe ones, they are not only not thought out, they often don’t even make sense to the sufferer. You can ask the person, “why do you hate yourself so much, what makes you such a loathsome person?” and they can only say, “I dunno, I just feel it so strong.” So what I’m saying is, the thing that drives people nuts is mostly in the dark.

So you have to take these hidden struggles, our unexamined thought processes, and bring them to light. We want to make them more concrete and real. Jesus said, “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free”. The idea is to find the hidden lie, expose it for the source of pain that it is, and put God’s truth in that spot. 

So let’s start with something like this:

“Imagine your brain as one big control panel. All sorts of readouts and blinking lights and various controls that you use to deal with your thought life. On that massive control panel is a big knob with a pointer on it, and it’s labeled “BEAUTIFUL”. If this knob is turned up, you will think of yourself as beautiful, inside and out. Not flawless, not perfect, not desirable necessarily, just beautiful. 

So the key question is— why in God’s name would you let anyone else fiddle with that knob? Even someone you love, even someone you trust shouldn’t have access to that knob. If they truly loved you, they’d leave it turned up anyway, and if it turns out that they didn’t love you, they could flip that knob all around and have you riding a very ugly emotional roller-coaster. Heck, you wouldn’t give this guy your ATM pin number, but you’d let him monkey with your self-image? Heck, you’ll even let people in magazines, people who don’t even know you, decide where that knob should be set!

It’s your brain, why not ask God where that knob should be set, lock it in, and move on.”

Of course, this is just the top layer, you need to keep digging into these hidden thought patterns using the same technique. So let’s say one of your ladies comes along and says, that she’s unwilling to see herself as beautiful because she was molested as a child. Well you can already see the lie there. Sick people do what makes them feel good, they aren’t looking to treat people how they deserve. They victimize whoever they can.

The behavior of a sick person marks him as a sick person, but it’s not exactly a critical assessment of their intended target. The thing that makes this behavior evil is precisely that they don’t care about the people they abuse. When you you’re a kid, you might think that adults know you and that their behavior is based on your character, but as a grown woman, you know some adults treat people like objects, with no regard for who they are at all. 

So, it’s still your knob, it’s still your decision, why in God’s name would you let a mentally sick person even comment on something so important? …and so on. Also, remember that it takes courage for people to move on from issues that have shaped their identity.