If you're going to treat yourself well, as very valuable, then take ownership of all that's yours. In other words whatever's yours, take ownership of it and then you're empowered. You can do something about it. That's loving yourself, taking responsibility. Now of course the thing is that, you'll find if you give yourself to discovering who you are, and you begin to find lots of things, then when you connect with people, you're really interested to find out about them, and all the things in their life. Most times we just ask, what do you do? We define people by what they do, rather than actually finding out who they are, so if you're able to communicate who you are to others, you'll also probably be able to listen and find out from others what they have to say about themselves. If you invest in your personal growth, you'll be interested in investing in the growth of others. If make decisions and you take responsibility for your choices, then it's likely you'll hold others to account for their decisions. You'll relate differently.
If you are a victim person, who doesn't take responsibility for your own choices, you're not likely to hold anyone else accountable for theirs, so you'll be out of control. You'll be in a powerless situation. The last one is, you need to learn to set limits or boundaries. If you love yourself, you have to set limits. There are limits on what you can do, set limits and set boundaries. Boundaries are what you let come in, so if you have a house, you have a property - most of you have got a property - you know that if some strange group of people step across that property line, you're going to be concerned, why. They were fine walking down the street, but when they crossed over that property line, they're in you're property. Now there's a possibility it'll affect you. Now you have ownership, you can do something. If something goes wrong, you know, you can cut your grass, don't have to worry about the guy next doors. Boundaries are very good for defining what we're responsible for, and what we're not responsible for.
Jesus put limits on things. He said no. Mark 1:35, they came to Him and they said listen, we have a great revival, let's get out there and do some more, have more miracles, lots of people here. He said no, I've got to go to another city. I've been up praying, and My Father's given Me different directions. In John, Chapter 11, they said hey Lazarus, your mate's dying, you better go over and heal Him before He gets to die - and he said no. How many times did Jesus walk in and out of the temple, and pass that man who was crippled, and never healed him? See, He didn't do everything. He actually defined His life around what God had called Him to do, then set boundaries, and He lived within them. Interesting, there's one place in the Bible, where the disciples would go I'm too busy, and they had nothing to eat, and He said let's stop and go aside and let's begin to have time to eat and refresh ourselves, put boundaries around the ministry, and helped them put the boundaries as well.
So what an amazing thing, He just set limits. Now if you can't set limits on yourself, and boundaries on yourself, you won't set them on anyone else either. It's part of loving yourself. When you love yourself in these kinds of ways, it affects how you relate, and what kind of relationships you build with other people. You can make some changes I'm sure, see? If someone's irresponsible, you have to set limits. You have to say no, and there's consequences for your behaviour. When you do that, you're loving and valuing yourself. When you don't do it, their irresponsibility comes in and invades your life. Now think about this. If you were to get involved in serving and helping and suppose particularly get involved with some drug addicts or some alcoholics or some gang members. The first thing you'll discover with them, if you haven't already discovered it, the first thing you'll discover is, they have no boundaries in their life, and their life is out of control, there's a chaos. See, they don't like themselves, and they're medicating the condition rather than solving the problem, and so their life is in chaos; no boundaries, because they have no value on themselves, so they can't form good relationships.