Love Self ... Deny Self: Which is God's Way?

Love self ... deny self: which is God's way?  Are we not commanded to do both? We know and understand that the first and greatest command is to love God, but is not the second to love your neighbor as you love yourself (see Matthew 22:37-39)? Isn't this a command to love your neighbor and to love yourself? Try reading the passage again. To love yourself would make a third command, right?  The Word says the second, not a third.  The command is to love your neighbor AS you love yourself.  We are neither commanded here nor any other place in Scripture to love ourselves. I believe God knows that we love ourselves, so there is no reason to command us to do so. After loving Him first, the second command is to love your neighbor. How?  AS you love yourself. 

So therefore, the greatest love cannot be learning to love yourself, as the world teaches.  God's way is not to love yourself but to deny yourself.  Really, you may be thinking.  Your next thought might be, I don't believe that.  And your thoughts may continue -- if I don't love and highly esteem myself, how can I be okay?  How can I be successful? How can I be victorious?  If my focus is on loving myself, how can I obey the command to deny myself?  What a dilemma? What really is God's way?

How do I receive God's great and precious promises?  He says that I can do all things ... I am the head not the tail ... I'm above not beneath ... the lender not the borrower ... will eat the best of the land ... nothing is impossible ... successful in everything I put my hand to ... and so much more.  Why do I not have these things?  Why is this not my experience?  What am I missing? What do I have to do differently?  Glad you asked.  If you believe that everything that you need for life and godliness is found in Christ Jesus, then consider this instruction from Luke 9:23-24.  Then he said to them all: ‎“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it."

Deny himself … deny myself.  Now what does that mean?