It’s giving self sabotage..

Hey readers! Welcome back to another blog entry!

I first want to start this entry off by thanking God. When I decided to jump back into blogging, I didn’t know if my fire would come back. I wasn’t sure if my motivation would be the same, if my creative thinking would rev back up or if I’d even love it the way I did five years ago. I went back and forth with myself about everything. Is this what God would have me do in this season? Will it bless other people the way my previous entries blessed people? Am I ready to be vulnerable? Will anyone even read it? I asked myself a thousand questions before I launched this site. Then one day I noticed that the voice behind me questioning myself had a fear element attached to it and an “I’m just gonna quit while I’m ahead” kind of attitude behind it. Once I noticed that I stepped out of curiosity and into self sabotage, the decision to go forward with this blogging site was finalized…and here we are.

With that said, I cannot stress enough how detrimental it is to allow fear to lead you into self sabotage. In many instances of my life I have been controlled by what I call a crippling fear and therefore missed blessings that I knew in my spirit were for me. I’ve seen God bless people with what I know He said was mine to possess but because I allowed my fear of the unknown to turn into self sabotage, I didn’t walk through certain doors. That’s not to say that God’s plan for me was to not walk through certain doors but for many doors to have been presented to me one after the other and I turn away from all of them indicated a seriously internal problem. Today, I have no regrets because at the very least, I have an experience and a perspective to share with you all that will hopefully serve as a piece of wisdom for you to digest. At best, I am the woman that I was meant to grow into and all of those lessons helped bring me here. I can be nothing but grateful.

Let’s identify a few practical “bricks” that can grow into one solid wall of self sabotage.

1. Insecurity

2. Comparison

3. Fear

4. Opinion of man

5. Overthinking

Each one of these bricks can play a huge part in why you haven’t started that business, wrote that book, shared your testimony, prayed for your neighbor, shared the gospel with your coworker’s, etc. etc. If ever you feel burdened by any of these words and see them operating in your situation or in your life, I implore you to look at scripture. If any of these bricks listed above crippled people such as Elijah, David, Esther, Paul, Jesus’ disciples, Samuel, Hannah, Joseph, Daniel, Israel, Moses, Nehemiah, King Josiah, JESUS CHRIST and so many others…Where else in the world would we find spiritual nourishment as believers? Would we even still be considered believers? Probably not because we wouldn’t have reference to pull from about the times God showed up and showed out in the lives of His people. Hear me clearly, I am not saying that panicking is not biblical, because we can literally read the stories of how humans are human-ing (lol) all through out it. I am saying that what is on the other side of the wall that is self sabotage is something so much greater than you could imagine.

Take this perspective: Peace is on the other side of that wall. Your break through is on the other side of that wall. Your healing is on the other side of that wall. Your next dimension in God is on the other side of that wall. Generational wealth is on the other side of that wall. Generational blessings are on the other side of that wall. Can you see it? I sure can. What’s unfortunate is these things are only cliché to the people who decide not to knock the wall down. For the people who chose to come out of insecurity, comparison, fear, opinion of man and overthinking, they’ve seen what God can do and how faithful he is to perform every good work He promised He would do in them and for their lives. Here’s another perspective to ponder; one day, I was listening to a sermon from Sarah Jake’s Roberts and she said “God does things with generations in mind.” When I registered what that meant to me and my future children, it completely shifted my perspective for how I lived my life. For example, do we really think that God using Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land was just for them specifically? Of course not. Quite literally, none of them even got into the “clurb.” But even if the Lord chose not to wait until the complaining generation died off before entering the land, it still would have been for their children and their children’s children and their children’s children to enjoy. Another example would be God encountering and changing the trajectory of Paul’s life. That was not just to win over the life of Paul. The many books he’s authored in the Bible STILL impact generation after generation.

Most importantly, God did not send his only son to this earth to sacrifice his life just for His chosen people. Jesus sacrificed his life to save the entire world. We can’t even count how many generations that is. But God knows. How invigorating! When we look at what God has already done in scripture, we can draw the confidence, the strength, and move in the authority that we have in Him to swing a wrecking ball directly through the wall of self sabotage. Why? Because we embody the faith to do so. Mark 11:23 says “If anyone says to this mountain, Go and throw yourself into the sea, and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will indeed come to pass, it will be done for them.” We have to believe that with God, we can do anythiiinnggg. Growing up as a kid who watched Disney Channel religiously, I’d always hear characters say “Everything you need is on the inside of you.” Though I’m sure they weren’t referencing the Holy Spirit being on the inside of us, I took it to mean that way. I didn’t apply it right away but when I grew tired of going in circles, I began to speak over myself and say “if I have the Holy Spirit, these walls that stand in my way have to come down.”

So what happens once the wall finally collapses in your life? Well…you can now begin to walk in obedience to God. You’ve gotten out of your own way and now you have determination to go after everything God says you can have. This can look like a thousand things because we worship a creative God but no matter how you have to go about doing it, just make sure it gets done. I like to reference Elijah’s mental breakdown after his showdown on Mount Carmel with the false prophets. I tell myself, “as long as I’m bold where it matters, I can freak out in my prayer time later.” To which I absolutely have done multiple times. One day I was on my job and a coworker came in really discouraged because his mother had a debilitating illness and he was her only child old enough to help take care of her. It was really weighing on him to see his mom wither away so I offered to pray for him. I was shaking in my boots but I felt that this was an opportunity to witness to him since he wasn’t a believer. I grabbed his hand, walked over to a corner of the business, placed my other hand on his shoulder and began to pray.

My entire body felt like a furnace but my voice remained steady. I rebuked fear, I prayed for peace, I prayed for his mom and I worshipped God for him. By the time we opened our eyes, one of my managers was standing there. She didn’t say anything, she looked and walked away. I encouraged my coworker and we got back to work. Later that night, I prayed before bed and I begged the Lord to help me be strong enough to face any persecution that could come from me praying. I had grown folk bills to pay so I needed my job but my coworker needed help too. I was frantic. Then I remembered how the Lord sent an angel to minister to Elijah and give him food to eat. From that visual, I was able to surmise that whenever I am doing something the Lord prompts me to do, He will always take care of me as a result. I slept. The next day, the only thing my manager asked me to do was to pray in the break room as opposed to on the work floor. Thank God!

I could go on forever on this topic but I think I will end the entry here. As always, I hope you were blessed and that there was something in here you could chew on. We’re all running the races set before us so please be kind to yourself. Until next post, God bless!