Seduced By Self Sabotage

Have you ever wondered why most millionaires go bankrupt or almost bankrupt? You hear millionaires talk all the time. They talk about how, oh, I lost everything, I made millions of dollars, then I lost everything, and then I got it back and it was better after I got it back. My question is, why does that happen so often? Why do people get that far along on life's journey financially, but not just financially, otherwise other ways as well. Why do people go that far along on their journey and then they destroy it? You see people who've been married for 14, 15, 20, 30, 40 years and then they go and get a divorce. Why, why do people self destruct besides the fact that we have a sin nature? Well, I believe there are some reasons why we self sabotage. I know for me.

I went from being in the pit of poverty like I was pitiful poor. And you say, what's pitiful poor? That's when you're so poor, poor people feel sorry for you, right? And I went from that to making significant amounts of money. And by significant, I mean, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, $80,000 a month, 100,000amonth sometimes, and went from that to broke again. And you think when you're making 30,000amonth, there's no universe in which I could go broke again. Right. You think in.

Same thing happens with people on their fitness journey, right? They'll get in shape and they're like, okay, I finally did it. And then the next thing you know, they'll blow up like a balloon again. I, I know that happened to me as well, right? And so it's like, why do people self sabotage? I, I, I believe there are some very, very clear reasons. And I think, I think, I think the number one reason people self sabotage is because they bump their head on what I call stress ceiling.

And the stress ceiling is that's the barrier to as well as the doorway through the next level.

What happens is.

We'Re achieving this objective and we're climbing this ladder of achievement, whether that be financial achievement, business achievement, relational achievement, physical like fitness achievement, where we're climbing this ladder and all of a sudden we hit our head. And when you hit your head, it hurts, right? And so we're like, wow, what was that? And the reason we bumped our head on that stress ceiling is because we're about to break through to a new level where new skills are required. And we don't have those skills to make it on that level. In fact, we don't even have enough skills yet to make it to that level.

And so what we do is we begin to evaluate subconsciously in our automatic mind, we begin to evaluate.

How much is this going to cost me, not necessarily financially, how much is this going to cost me in becoming.

For me to develop the skills that will help me break through to that next level and then be able to sustain myself at that level. So that stress ceiling causes people to rethink the journey. And even if they're not rethinking it consciously, they're rethinking it subconsciously. And because of that, and because of the fact that figuring out what skill sets are necessary for that next level and then whether or not it's worth it to develop those skill sets, rather than thinking about that consciously, they just let their subconscious mind talk them out of it. And so.

Because thinking is the hardest work, most people never do.

So many people in this world right now.

They will maintain states of physical diligence and work hard with their body so they can maintain a state of mental laziness so they don't have to use their mind.

And all of us, if we're going to break through to the next level, we have to stop being the person who protects our mind from thinking.

Because we don't like how it feels when learning that next skill set makes our brain start sweating. Can I get a witness? And so what happens is, like, I've got to become this new person. And before I become this person, it looks really hard. And so what I do on a subconscious level is I assign a level of difficulty to the next level that makes me feel okay with me by justifying not leveling up.

And so what I'll do is I'll rationalize.

Staying stuck. Yeah, well, that's so much harder, and it's not really necessary anyway. And besides, I'm already doing most of that.

Can I get a witness up in here? And what happens is we stay stuck like Chuck in a pickup truck, or worse, we hit our heads so hard on that stress ceiling that it knocks us down some rungs. And now we find ourselves in worse shape because there is no stagnation in life. We are growing or dying. We are progressing, or we are regressing or digressing, but we are not standing still. And it's so dangerous to get to the place in our lives where. Yeah, but here's what we'll say. We'll say things like, but I like this level.

I'm comfortable at this level. I don't want to be too greedy, right? I don't want to be overly ambitious. I'm Just going to learn whatever state I'm in there with to be content.

By the way, when the apostle Paul said that, when he said, I've learned whatsoever state I'm in there with to be content, here's what he said before he said that. He said, I know both how to be abased and how to abound. I've learned whatsoever state I'm in there with to be content. He didn't say, I've learned how to be abased and it's not worth it for me to abound. I've learned whatsoever state I'm in there with to be content. And see, some people say, I've learned whatsoever state I'm in there with to be content, but they haven't allowed themselves to enter enough states to know if that's true or not.

You know how to be content broke. You know how to be content not knowing. You know how to be content in the circle of sameness. But do you know how to be content on the journey of growth.

On the road to refinement, can you stay content on that journey? When everything's not working for you, but it's working on you, can you stay content on that journey? And what happens for most people is. I'm not saying for some people, I'm saying for most people, the answer is no.

It'S not worth it to them. It is worth it to them, but because they don't know it's worth it to them, they think it's not worth it to them. So they rationalize, which means they tell themselves rational lies.

And they talk themselves out of.

Stepping out of the circle of sameness and ascending the throne of their assignment. You know who this reminds me of? This what this story reminds me of? It reminds me of David.

He had been working for.

The king of the Philistines for so long that he had gotten comfortable in Ziklag.

The king of the Philistines gave him this little village, Ziklag, and his. He was there, and his men were there, and his wives were his. His wives were there, and his men's wives were there, and they were all there, and all their children were there, and everybody was happy.

David goes out to battle. He comes back. And the Amalekites had come and taken his wives, his sons, I mean his children, his men's wives and their children, and taken them captive and burnt Ziklag with fire. And the scripture says that David and his men, they sat on the ground and they wept until they had no more power to weep. You know what that means? They cried until they ran out of tears. And David's men were so disgruntled. Disgruntled that they talked of stoning him.

Why? Because the comfort zone had been burned. God ordained that the enemy come and burn their comfort zone to the ground.

What?

Hey. God said, you may resist growing, but you got to get up out of here.

Hey, I didn't send Samuel to anoint you with oil so you could work for Achish your whole life.

Can I get a witness and see? What happens is. What happens is we get ready to break through to a new level. And because of the difficulty of breaking through to that level, we decide we're going to dig in our heels and stay here. But what we don't realize.

Is that the stress ceiling is not just a stress ceiling.

I wish I had some help in here. Oh, Lord. The stress ceiling is also a strength signal.

Nah, you ain't picking up what I'm putting down.

It's also a strength signal. It's showing you the area of your life in which there's room for strength to be developed.

And when you strengthen that area of your life that had no strength because you didn't need it to be strong.

Then and only then can you break through to the next level. And then by becoming that person, that is the only way you will have the opportunity to stay there.

And it'll keep you from destroying the business that you've spent decades building. It'll keep you from destroying the marriage that you spent decades building. It'll keep you from destroying the physical fitness that you have had in your body that you spent years or decades building. It'll cause you to go on a journey like I will break through.

God made you to rule over your assignment, but in order for you to rule over your assignment, you must first learn to rule over you.

And you only rule over you by yielding to the King. Think about it. I don't have any power in me of me to rule over Myron unless until I receive Christ. And then I'm yielded to the Spirit. And then, and only then, it is God that worketh in me both to do that's the power, and to the will that's the desire of his good pleasure. Are y' all seeing how this all fits together? And so we bump our head on our limitation. This is why when God gives you a dream, he immediately puts you on the path of drama.

Because the drama is the arena on which in which you develop the strength to stay there when you get there.

And if there's no Drama. If there's just a dream and no drama, the destiny will not last.

You will destroy like you will the person you are right now.

If God would say, okay, I'm going to give you a pass. You don't have to become the person. You will destroy the next level when you get to it.

Yeah.

You'Ll destroy it just like King Saul did.

King Saul didn't have a journey.

We all, we. We love talking about the anointing. That person has an anointing on their life.

I'm a big fan of the anointing. For real? For real. Big fan. The anointing was when God would have the prophet go and anoint someone with oil. And. And that.

What that meant was God is revealing your purpose to you and those around you.

I love the fact that it didn't just say that Samuel anointed David with oil. It said he anointed him with oil in the presence of his brethren. God doesn't just desire for you to know who you are. He desires for the people around you to know who you are.

And if somebody misrecognizes me, that ain't my problem.

See, David didn't get invited to his own anointing.

Talk about being left out.

We about to name the next king. Samuel says, jesse, where you boys at? Boys, y' all come in here. He calls seven of eight. And I love the way it says it in the King James.

The Lord has not chosen this. The Lord has not chosen this. The Lord has not chosen this.

No, this ain't that.

And everybody's confused why. These are all big, strong, strapping dudes, soldiers, like men of war. It's none of them. Sammy says, well, do you have any other sons? Jesse says, who? David.

See, here's part of your problem. Part of your problem is you are frustrated because the people who love you the most don't see your assignment in you.

They're going like, what makes you think you gonna do that? Hey, do not be discouraged because the folk around you can't.

Are y' all picking up what I'm putting down? Just because they can't tell.

When I graduated from high school, I got one award of my whole high school career, the most likely to get on your nerves award.

It was a little pill bottle with some earmuffs on it that were made out of those little pipe cleaner things and said, most likely, get on your. Everybody else is getting trophies for this and trophies for that. And it was a Christian school. And when I went to that Christian school and I went to that Church. I brought more people to that church during the time I was there than any other single, solitary person, including the pastor.

But I got the most likely to get on your nerves award. You know why? Because everybody cannot see your anointing.

But it doesn't matter if people can see it, because God can see it.

God gave Joseph a dream. Joseph knew the dream came from God. He went and told his mama, told his daddy, told his brothers. Here's what the scripture says. His brothers hated him for his dreams and for his words. Okay, you got a dream. Great. I have a dream this afternoon. People gonna hate you. They're gonna hate you for your dream. They're gonna hate you for your words. Deal with it.

See, the stress ceiling is a strength signal. And if you are unwilling to develop the strength when the signal shows up, you cannot break through the stress ceiling.

Here's what it means. You're gonna have to learn some skills that you don't know. So in order to keep from self sabotaging when you hit the stress ceiling, you gotta recognize the strength signal. And then you have to start developing skill sets, skills that you didn't have when you were at the lower level, because those skills weren't necessary at those lower levels. It's kind of interesting how for the most part, most human beings will do just enough.

Just enough to get by, just enough to stay there.

Just enough to remain comfortable.

But breaking through is a level. So I had.

I had polio. So I had polio in this leg. And so I walk with a brace. And so there was this new Technology Back in 2015, 2000, whatever called a stance control brace, where it didn't have to stay locked, but what would happen is when you kicked out your leg, it would lock, and then you could take your step well. So I bought a stance control brace. It was like $5,000. So I bought one. And it was working well most of the time, but every now and then it wouldn't lock, and then I'd fall, right? And when I fell, I hyper. What is this? This is not extended. Hyperflexed. I hyperflexed my knee, and that happened about four or five times. And I tore my meniscus in my right knee. And so then, now my strong leg became weak because I've got all this pain in it, right? And so.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have just done the stem cell injections. But I didn't know that then. So I did the surgery. That was $10,000. So I did the surgery, and they went in and Scraped the meniscus and like, my leg would only bend that far now. I mean, it comes back pretty far now, but it would only bend that far. And. And before I tore my meniscus, I was in the best shape of my life. I was walking nine holes of golf three or four or five times a week and then riding 18 on the weekends. So I was like really in great shape. I was 165 to 172 pounds, like, fit as a fiddle, romping, stomping, death and destruction. I mean, I was like.

Blew out my knee, couldn't walk holes of golf anymore, and man, I blew up like a balloon. Well, to me. So I went from that to back to £200, which for me was a lot. When you're, when you got back down to one like 170, 165, 170ish. And now all of a sudden you're back up to 200, you're like, well, we don't have to get back in shape or we're going to have to get a new wardrobe. Something got to change, right? And so I started. I'm in my 170s again, finally. But I discovered something recently.

And it hurts so badly, or should I say it hurts so good. I discovered when I'm at the golf course, I can turn golf into exercise even if I'm not walking. And I started doing 10 squats on every tee box and 10 pushups on every tee box. So yesterday I played 14 holes of golf. I did 140 squats and 140 push ups while I was playing golf. And just to make like it was hard. And it'll be hard until what? Until it becomes easy, right? So all I'm saying is like, the strength, we have to look at the stress ceiling as a strength signal that commands that we develop a skill set. Because if we do not develop the skill set when we hit our head on the strength on the unstressed ceiling, we are going to self sabotage, period. Those are your choices, like yield.

To the stress signal.

Or yield to the strength signal. Rather, yield to the strength signal or self sabotage. That's what happens. And so now it's so fascinating how.

Everything goes back. Like all achievement goes back to our willingness to decide.

And our ability to decide, right? Some people have, like, understand, decide is not the same as choose, right, decide day, Latin root, day, over from side to cut. When you decide something, you cut yourself off from every other possibility. You know what choose means? Pick one. You can pick one now and pick another one. Five minutes from now. So choosing is not the same as deciding. Deciding has way more hyper intention in it. Are y' all tracking? Are y' all picking up what I'm putting down? And so what we have to learn to do is we have to learn to decide. But guess what affects our decisions? Our expectation.

And if our expectation is disempowered.

Our decisions will be almost always be retreated.

But only an empowered expectation can lead to advancement.

And so if I'm going to decide to advance, I have to expect the advance that I'm deciding to take on. I have to expect it to work or I do not have the ability to do it. Do you understand? Expectation is, is your greatest superpower.

How do I know that? Yeshua himself said, if thou can't believe, all things are possible. To him that believeth, that's called a clue. And see, you think your problem is you don't know how to do something, but God knows your problem is you don't know how to expect it.

And you haven't. The reason you don't know how to expect it is because you haven't taught yourself how to expect it.

So as I wrap this up, can I give you a formula, a good psychological formula that comes straight from the Bible on how to empower your expectations? If that's okay, say that's okay. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I was in the right room.

So.

Hebrews chapter 11.

Is about what? The faith. It's about faith. It's the great faith chapter. I love the fact that you said the hall of Faith because it names all of these faithful characters in scripture who all lived and died in faith, some having received the promises, some having not received the promises, but they still had faith. Anyway.

Anyway, you'll get that one on the way home, right? Okay.

Well, you know, when God put the Bible together, it wasn't broken up into chapters. We did that so it's easier to find stuff. So Hebrews chapter 12 is not separate from Hebrews chapter 11. It's a continuation. And the first word in Hebrews chapter 12 is wherefore. When we are reading scripture and we come across the word wherefore, we come across the word therefore. It's always referring to what came before. So when there's a wherefore, there's a before. And if he says wherefore, I need to go and look at what came before wherefore so I can know wherefore is going to take me. Therefore, well, and Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Okay, so what does that even mean. Well, wherefore, because of all these things I named in the past, because of all these people I talked about having faith. Wherefore, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, that is not people who have died and gone to heaven, in heaven, watching us. If you were in heaven, would you be watching earth? I mean, come on, what could be worse than that? I'm going to go to heaven and watch earth. That sounds horrible. Besides, that's not what it's saying. It's not talking about them witnessing us. It's talking about their testimony of faith, witnessing to us about the benefits of having faith.

Wherefore, seeing we're compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses. Let us lay aside every weight. The word weight is the word burden. The thing that weighs you down, the thing that makes you exhausted while you're running your race. Lay it aside. Put down the weights, take off the weighted vest, take off the ankle weights of worry and lay them down. And then it says, let us lay down every weight. And the sin. Now, he didn't name this. He didn't say the sin of cussing people out. He didn't say the sin. He didn't say the sin of stealing. He said, and thus sin that does so easily beset us. What sin is it? Well, if the whole thing's talking about faith, the sin that it has to be referring to is the sin of doubt or unbelief.

So let us lay aside every weight, every burden, and the sin of doubt that so easily besets us. The word beset means stop. Doubt stops us.

And let us run with patience. Now, here's what's interesting thing about patience. Patience is persistent, consistent endurance. We need persistence because the race is hard. We need consistency because the race is long. So let's run this long, hard race. Here's what's interesting. It doesn't say the race that we chose. It doesn't say the race that we picked, the race that we signed up for. No, no. The race that was set before us, which means the setter of races set the race before us. When I say race, I ain't talking about there's only one race, the human race. So I'm not talking about black, white, Asian, Hispanic. I'm talking about the journey, the assignment. God gave it to you. You didn't get the pick. You didn't get in a lot. Not like signing up for classes when you go to school. No, this is just. It was picked for you and you were made for it let us run with patience. The race is set before us. Then it tells us how. This is so good.

Looking unto Jesus.

The author and finisher of our faith. Oh, Jesus didn't self sabotage. He finished it. He started it. He finished the author and finisher of our faith. How did he do it? Here's what it says. Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is set down on the right hand of the throne of God. Like we read that and we just skim over it like it ain't saying nothing. And it is telling us how to win. Say, what do you mean telling us how to win? Talking about a race. What do you do in a race? You win. How do you win? Finish. How do you finish? Look at Jesus. See how he finished. He had the hardest, most challenging, most difficult assignment of any person who's ever walked the face of the earth. Okay, so how did he endure the difficulties of his assignment? He who is sinless became sin for us, who knew no sin that we might be made the right. How did he endure that? He set the joy before him.

See, Yeshua set the joy before him which gave him the ability to endure the cross.

The reason you don't have the ability to endure anything is because you haven't set the joy before you. See, what we have to learn to do is we have to learn to look through the problem.

God has ordained. He's given us a promise. That promise is truth. It will not change. But the same God that gave us the promise, the very same God that gave us the promise, he ordained that the enemy bring us a problem.

And the enemy don't put the problem over here. He don't put it over there. He don't put it up. He sure don't put it behind you.

You know where he puts it between you and the promise. Because he's hoping. The enemy is wishing, is hoping that you will focus on the problem as if the promise doesn't exist.

But why did God ordain that the enemy bring me a problem and put it right there so that you could learn to focus on the promise through the problem and eventually develop so much.

Faith in and focus on the promises of God that you can act on the promise as if the problem weren't there.

God ordained the problem so you could learn to pierce through them.

Develop the discipline. This is what expectation is like. Your ability to expect it to work.

Is greater than the enemy's ability to make you doubt whether it's going to work. Why Do I believe it's going to work? God said so.

Humans may come against me, Circumstances may come against me. Situations may come against me. That's their problem. Why? Because we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. That. That doesn't. That doesn't mean we're going to win. It doesn't even mean we've already won. Say, what does it mean? It means we've more than already won.

I don't have to wait to see how it's going to turn out. In the realm of time, we do not have the ability to experience the present. Because as soon as I say now, it becomes then.

Now, then, now, then.

I can't do it. Now becomes then. When? Now, then. I can't even finish the sentence. But you get it, don't you? But watch this. In the realm of eternity, there's no such thing as the past or the future. There's only the present. That's why God knows the end from the beginning. Because the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. There's no difference. What's a moving picture to us is a snapshot to God. Or better yet, what's a moving picture to us that we're watching as we live? This life is a fully finished production in the economy of God.

If you wrote, produced, acted in and edited a blockbuster action love story drama and you went to the screening, you would not be worrying about whether or not you were gonna die. You would not be overly concerned about whether or not the guy gets the girl. Why? You wrote it, you edited it, you produced it, you acted in it, everything. Well.

This whole thing was fully produced before we got here.

Eternity is the forever now.

And when we do things God's way, the only thing they can do is work. And that is how you keep from self sabotaging. So hope this helps. Stay blessed by the best.