Overcoming Self-Sabotage

Hey, welcome to my show, Self Talk with me, Dr. Ray Self. You know what I'm trying to do is I'm just trying to help people. I'm trying to help people with the truth coming from the Holy Spirit, the truth of Christ but at the same time, I want to make it practical, I want to see you get free. My passion has always been let's get over our stuff and let's get into the place doing the thing that God's created us to do. That's really what my heart is. I want you to fulfill what God has called you to do because that's, that's where your peace is, that's where your happiness is, and that's what God wants you to do. And so today I'm going to talk about something called self-sabotage. I think you'll find this show very, very interesting and very helpful. It can be something that you're not aware of that you've been doing subconsciously so let's talk about that. Today's show again is brought to you by my college, the one that I founded and started about 25 years ago, International College of Ministry. You know, check us out, icmcollege.org, love to have you as a student. God bless you. Thanks again for listening to today's show, here we go.

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Okay, welcome again to Self Talk. I'm your host, Dr. Ray Self. Matter of fact, that's the name of the show, right? Self Talk with me, Dr. Ray Self. Heavenly Father, I thank you for everyone listening to the show today. I pray, Father, that uh, I can be a blessing with your power, with your anointing. Holy Spirit, touch us now. Open up our ears and our hearts to receive what you have for us today and everyone listening to this show. In Jesus’ name, amen. Self-sabotage, what is that? And I want to talk about it. Self-sabotage is what I call this dynamic that causes you to keep missing out on things that you want to do. It's like um, I– I've seen this with so many people where they start something good and they're not able to finish it. Their– something wonderful happens in their life and all of a sudden, it gets messed up. Um, good things, positive things, then there's always something that tends to block it; or hindering it and it's like, “Why can't I finally just break through and be successful and find the peace that I need and, and find that happiness and joy? Why does something always happen to me? What's going on?” Well, it could be self-sabotage, and let's, let's talk about that.

So, I, I've known this and I've seen this a lot with men and women but I, I've known men that have this…uh, as an obvious problem. And it seems like every time something good happens in their life, they get a promotion, they get into a healthy relationship, something happens and they ended up messing it up. They end up kind of sabotaging it. It's, it's self-sabotage. It can be, um…you've been invited to some more special and you can– you, you always show up late or something, uh, stops you from, from getting there. Or, or maybe it's just a promotion in uh, in your job and then you, you don't, you don't measure up and you end up losing the promotion, uh– or, a big one for me was healthy relationships. When I was younger and in college I remember having some healthy relationships and every time I would get into a healthy relationship, I would sabotage it, I would mess it up somehow. And then the unhealthy stuff that was a little bit toxic, I could go with that. I mean, it's like the– I was more comfortable with the unhealthy than I was with the healthy. I would sabotage the healthy and remain with the unhealthy. It could be in relationships, it could be in situations…Um, I did not see myself underneath it all as worthy, and that's the key to this. Self-sabotage comes by feeling unworthy. Now, let me explain this.

You– there's a situation, there's an opportunity that you want; something that you want really bad, okay? And, and so you, you go for it and then somehow it always gets messed up. Could be this relationship I was talking about, could be a job, could be uh, various life-positive opportunities, but it always gets messed up. Well, what's happening is, is underneath the surface, you do not feel you deserve it. You say, “Well I'm not aware of that,” well, no, you may not be aware of that because if you want good things and you desire good things and, and these positive things; but underneath it all you don't feel worthy of it, even though it's subconscious and you're not aware of this, you will sabotage it, okay? You will mess it up, find a way to hinder what, what is good because your identity says, “I'm really not valuable enough, I'm not worthy enough to have these good things in my life.” Now, it's not something that's always conscious, it's something that's in your subconscious. Subconsciously, your self-esteem is not where it needs to be. Subconsciously, you're feeling unworthy, unacceptable, uh, not quite measuring up. Matter of fact, in a lot of my teaching I call this the spirit of illegitimacy. You don't really feel legitimate underneath the surface. Now, on the exterior is what everybody sees and the way you act, you act confident, you act assured, you want good things and you have these positive things happen in your life that you say, “Oh, that's great, I'm going to do this, I'm going for it,” then it gets messed up. And you don't even know why you're keep messing it up. Why does it just never work out for you? A healthy relationship, a great job promotion, a financial promotion, something physical, you know, um…You know, you, you, you get invited to play on, on a particular sports team, an All-Star team but then you, you end up striking out every time you get up to the plate. It's self-sabotage and self-sabotage comes from low, or inappropriate, or incorrect self-esteem. 

Now, the answer to self-sabotage - now, I know I'm kind of covering this kind of quickly but again, the, the symptom is good things keep going wrong. It's like I can't ever finish that race. Uh, it's a great thing I'm doing and I cannot finish it. I see people with my school. I see people who have a call of God on their life and they enroll in the school, they want to get their bachelor degree in ministry…and they, they start off like Gang Busters, and then they, they sabotage it. They, they ruin it, they do something not to finish the race. Uh, I've seen people enroll in the master’s program. Same thing that they start off going terrifically, really doing well, and then they do something– or, or they quit. They don't finish. And that's another evidence of self-sabotage, not completing the task, not finishing the race. The answer is identity. The answer is identity because no matter how much good happens to you, if underneath the surface you feel unworthy or not– your self-esteem is not where it needs to be, the natural thing to happen is to self-sabotage, bring the success down to the unsuccessful person you feel underneath the surface, okay? So it is an identity issue.

Fortunately, praise God, the scripture has an answer for this. When you are saved, you become born again. When you're born again, your identity changes into something absolutely spectacular and amazing. You become– the Bible says things like a, a joint air with Jesus Christ, a member of the royal priesthood, redeemed, saved, justified, a child of God. This is who you are. Now, as a child of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, you are very deserving. And success and prosperity and abundance will be more natural for you because– and you can accept it because it's who you are. You're a child of the king. But not knowing your identity and living with low self-esteem or feeling invalidated, insecure, um, not legitimate, all these things that so many millions of people suffer with will cause you to sabotage success. You will sabotage success when underneath the surface you feel unsuccessful. And even though you're not consciously doing it, you will do it, you will not finish a project, you will not hang on to that good relationship, you will not hang on to that good job, you'll get a, a financial windfall, you will– you'll blow it; because you're sabotaging because of your identity. So, it's critical to know your identity. You were born again. Listen, born again means you became a new person. Now, you can live that old person, and that old person is very likely to sabotage, but when you know who you are in Christ because you've been born again, you will not self-sabotage. Matter of fact, you will live a successful life because you live according to what you think. The Bible says in Proverbs, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he,” so if you believe you are a successful, chosen, redeemed, justified child of the Most High God, your life will manifest that. If you don't believe that and you believe underneath the surface, I'm, I'm not– I don't measure up, I'm not as good as everybody else, uh, I'm kind of invisible, uh, I'm not really worthy, I feel insecure about this, this is what you're thinking in your spirit. And then you will manifest that. So when you believe you're a failure, you'll manifest failure but when you know you're a success because God has chosen you, you will manifest success. 

So the spirit of self-sabotage can be very demonic, it's what the devil wants you to do. He, he– what he wants to do to you I should say. You see, my passion is everyone is born for a reason. You're not an accident. I know that sounds like a cliche, but it is absolutely truth, is absolutely true. So as a born-again Christian, you have a destiny, a purpose, a reason God created you, and moving and living and acting on that reason God created you is where you find your success, your peace, your abundance, your life, and it affects the world around you. We all need to do this. I spent much of my life as a businessman that I wasn't called to be. I never found my peace and my purpose till I went into ministry, that's what I was called to do. But your purpose can be thousands and thousands of different things. It may not be ministry, it can be– you know, you can glorify God in all kinds of things that you do. But, no longer let this spirit, this problem of self-sabotage, stop you. Think about yourself. Do you have trouble finishing the race? Do you tend to mess up good things? Or is it, is success actually uncomfortable for you, okay? That's the spirit of self-sabotage. And we stop it by knowing that we are worthy, we've been– been chosen, we are children of God, we've been identified by God as His child, this is who we are. God's no respecter of person, there's nobody greater than you, there's nobody less than you, it's– there's only one you. You are unique, you are different and it's okay to be you, it is great to be you, it is fantastic to be who you are because this is who God created you to be. It took me a long time to be able to accept myself. And you know, and we have failures, we have weaknesses, we're not perfect but we have been chosen by God, redeemed by God, and, and now we've been adopted by God as His children. This gives us worthiness, and having this revelation, getting this into your spirit - you may have to think about it and think about it and think about it - will defeat that self-sabotaging problem. Now, I do have a tool. If you email me, I can send it to you. I call it the I Ams. It's a list of scriptures that tell us who we are in Christ. Now, just reading those scriptures on a daily basis will change your life. It's– you know, faith comes by hearing, speaking things out into the atmosphere about yourself. These positive things will change your life. Now, the world says you just need to have positive affirmations, you know, “I, I think I can, I'm wonderful, I'm great,” yeah, that's, that's okay, but when you speak the word of God about yourself that cannot return void, you will see major, major changes. Now, to get this list, if you'll email me at drrayself@gmail.com, d r r a y s e l f @gmail.com and say “I want the list of identity scriptures,” I will email them to you, maybe that will help you. So, let's pray. I'm not going to be with you long today. I, I think this is an important show, you do not have to continually sabotage your life even if you're doing it subconsciously. The answer is your identity. knowing your value and your worth as God describes you is the answer to the problem of self-sabotage. 

Heavenly Father, I thank you for everyone listening to the show today. I pray, Father, that my words are a blessing to them and that uh, they will not return void, Father. And Lord, I thank you, Father– let your Holy Spirit touch us, reveal is– that– if this is our problem and you're ready for us to, to accept our identity in Christ. Holy Spirit, convict us. Holy Spirit, show us, Father. And so Lord, I just declare and decree a blessing to everyone listening to the show, that Father, anyone listening to this show has not accepted Jesus as their savior and been born again, I pray, Father, that you will convict them today that that is the ultimate answer. So Lord, we give you praise, we give you honor. In the name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen and amen. Thank you so much for listening today.

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Well, that concludes episode 193. I hope this show has been a blessing to you. Uh, it's an honor to do this. You know, there's been times honestly, folks, I’ve thought about, you know, I'm going to discontinue this and then all of a sudden I get an email or a phone call from somebody that was touched by the show and…as long as the show is blessing people I'm going to keep doing it. If you could help me with the show, it'd be great, you know, some donations would really help us because the show does take time and money, and you can do that through icmcollege.org/donate, that– that's appreciated. Also, check out in the show notes there's a lot of stuff. There's some free courses you can take, uh, there's links to purchase my books and I have one book I just finished called The Call, and for just $15 if you purchase the book or, or $15 minimum, I'll send you a copy and I’ll, and I'll autograph it and maybe put a little message to you in there, prophetic word hopefully. I'll pray over it for you. Um, anyway, I hope the show has been a blessing to you. Uh, don't forget to uh, like and subscribe, um, you know, like and subscribe, give us a review, that really helps the show get out there. All I can say is thank you so much for listening to Self Talk with Dr. Ray Self, it is a blessing. God bless you.