SIX STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL SELF-SABOTAGE

Walking faithfully into the promises of God is quite the journey.  It is a road marked with challenge.

Although the signposts and weather may vary, the destination never changes.  The course is wrought with trial, but the inheritance is always constant. 

Regardless of the path, Heaven intends to see you into blessing. 

Will you resolve to make it through?  Or will you self-sabotage part the way there? 

Not much has changed in thousands of years of humanity.  God’s intents towards His people are still and have always been blessed.  His people, on the other hand, were once and can often still be, champions of self-sabotage.

The Israelites set a foolproof example for us on how to avoid the blessing and promises of God.  Sure ways to help keep us wandering in the desert and dying unfulfilled in the wilderness.   

From the lessons learned between Egypt and Canaan, here are six steps to successful self-sabotage.

1.     COMPLAIN

The number one most effective way to self-sabotage is to make negative confessions.  

Complain.  Complain about everything!  Complain all the time!

Call out for a deliverer and then when you are liberated make sure you consistently remind your leaders about how much better your life was when you were a slave.

When you are in your new place, complain it would have been better had God never called you out in the first place.

Complain about what you don’t have.  Then when God gives it to you, make sure you promptly grumble that you’ve grown tired of it and that you’d like something else instead.

Complain about others in the tribe.  Regularly insult the motives of those leading you.  Make sure your leader never has the chance to rest because of the constant squabbling among yourselves.

2.     DISHONOUR

Dishonouring your leaders is a sure way to slow down or detour the journey.  Make sure that you second-guess their direction.  Always remind them of how obvious it is that they don’t know what they’re doing.

When they give a directive, complain and remind everyone around, including the leader, about the impossibilities of the instruction they’ve just given.

Make sure you resist applying any of their advice.  Remain oblivious to their sacrifices and pressures.  

Doubt their leadership ability.  Challenge their leadership and throw your hat in the ring knowing you’d do a better job.

Cause revolts and stir up others; in doing so you can successfully take a whole bunch of people down with you.  Why go down alone when you can influence a few others to self-sabotage along with you.

 And by all means, get involved in judging your leader’s personal affairs.

3.     BLAME SHIFT

 Another great way to self-sabotage is to blame-shift.  Shirk responsibility.  Blame God when you suffer consequences for poor decisions.  Blame your leaders when something bad happens.

Never ever accept responsibility. 

The Israelites were kings at doing this.  When the people would rebel they would blame Moses or God for failing them.  When consequences ensued their bad behaviour they would blame Moses or God for their own discomfort

4.     DON’T CHANGE

One of the best ways to avoid the big plans God has in store for you is to maintain small thinking.  Squander your freedom by bringing slave ways with you.  Don’t change! Continue to live as a slave long after you’ve been liberated.  Maintain slave mentality, slave habits, slave fears, slave insecurities, slave inferiorities, slave ways.

Whatever you do… Don’t let go of your dysfunction.

Make sure you pull out your shackles and try them on from time to time.

Don’t allow God or leaders to speak into your life.

Buy a T-Shirt that says: “WHAT I DON’T KNOW ISN’T WORTH KNOWING” and wear it proudly the rest of your days.

5.     BE FEARFUL

Be mastered by fear.  Get to know the voice of fear so that when it speaks it is louder than the voice of faith.

Don’t listen to the promise and prophesy of God.  Shoot down any person who may be speaking faith.  Allow fear to convince you to go with the majority.  Foolishly believe that there is safety in numbers.

Just consider the spies who came back from scouting out Canaan:

• Their fear of the obstacles outweighed the lure of the blessing
• They turned all of Israel against Caleb & Joshua, who were the only two spies trying to remind the people of God’s promise.
• The 10 fearful spies spread the epidemic of fear through the whole nation of Israel
• Fear stopped a camp of millions from ever walking into the Promised Land of God’s blessing.

Make sure the case for FEAR is stronger than the case for FAITH.

Focus on the natural.  Focus on the impossibilities.

6.     FORGET

Finally, the sixth key is the one that helps us uphold the other five.  Complaining, dishonor, blame shifting, resistance to change and fearfulness are all possible because of this sixth key – forgetfulness.

The pathway to complaining starts when you forget to be thankful. 

It’s easy to dishonor the leaders you’ve forgotten to pray for. 

Blame shifting speaks easily when you forget the part you play in the glorious big picture. 

Change is inconvenient when you forget the blessing that lies ahead.

And when you forget the faithful, continuous and evident Hand of the Lord in your life, it is easy to fear what lies ahead.

If you want to sabotage the promises of God for your life, please make sure to forget!

• Forget the previous provision of God
• Throw out hindsight
• Forget to learn from your mistakes
• Forget to learn from the mistakes of others
• Forget to spend time meditating on His Word, His promise
• Most importantly: forget to give thanks

Or you could reverse the natural urges of these attitudes, and be intentionally thankful, faith-filled, honouring, responsible and teachable. 

The focus of our hearts is the compass for our path. 

Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? 
He who has clean hands and a pure heart

Psalm 24:3-5 (NKJV)