“As Christians we should never feel sorry for
ourselves. The moment we do so we lose
our energy, we lose the will to fight and the will to live and are paralyzed.” (Martyn
Lloyd-Jones)
POWERFUL: Which Wolf wins? The one you feed.
Self-pity won’t go away on its own. We have to stop feeding it, and that means we need to stop giving in to it.
The Enemy will invite you to self-pity
· Just because your enemy, the devil, was inviting you to a pity party, it doesn’t mean you have to attend.
· The enemy will offer us many reasons why we should attend by reminding us of all that we do not have in life and tempting us to compare ourselves with other people who seem to have better lives than we do.
Days you waste in self-pity
· You will never get back
Learn from your mistakes
· We can learn from our mistakes and make better choices in the future.
Has Self-Pity Ever Helped You?
Powerful Point: Having Self-Pity will NEVER help you. It won’t help you change anything or make any progress. It will never change the people around you; even if they are the source of your pitiful feelings.
What are the results of Self-Pity?
· It will drain you of energy
· Steal your hope of ever enjoying anything
· It will prevent God from helping you.
· It leaves you hopeless.
· And it’s one of the worst feelings in the world.
· It leads to depression and prevents us entirely from seeing the good things that we do have.
· Self-pity is actually bragging to ourselves about how bad we have it in life.
Change Your Mindset
Let’s start bragging about the good things and asking God to take care of the bad.
Self-Pity
· Is an enemy and should be treated as such.
o We would never knowingly open the door and invite a their into our home.
o But we open the door and let self-pity in and other destructive attitudes that are definitely thieves.
o Self-Pity comes from an unwillingness to accept a situation or circumstance in your life.
o It develops when there are things that we want but cannot have or things we don’t want and cannot get rid of.
o It is fed by meditating over and over your challenges, difficulties, and problems in life and by comparing your life with someone you think has it better than you do.
o Are you feeding the wrong wolf?
A Child of God.
Anyone who is a child of God has seeds of goodness and right behavior in their spirit.
· They are thankful for what they have
· They are not resentful for what they do not have.
We have Jesus
· And all good things are found in Him.
· He is in us and we are in Him
· The seeds of an amazing life are in us
· But they won’t grow if we continue hindering them from blossoming with destructive attitudes like self-pity.
Apostle Peter
· Said when we are born again, we are born into an ever-living hope (1 Peter 1:3).
· We don’t have to live without hope.
· God has given us the tools to resist self-pity any time it tries to pay us a visit.
· Jonah found himself in some very difficult and uncomfortable circumstances until he eventually followed God’s direction (Jonah 1-3)
What is HOPE:
Hope is the positive expectation that something good is going to happen to us at any moment. That kind of positive attitude cannot coexist with self-pity.
Feed the Good Wolf
1. We can choose to feed the good one, the one that makes us thankful, joyful, and helpful to others, all the while trusting God to help us with any difficulty we have.
You Can Have Pity or Power
Joyce decided to have “Self-Pity”
HOW?
· She chose to work while here family were enjoying a Sunday afternoon.
· She was addicted to Self-Pity.
· She created circumstances that gave her reason to be miserable. Is that something we do?
· People who are miserable want others to be miserable.
· And they resent others for being happy.
· When she wasn’t having her way, she felt sorry for herself.
Joyce had a wounded soul that resulted from being abused by others and was in desperate need of healing but did not know where to get it from.
God posed a suggestion to Joyce and We want to pose this opportunity to you today: “You can be pitiful or powerful, but you can’t be both!”
WHICH ONE WILL YOU CHOOSE!!
Let this world FREE YOU today….!!! You are being confronted tonight with a choice and it’s up to you. Which wolf will you feed? The good one or the bad one?
We don’t have 2 Wolves living inside of us.
Ø But we have two sides of our nature
o A Fleshly nature
§ That is sense and reason without the Holy Spirit
§ It is depraved to the maximum degree and totally self-absorbed.
o A New Nature
§ Recreated in the image of God
§ It is good to the maximum degree
Each day we feed one or the other, and the one we feed the most is the one that becomes the strongest.
We should recognize our roadblocks in our life so that we can deal with them. ALL ROAD BLOCKS can be destructive, but self-pity was one of the worst!
God offers us a Life-changing choice:
Ø Only you can make the choice for your life.
Ø If you want to experience His power in my life, then with His help, you must give us self-pity.
Ø Many that is looking at you struggle may believe that your choice is obvious. And they don’t understand why you continue to be in your situation when all you have to do is make the only right choice.
People choose to be in some of their situations by not choosing God. If we reflect the bible, most of the prophets, believers, etc. had choice. Ask yourself, “Who would choose self-pity when POWER is being offered as an alternative?”
Self-pity is debilitating! It paralyzes us and prevents any progress in life. It is also a sin.
Is Self-Pity a Sin?
YES. Reflect on Galatians 5:19-21
It’s not
listed in the bible as “self-pity is a sin” however, in Galatians, it’s lists
the works of the flesh – one of which is idolatry. It is listed along with adultery, witchcraft,
anger, envy, murder, and self-ambition.
Joyce thought to the Lord, “Idolatry is the worship of idols, not
self-pity.”
There is sin in self-pity. It is
idolatry because we are turning inward and idolizing ourselves. Everything in our life is about how we have
been treated badly, how much we are missing in life, how hard life is for us,
what others have that we don’t have, and on and on.
God wants us to have pity and compassion for OTHERS in their pain and misfortune. But we have perverted that wonderful ability from God to reach out and relieve the suffering of others into reaching in and closing ourselves off from others while wallowing in a cloud of gloom and negativity.
Yes, Self-pity is a sin…We need to admit it and repent of it.
The temptation to sin will always come, and that is the reason God has given us the fruit of self-control (Galatians 5:22-23)
2 of the antidotes for the sickness of self-pity:
A. Being aggressively thankful
B. Doing things for others
(This helps us to keep our minds off of ourselves)
We must be “real” about our expectations.
If you are going for perfection, you are headed for a lot of disappointment, because nobody is perfect and nobody has a perfect life.
Another
ointment of Self-Pity – Getting up Getting out and doing something.
It’s time to give up all the excuses and knock the roadblocks in life out of
the way so you can move forward. Healing
for your soul and an enjoyable life are waiting for you on the other side of
the roadblocks.
Being FREE from self-pity, or any of the other roadblocks may certainly not be the total answer to healing your wounded soul, but it is certainly a great beginning and can only make things better for you. Trust God for total healing because Jesus can heal you everywhere you hurt!