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Part 3 of 5Self Sabotage - GOATED Vol. 2
Self-Sabotage Part 3 (Goatated Series Volume 2)
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Connected by scripture or shared themes.
Part 3 of 5Self Sabotage - GOATED Vol. 2
Self-Sabotage Part 3 (Goatated Series Volume 2)
Continue exploring
Connected by scripture or shared themes.
We're living in a culture that tells us sadness is something to avoid, suppress, or medicate away. But the Bible is clear: no matter how right you live or how wise you are, everyone experiences seasons of sadness and days of despair. Books like Job demonstrate that suffering and grief are part of the human experience—even for the faithful.
Today, we're exploring how Jesus himself teaches us to steward seasons of sadness in a way that leads to healing rather than self-sabotage. The enemy doesn't just use our storms or our standards to provoke self-sabotage; he also uses our sadness. When we don't know how to process grief properly, that unprocessed sadness becomes a seed that grows into destructive behavior.
There are three distinct approaches to sadness: culture's way, the church's way, and the King's way.
Culture's Way: Suppress or Self-Medicate
Culture tells us to stay strong, get over it, or distract ourselves with dysfunction. The emphasis is on image management, not inner healing. This approach fails to understand that when sadness goes unprocessed, it becomes repressed pain that leaks out through addiction, anxiety, detachment, and explosive anger. It creates numbness but not healing.
Sadness has driven people back to the bottle. Sadness has led people back to pills. Sadness has drawn people into toxic, abusive, exploitative relationships. We think our most self-sabotaging behavior happens during storms, but sometimes it's the quiet sadness that derails us.
The Church's Way: Mislabel or Minimize
Church culture sometimes puts the wrong label on sadness. We call it a lack of faith when it's really a sign of love. We call it spiritual immaturity when it might just be emotional honesty. Some people aren't broken in their beliefs; they're broken in their hearts.
This approach leads people to fake it instead of face it. They feel guilty about their humanity and hide behind hallelujah while hemorrhaging emotionally. We rush people out of sadness with religious platitudes instead of walking with them through the valley of the shadow of death.
We need to understand the difference between flesh and humanity. The flesh is a nature that rebels against divine design, but humanity was God's intention for us. Being angry is human; sinning in anger is flesh. Being hungry is human; being greedy is flesh. There's nothing wrong with being human. There's something wrong when I let my flesh drive my humanity.
Somebody needs permission to say: I know God is going to make a way, but I need a minute. I know He's going to open the door, but I need a minute. I know my loved one is in a better place, but I'm not in a good place right now. Give me a minute.
The King's Way: Honor Your Humanity and Bring Hope into Your Heaviness
This way gives permission to cry—Ecclesiastes says there's a time to weep. It gives space to grieve. It gives power to heal. It leads to healing, not hiding.
A powerful picture of the King's way is found in John 11, where Jesus experiences the loss of his friend Lazarus.
When Lazarus became sick, his sisters Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus: "Lord, the one you love is sick." Your emotion ought to lead to action. If you love deeply, you should show up quickly. But the text says Jesus waited. He waited so long that by the time He headed in that direction, Lazarus was already dead.
The disciples asked, "Why are we going?" Jesus said, "He's sleeping." They replied, "What? He's dead." He said, "No, he's sleeping." Here's what Jesus was teaching: me and God can be looking at the same thing, but that doesn't mean we see it the same way.
You say it's dead, but I say it's sleeping. And when I get there, all I'm getting ready to do is wake him up.
You call it a resurrection. Jesus calls it a wakeup. What's been dead in your life that you're assuming is too late? The reason Jesus may not be moving the way you think He should is because you're looking at the same thing, but you don't see the same thing.
Now here's where it gets profound. In verse 35, we read: "Jesus wept."
Think about that. The lily of the valley wept. The bright and morning star wept. The Wheel in the middle of a wheel wept. Lawyer in a courtroom, doctor in a sickroom—He wept. Jesus wept.
What does this teach us about a theology of sadness? Even when you know God's going to fix it, you still feel it.
I know He's going to fix it, but I feel it. I know He's going to work it together for my good, but I feel it. I know what's coming is better than what's been, but right now I feel it.
We need an honest church that will admit: I trust God, but I feel it. I believe God, but I feel it.
After Jesus weeps, some people ask: "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind have kept this man from dying?"
This is a theodicy question—the kind Christians often have but are afraid to ask. If this man can open blind eyes, why couldn't he prevent this? Why did you let this happen to somebody You loved?
But here's what's important: their question reveals another issue that Jesus needed to fix. They're imprisoned by their own level of reasoning. They think, "If it don't make sense to me, it don't make sense."
Jesus was saying: You think the only thing that needs fixing is Lazarus, but your question shows something else needs fixing—your faith.
You got faith in My power, but you don't have faith in My plan.
Faith in His power means believing He has the ability. Faith in His plan means trusting the way He uses it—or doesn't use it. It's one thing to believe in His power. It's another to trust His plan.
We shout over His power. We dance over His power. We rejoice over His power. But faith in His plan is on another level entirely. It means: "I trust You when You don't use Your power. You could have, but You didn't. I don't understand it, but I trust You."
You don't need trust for what you understand. You need trust for what you don't have an answer for. If you needed an answer, God would give you one. You want one, but you don't need one. Because if you needed one, He would give you one.
Here's the hard truth: No matter what reason God gives you, sometimes you just want Lazarus back. And because you want Lazarus, no explanation is going to satisfy you. God could say, "I'm building the faith of a million people," and you'd say, "I don't care. I want my loved one back."
One of the most important things we have to understand in our walk with God is that sometimes we're not going to understand. And if we don't accept that, when sadness hits, our response will be self-sabotage. We'll try to numb the pain instead of allowing God to fix the deeper issue this situation has exposed.
Sometimes bad relief is quick relief. With the right distraction or substance, you might feel better in twenty minutes. But bad relief is temporary. It's momentary. When it wears off, you're still faced with Lazarus gone.
Step 1: He Sat in His Sadness
Jesus didn't get stuck in his sadness, but he didn't sprint past it either. He had a verse 35 where he wept. Your verse 35 might look different. For some, it's a year. For others, three months. For someone else, two weeks. But you need to have a verse 35. You need to sit with your grief, not rush through it.
Step 2: He Stewarded His Sadness
He let his sadness drive him toward a resurrection. He didn't just succumb to his emotion; he used his emotion to carry out his purpose. He didn't work to distract from the pain—he worked with it.
What if your healing is in performing a resurrection? What if sometimes helping others is part of what God will use to heal you?
Step 3: He Surrendered His Sadness
This is crucial, especially for those wired like me—driven, type A personalities. Sometimes it takes running into your humanity to remind you that you're human. Sometimes it takes running into something you can't fix to remind you that you can't fix everything. You need a Savior.
No matter how many walks you take, you're not going to walk out of every sorrow. A beach isn't fixing everything. Positive affirmations aren't addressing every pain. There's a sorrow that hits your heart where God says, "You're going to have to give me that."
I'm sad and I need You to get me unstuck. I can't get out by myself.
There's a day coming where there's a sorrow you're going to have to surrender. I won't teach you that you can rebuke all your sadness away. I won't teach you that if you live right enough and moral enough, you can avoid all sorrow. The whole book of Job contradicts that claim. Job did nothing wrong, and the bottom fell out anyway.
Our faith claim must be: I won't let sadness drive me into self-sabotage. I'm going to sit in it. I'm going to steward it. And I'm going to surrender it. And I will grow through this, not just go through this.
You can't do any of this without Jesus. But in Him, you can move from numbness to healing, from hiding to facing, from self-sabotage to restoration.
We're living in a culture that tells us sadness is something to avoid, suppress, or medicate away. But the Bible is clear: no matter how right you live or how wise you are, everyone experiences seasons of sadness and days of despair. Books like Job demonstrate that suffering and grief are part of the human experience—even for the faithful.
Today, we're exploring how Jesus himself teaches us to steward seasons of sadness in a way that leads to healing rather than self-sabotage. The enemy doesn't just use our storms or our standards to provoke self-sabotage; he also uses our sadness. When we don't know how to process grief properly, that unprocessed sadness becomes a seed that grows into destructive behavior.
There are three distinct approaches to sadness: culture's way, the church's way, and the King's way.
Culture's Way: Suppress or Self-Medicate
Culture tells us to stay strong, get over it, or distract ourselves with dysfunction. The emphasis is on image management, not inner healing. This approach fails to understand that when sadness goes unprocessed, it becomes repressed pain that leaks out through addiction, anxiety, detachment, and explosive anger. It creates numbness but not healing.
Sadness has driven people back to the bottle. Sadness has led people back to pills. Sadness has drawn people into toxic, abusive, exploitative relationships. We think our most self-sabotaging behavior happens during storms, but sometimes it's the quiet sadness that derails us.
The Church's Way: Mislabel or Minimize
Church culture sometimes puts the wrong label on sadness. We call it a lack of faith when it's really a sign of love. We call it spiritual immaturity when it might just be emotional honesty. Some people aren't broken in their beliefs; they're broken in their hearts.
This approach leads people to fake it instead of face it. They feel guilty about their humanity and hide behind hallelujah while hemorrhaging emotionally. We rush people out of sadness with religious platitudes instead of walking with them through the valley of the shadow of death.
We need to understand the difference between flesh and humanity. The flesh is a nature that rebels against divine design, but humanity was God's intention for us. Being angry is human; sinning in anger is flesh. Being hungry is human; being greedy is flesh. There's nothing wrong with being human. There's something wrong when I let my flesh drive my humanity.
Somebody needs permission to say: I know God is going to make a way, but I need a minute. I know He's going to open the door, but I need a minute. I know my loved one is in a better place, but I'm not in a good place right now. Give me a minute.
The King's Way: Honor Your Humanity and Bring Hope into Your Heaviness
This way gives permission to cry—Ecclesiastes says there's a time to weep. It gives space to grieve. It gives power to heal. It leads to healing, not hiding.
A powerful picture of the King's way is found in John 11, where Jesus experiences the loss of his friend Lazarus.
When Lazarus became sick, his sisters Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus: "Lord, the one you love is sick." Your emotion ought to lead to action. If you love deeply, you should show up quickly. But the text says Jesus waited. He waited so long that by the time He headed in that direction, Lazarus was already dead.
The disciples asked, "Why are we going?" Jesus said, "He's sleeping." They replied, "What? He's dead." He said, "No, he's sleeping." Here's what Jesus was teaching: me and God can be looking at the same thing, but that doesn't mean we see it the same way.
You say it's dead, but I say it's sleeping. And when I get there, all I'm getting ready to do is wake him up.
You call it a resurrection. Jesus calls it a wakeup. What's been dead in your life that you're assuming is too late? The reason Jesus may not be moving the way you think He should is because you're looking at the same thing, but you don't see the same thing.
Now here's where it gets profound. In verse 35, we read: "Jesus wept."
Think about that. The lily of the valley wept. The bright and morning star wept. The Wheel in the middle of a wheel wept. Lawyer in a courtroom, doctor in a sickroom—He wept. Jesus wept.
What does this teach us about a theology of sadness? Even when you know God's going to fix it, you still feel it.
I know He's going to fix it, but I feel it. I know He's going to work it together for my good, but I feel it. I know what's coming is better than what's been, but right now I feel it.
We need an honest church that will admit: I trust God, but I feel it. I believe God, but I feel it.
After Jesus weeps, some people ask: "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind have kept this man from dying?"
This is a theodicy question—the kind Christians often have but are afraid to ask. If this man can open blind eyes, why couldn't he prevent this? Why did you let this happen to somebody You loved?
But here's what's important: their question reveals another issue that Jesus needed to fix. They're imprisoned by their own level of reasoning. They think, "If it don't make sense to me, it don't make sense."
Jesus was saying: You think the only thing that needs fixing is Lazarus, but your question shows something else needs fixing—your faith.
You got faith in My power, but you don't have faith in My plan.
Faith in His power means believing He has the ability. Faith in His plan means trusting the way He uses it—or doesn't use it. It's one thing to believe in His power. It's another to trust His plan.
We shout over His power. We dance over His power. We rejoice over His power. But faith in His plan is on another level entirely. It means: "I trust You when You don't use Your power. You could have, but You didn't. I don't understand it, but I trust You."
You don't need trust for what you understand. You need trust for what you don't have an answer for. If you needed an answer, God would give you one. You want one, but you don't need one. Because if you needed one, He would give you one.
Here's the hard truth: No matter what reason God gives you, sometimes you just want Lazarus back. And because you want Lazarus, no explanation is going to satisfy you. God could say, "I'm building the faith of a million people," and you'd say, "I don't care. I want my loved one back."
One of the most important things we have to understand in our walk with God is that sometimes we're not going to understand. And if we don't accept that, when sadness hits, our response will be self-sabotage. We'll try to numb the pain instead of allowing God to fix the deeper issue this situation has exposed.
Sometimes bad relief is quick relief. With the right distraction or substance, you might feel better in twenty minutes. But bad relief is temporary. It's momentary. When it wears off, you're still faced with Lazarus gone.
Step 1: He Sat in His Sadness
Jesus didn't get stuck in his sadness, but he didn't sprint past it either. He had a verse 35 where he wept. Your verse 35 might look different. For some, it's a year. For others, three months. For someone else, two weeks. But you need to have a verse 35. You need to sit with your grief, not rush through it.
Step 2: He Stewarded His Sadness
He let his sadness drive him toward a resurrection. He didn't just succumb to his emotion; he used his emotion to carry out his purpose. He didn't work to distract from the pain—he worked with it.
What if your healing is in performing a resurrection? What if sometimes helping others is part of what God will use to heal you?
Step 3: He Surrendered His Sadness
This is crucial, especially for those wired like me—driven, type A personalities. Sometimes it takes running into your humanity to remind you that you're human. Sometimes it takes running into something you can't fix to remind you that you can't fix everything. You need a Savior.
No matter how many walks you take, you're not going to walk out of every sorrow. A beach isn't fixing everything. Positive affirmations aren't addressing every pain. There's a sorrow that hits your heart where God says, "You're going to have to give me that."
I'm sad and I need You to get me unstuck. I can't get out by myself.
There's a day coming where there's a sorrow you're going to have to surrender. I won't teach you that you can rebuke all your sadness away. I won't teach you that if you live right enough and moral enough, you can avoid all sorrow. The whole book of Job contradicts that claim. Job did nothing wrong, and the bottom fell out anyway.
Our faith claim must be: I won't let sadness drive me into self-sabotage. I'm going to sit in it. I'm going to steward it. And I'm going to surrender it. And I will grow through this, not just go through this.
You can't do any of this without Jesus. But in Him, you can move from numbness to healing, from hiding to facing, from self-sabotage to restoration.
