The following is a process to learn how to say no to ourselves.
When as Christians, we ask ourselves why did we fail? This failure may be that we sinned by lying, or let our mind and mouth run off or it could be we were trying to complete an important task and failed. Failure can also be caused by knowing what is right although deep in our soul we do not want to stop doing wrong. There also could be elements of anger or an addiction like alcohol or something simpler like over eating. Maybe we are acting out and through immaturely want to show the world we can do what we want to do, but that still small voice convicts us that we are going the wrong way (1 Kings 19:12). Many have never learned how to say no to themselves, and nobody ever taught them how. How do we fix ourselves? It is harder to be defeated when we are alert to where we are weak, and have learned to say no to ourselves.
Everyone must choose one of two ways to correct themselves, the pain and reward of self-discipline or the pain and failure of regret. When we fail to say no, people who have a conscience have feelings of regret and our emotions can beat us up. However, if people have no feelings of regret, this process will not help because regret is the key character trait of wisdom, enabling us to want to change ourselves for the better. When we lie, to ourselves we are not actually connected to our body. Our body lives in reality, and all reality is God’s truth. It is the verbal mind than can lie to ourselves and others. This is why we totally depend on “…the word of God (that) is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12).
However, after feelings of disappointment and regret, we need to put away feelings quickly and ask ourselves why we failed. This is seeking knowledge of what we need to do to alert ourselves before we repeat our failures (Proverbs 18:15). Many times, these are simple quick steps or other methods we can use to keep us from pushing aside our self-control. Nevertheless, it is essential to separate ourselves from emotions that are fleeting and to truthfully investigate who we are with intellectual integrity to why we fail to control ourselves. We need to ask ourselves what are we trying to prove or who are we trying to be? Do we want to be a person of trust, and be mature and righteous or do we want to be a person focused on self-gratification who has no self-control? God said, “The simple believe anything, but the prudent give thought to their steps. (Proverbs 14:15).
Now, when we have recognized we have missed the mark, self-pity at this point is self-defeatism, another emotion that keeps us from correcting ourselves. This can cause us to be depressed and start to think we have no way out of our failures. This can also be self-excuses, like telling ourselves or others we are a bad person, but this only deflects the wrong we have done in our minds from self-responsibility. This is all wrong headed and self-defeating.
Rationalizing our actions is the lie that keeps us from correcting ourselves because rationalization always concludes that our failure can’t possibly be completely our fault and pins the blame on someone or something else. This morphs into self-justification that leads to arrogance that dooms the irresponsible person to continually fail. Rationalizing wrongs is an evil process to justify ourselves and the things we are doing wrong. Self-justifying our actions accompanies most the evil in the world.
Then there is the person who knows they should change, because maybe they are obese, or addicted to something etc. etc. and cannot convince themselves to stop and control themselves! They just want some other method other than self-control. This may be the hardest failure to stop, because they have learned to use both self-pity and rationalization to conclude they have little or no reason to stop failing.
Then, what is needed? We need a huge dose of truthful self-analyzation, which is searching and fearlessly taking a moral ethical inventory of ourselves. This provides the true reason for the resolve to break free from our failures and addictions. This is looking into a mirror, face to face knowing our true-self just as we are truly known by Christ (1 Corinthians 13:12). This is seeing our situation, without excuses, clearly without emotion to be truly honest with ourselves. This is when we cannot point to someone or something else, and we call ourselves out. This is when in the name of Jesus, we are praying through His authority (John 16:23) and calling on the Spirit of truth to teach us, comfort us, and tell us what is to come as the Spirit of God intercedes for us. The Holy Spirit enables us see to ourselves truthfully, which lets us see the reasons for our failures and gives us the internal support to overcome. Our prayer accepts the Helper who combines with our spirit, which is the critical element for ourselves to recognize and obtain the spiritual support to work at changing our adverse character traits. Christ’s Spirit guides us into all truth as we open our hearts and minds to His wisdom and guidance. This puts away false self-confidence, enabling the Spirit to speak to us and lets us hear Him, if we listen. “A well-thought-out plan will work to your advantage, but hasty actions will cost you dearly” (Proverbs 21:5). Hasty actions only tend to our wants when a well thought out process focuses on the steps to success.
I cannot emphasize this enough. Truthful self-analyzation, while in prayer, is the best way to identify the absolute truth of our character traits that enables us to change course and start growing out of the good tree of life to be a righteous self-controlled person. The reason this is so effective is the power of spirit of truth enables our truthful self-analyzation beyond feelings, rationalization and excuses thus envisioning the reality of who we truly are. Therefore, the steps we follow are now self-controlled, assisted by Christ’s spirit of truth, and effected by our own physical determination. This makes it much harder to be defeated because have been alerted to where we are weak, and have learned to say no to stay the course of self-control.
This is when we need to write our commitments down and read them every morning and recommit to them daily in prayer. These, our self-created steps, have to be practical steps to set our life’s path on the avenue of alerting ourselves to change course. Success gives us a great amount of satisfaction and is what enables us to continue to become productive self-controlled people who are trustworthy.
Saying no to ourselves is when we become masters of ourselves through the Helper, the power of the Spirit of God. However, we have to understand we are not computers and just because we load the methods or steps into our brains does not mean we will instantly correct ourselves. The prayerful methods we create may take adjustment and we may have to fail a number of times before we start to master ourselves. We have been on the wrong track possibly for many years and we cannot expect to change course immediately. Make no mistake this is where grit and commitment come in. We have to have tenacity to commit and recommit in prayer to our steps and keep on, keeping on to master ourselves.
This produces life’s successes through resilience and lessons learned, and is one of the most valuable blessings we will never regret obtaining. Self-control produces the benefit of the resilience to do the right thing we don’t necessarily want to do, but we do this the best we can. This puts us a step above and moves us into the light of Christ, which is being an effective and honorable person. Our goal then is to live a life in the fruit of the Spirit of God. This is loving others by doing onto them as we want them to do unto us that sponsors a life of joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness through mastering ourselves (Galatians 5:22-23).
Again, the best coping process when we have setbacks in life, is to deal with our failures by getting past emotions by gaining knowledge. This is where we ask God to forgive us and we forgive ourselves so we can start again. Knowing emotions keep us off balance, we now stress through prayer the steps we have committed to. This enables us to focus on the methods of helping ourselves that sets our minds on a process that gains self-control. It is through using this way we give ourselves the God inspired process to successfully become masters of ourselves.
To error is human, but to continue to error by doing the same thing, or nothing over and over is consenting to permanent failure. Therefore, set your life up to be an effective person by gaining mastery over ourselves by seeing ourselves truthfully and calling upon the Holy Spirit of Truth to guide us into all truth.
May God Bless you this Day!
David Howard, Foxhole Ministry