Are you or someone you know struggling from the effects of past hurts and traumas? Are you battling physical and/or emotional sickness and pain? Do you feel trapped in an endless cycle of broken relationships, unfulfilled dreams, financial crisis and more? Are you asking “What’s wrong with me?” or “What am I doing wrong?” If so, you may be in a street fight with the Unloving Gang. Self-Unloving, Fear and Shame are the strongmen of this gang and they have been sent by the enemy to kill, steal and destroy your life.
Self-Unloving is the inability to give and receive love. It wants you to wallow in self-hate, self-loathing, self-disdain and self-rejection. It’s the opposite of loving, liking, accepting and being pleased with who you are – your body, personality, intelligence, talents and identity.
Fear is the belief that the worst case scenario will come to pass. It is the opposite of faith. Fear projects the negative into present and future circumstances. Faith projects God’s Kingdom best and good into present and future circumstances.
Shame is the emotional pain and torment associated with both Self-Unloving and Fear. It’s the pain of not feeling good enough and not being worthy of relationships with others. It’s the pain of feeling no value or worth. It’s the torment of guilt, self-reproach, self-disgust and humiliation.
This Unloving Gang of Self-Unloving, Fear and Shame will keep us from being able to fully receive and experience Father God’s love for us, our love for ourselves and our love for others. They are best friends and they travel together like a terrorist gang to keep us from experiencing love and their goal is to steal our peace.
The main weapon of the Unloving Gang is lies. They will use lies we believe about ourselves, our worth and our life. They will use lies about God, His character and His love for us. They will use lies that are filled with accusation, criticism and judgements against us and others. All lies are negative, speculative stories that we form within our mind and imagination that are untrue. Believing these lies will keep us stuck in an endless cycle of fear, shame and self-unloving. We have to recognize that at the heart of these lies are false accusations about God, us and others. Our enemy knows that if he can lead our thoughts to create negative, destructive lies it will keep us from trusting, believing and experiencing God.
God’s Kingdom is founded in, through and on love! God’s love is the greatest shield we have to protect us from those destructive lies. Our Father God created us in love from Himself. He breathed His breath of life into us. He wants a family. Humans crave love above all else … even food! Within all humans is a deep longing for love that only God our Father can satisfy and fulfill.
We love Him because He first loved us. (1 John 4:10)
We can’t earn God’s love like a merit badge, by doing or being a certain way … He just loves us unconditionally. We don’t need to be good enough, or worthy enough or special enough, we just need to love Him as He loves us. Father God’s heart deeply longs for our love and only WE can satisfy this longing in His heart. Isn’t that amazing? We just have to make the choice to believe, receive and live in His love. This is the greatest commandment.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30 NIV)
Instead, we sometimes find ourselves running around looking for love, acceptance and fulfillment in all the wrong places. We try to find love in people (ex: boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, children and parents), activities (ex: sex, movies, books and pornography), substances (ex: food, alcohol and drugs) and objects (ex: houses, boats, clothes and cars).
So why do we go looking outside of God as our love source? Because we start to believe the enemy’s lies about us, God and others. We begin to doubt God, His promises and His love. We question our value, our worth, our destiny and our relationships. The ungodly lies start looking like truths and the Unloving Gang engages in battle.
Are you holding on to some of these lies? Take a few minutes to do some self-exploration. Are there some lies you believe about yourself? About God? About others?
Are you looking for love in some of those wrong places? Do a little more self-exploration. Are there people, activities, substances or objects that you have placed above God’s love or seek to feel more secure about yourself?
So how do you break free of all this stuff?
- It is imperative that you learn to RECOGNIZE the enemy’s destructive lies, accompanying emotions/feelings and self-questioning.
- It is imperative that you CHOOSE to come out of agreement with the enemy’s lies and reframe those lies into God’s Kingdom truths.
- And finally, you need to EVICT the Unloving Gang and all of their underling thugs out of your soul and your life!
There is power in your words! Agreeing and declaring the lies releases the enemy’s kingdom of destruction into your life. It releases word curses over your life, your identity, your relationships and your generations.
The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. (James 3:6 NIV)
But here’s the good news! RECOGNIZING the lies, CHOOSING to come out of agreement with them and EVICTING the Unloving Gang releases God’s Kingdom into your life.
The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit. (Proverbs 18:21 NIV)
Take some time this week to continue your self-exploration. Write down a list of the enemy’s lies you have believed. Then cross each one out and replace it with the power of God’s truth instead!