Self Awareness Part 2 Leadership 1

Personal Weakness/Weakness of the Soul What do we do with weaknesses that are not sinful but are also not a lack of ability? E.g. demotivation, procrastination, discouragement, disillusionment, etc These are not a lack of character or faithfulness The solution is not to find someone else to do it for you You can’t just ‘get better’ at these things (i.e. you can’t automatically just become more motivated) A lack of inspiration etc. means it takes more effort for minimal result It is still a weakness that must be addressed

Soul weaknesses Not always easy to identify Not a lack of knowledge or ability, not personality, can appear suddenly or over time Not always a clear or direct cause Feeling lost, uncertain, not passionate, more irritable, not wanting to attend church, unfruitful, etc If cause can be identified, cannot always be changed (e.g. a person, circumstance, or society) Can still be addressed, but needs to be identified accurately

E.g. Discouragement vs Disillusionment They are not the same, yet can present similar symptoms Discouragement: A lack of courage Fear of doing something again or something new Worried and anxious of the outcome Disillusionment Had different expectations compared to reality Dreams feel unachievable Feeling of not being effective and producing fruit

E.g. Discouragement vs Disillusionment Needs someone to encourage them Needs support Needs help in the task to guarantee a good result Cannot be combatted by vision Vision will paint a larger picture, which is more daunting Vision will add extra tasks and more work, which is intimidating Vision paints the goal, but someone who is discouraged will see it as an impossibility Someone discouraged does not need to see the bigger picture, they need help with the small steps

E.g. Discouragement vs Disillusionment Needs to be inspired Needs to see bigger picture, vision, purpose of what they’re doing Needs a larger perspective than the task in front of them so that they can excel Cannot be combatted by encouragement Encouragement asks the person to not give up and to persevere Encouragement offers support to accomplish the same tasks Encouragement will help them succeed in their task Someone disillusioned is already capable and does not want to hear that they need to just keep continuing. They want to see something more purposeful and to believe in what they’re doing

Identifying a soul weakness The 7 Whys If we ask the right why question 7 times, we are able to identify the root cause of what we are feeling If they can be identified accurately, they can then be addressed accurately After identification, we need to know that God is the source of our strength and the antidote to our weakness We cannot look to other things (media, entertainment, artists) to be our antidote Don’t look outside of God for a weakness that impacts our lives in God John 4:13

Living from our New Nature Gal 6:14-15 To live from our new nature, we need to kill our old nature Kill our old identities not by tackling sinful behaviour directly, but by tackling the identity message We kill the old man by using the Word of God Luke 4 – Jesus quoted scripture to tackle false identity messages Killing the old man is rejecting the lies of the devil using the Word of God Lying is the devil’s native language, one lie and he has access into our lives