Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 72
Do you ever catch yourself saying, “Oh that is good enough?” Or how about when you go to a restaurant and you are paying good money for the food and it is just OK. Do you send it back or do you accept second best. In this podcast I am going to talk about some of the reasons we settle for second best and how that might be affecting our relationship with Jesus.
I’m Lee Whitman from Restoring the Foundations and todays verse is Colossians 3:17.
“And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”
This is one of my favorite verses because God taught me something very significant using this verse. In 2008 the economy
was pretty bad and jobs were hard to come by. I had just left the Christian counseling ministry that I had worked at for 18 years to branch out and start a counseling ministry with Cindi and I working together. The only job I could find that allowed me to also work in our new counseling ministry was a job at a convenience store/gas station called Mapco. I quickly realized that the focus of my job at Mapco was to sell beer and cigarettes. One day I was whining to God about my job. Here I am a minister of the Gospel and I am selling beer and cigarettes. God took me to Colossians 3:17 and asked me if I would be willing to work at my job in the name of Jesus, in other words do it to glorify God. I argued with God. How can I sell beer and cigarettes to the glory of God? He said that selling beer and cigarettes is not a sin, so do your job to the glory of God. My heart changed in that moment. I became the best beer and cigarette salesman I could be, not for my employer, but to the glory of God. Instead of settling for second best and just putting in my time so I could go and work in the counseling ministry, I chose to glorify God through my work by being the best employee I possibly could be.
I think we are being conditioned to accept good enough. You remember when you were in school and the teacher passed out the test results, most of us were ok if the grade we received was just good enough. We learn this message that says as long as I do good enough I can get by in life. We learn to ask what is the minimum I have to do in order to get by. We go to work and do good enough so that we stay out of trouble. Yet our verse for today says that in all you do, give it all you’ve got because you are really doing it for Jesus.
How is it that we find ourselves settling for second best? Looking at this issue through the lens of RTF ministry, I believe the problem comes from several different sources. The first source of this settling comes through our bloodline. For many of us our ancestors were hindered by various factors from being able to reach for the very best. They learned through experience and circumstances that they were going to be held back from reaching for the best. People who have inherited certain generational curses are set up to settle for second best.
One of the most obvious curses that can cause this is the curse of victimization. My simple definition of victimization are people who have had things done to them that they did not want nor invite. The most obvious people who have inherited the curse of victimization are people groups who have been mistreated. People groups like African Americans, or the Jewish people, or native Americans have as a people group been victims of racial hatred for generations. For example, for 250 years Africans Americans were enslaved here in the United States with the residue of slavery still in effect today. Jewish people have suffered incredibly during the Holocaust and continue to suffer racial hatred today as seen daily on television. Native Americans land was taken from them and they were shipped off to state sponsored reservations.
These people are not alone in being victimized. Victimization comes in many forms and can easily cause people who inherited this generational curse to see themselves as second best.
Beth’s mother was raised in a home full of abuse of every kind. She suffered greatly from victimization because things were done to her on a regular basis that she didn’t want or invite. When Beth came along, her mother made a vow that she would never treat her children in the abusive ways she had been treated growing up. Even with that vow Beth lived her life as a victim. Not because she was treated abusively like her mother had been, but because the curse of victimization had been passed down to Beth through her bloodline. These generational curses put pressure on a person to sin in the same way as their
ancestors. This pressure constantly pushes someone like Beth to live out of victimization even though she was not abused like her mother. Beth gave in to the generational pressure and began to live her life as a victim.
Another generational curse that causes people to settle for second best is the curse of shame. Shame is that thing that says to you on a regular if not a constant basis that there is something wrong with you. Shame does not tell you that what
you have done is wrong or bad, shame says that you are wrong or bad because of that you have done. Shame automatically leads someone to believe that they are less than others. We will talk about the Ungodly Beliefs that go along with settling for second best in just a minute.
Another generational curse that pushes people to believe they have to settle for second best is the curse of unworthiness. Thomas was brilliant. In school he would score the highest grade in his class on almost every test. When he took the entrance exam for college, he scored a perfect 100%. Yet Thomas flunked out of college. You see, Thomas was being recognized for his intelligence and given opportunities that other students were not given. Thomas also lived under the
curse of unworthiness that told him he did not deserve this recognition. One of the characteristics of people under the curse of unworthiness is that they self-sabotage. They will do things that cause themselves to fail. That is what happened
to Thomas. Because he could not handle the recognition, the pressure from this curse caused him to sabotage his school work and he ultimately flunked out of college.
These are just a few examples of how the generational curses set people up to believe that they have to settle for second best. Then along with this generational pressure you add in the Ungodly Beliefs that come along with that pressure, and it
makes settling for send best something that seems normal. What are some of the Ungodly Beliefs that might go along with the generational pressure that we talked about.
Victimization will tell the people in the victimized people groups we mentioned earlier that because you are African American, or Jewish, or Native American you can’t expect to get ahead. You have to settle for being second best. Accepting “good enough” is the best you can hope for. Another Ungodly Belief that hinders these people groups is that society won’t let you get ahead because of your race. We did ministry with an older African American man who said that it wasn’t the white people who told him he couldn’t succeed, it was his own people. They had lived with this Ungodly Belief so long that they were passing it on to the next generation of African Americans.
People who are under the curse of shame really believe that there is something wrong with them. As RTF Founder Chester Kylstra says shame is that belief that you are uniquely and fatally flawed. Because my flaw is unique, I don’t dare talk about it with other people because they would certainly reject me for being so flawed. And because this flaw is fatal, it will never go away and it is something that I will die with. This leads people living under the curse of shame to believe lies like because I am so flawed I can never get ahead. I will always have to settle for less. Other lies are things like I am the problem. Or when something is wrong it is my fault. Or even I have to wear a mask so that people don’t find out how
bad I am and reject me. People believing these lies are not going to believe that they can experience the very best. Settling for second best is much better than what they think they deserve.
The third curse we mentioned is the curse of unworthiness. This curse causes people to believe that they don’t deserve the best, in fact they don’t even deserve good things. A common belief for people under this curse is that I am not worthy to receive anything good from God. Ungodly Beliefs must be broken by walking through RTF ministry. When we believe a lie we are making a contract with the liar and the kingdom of darkness. Once the agreement with the liar is broken, then we can ask God for His truth. But I have to warn you. God’s Truth about you may be soooo good that it might be hard for you to accept it at first when you have been believing these lies. But trust me, what Father God has to say to you will change your life. God does not have any second-place children. All of His kids are first born sons.
The third issue that must be considered and healed when breaking this settling for second best stronghold is getting healing for your wounded heart. Most people have had hurtful experiences when we have tried to accomplish something great in our lives, and it didn’t work out. When I was in college, I took a speech class. One of the assignments was to get up in front of the class of 50 students and give a five-minute persuasive speech on a topic of our choice. I picked a topic that I was familiar with and put in a good amount of time writing up my notes. When I got up in front of the class to give my speech, I froze. I got so nervous that I was visibly shaking. It was a terrible experience. I made a vow that day that I would never speak in public again. I have obviously broken that vow because speaking in public is part of what I do for a living. Not only did I have to break that vow, but I needed to get my heart healed from the fear of speaking in public.
Lester believed that God was leading him to start a carpentry business. He was a very talented and creative carpenter and a hard worker. So he invested his savings into this new business. The business never really took off. Oh, he was able to keep busy enough to make a living, but it never quite got to a place you could call it successful. He always struggled financially. Lester was very disappointed and hurt because he started the business out of obedience to God and assumed that since God told him to start the business, then the business was certainly going to go well. Out of this hurt, Lester began to settle for second best. The hurt kept him from seeing that there was something better, and he settled for good enough for many years. The end of the story is that after going through RTF ministry and breaking off the generational curse, and replacing his Ungodly Belief with a godly belief, and getting this wounded place in his heart healed, Lester went to work for another carpenter and became very successful. In fact he was able to share his ideas learned while running his own business to help his new boss and the new business became even more successful. God had him start his own business so Lester could learn some wonderful lessons.
If you find that you are settling for second best, it is time to break out of that. Jesus came to give you an abundant life, not a second best life. Don’t settle. Go on the RTF website at restoringthedoundations.org and click on the ministry tab. Find one of our highly trained RTF ministers in your area and break this stronghold in your life.
Prayer
