Overcoming Approval Addiction – Episode 2

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An addiction addict depends on their esteem from others.
Rather than from god, you you have do you think about how what kind of bond is that is?
I am depending on somebody else for healthy esteem. Seriously.
I’m depending on somebody else for healthy esteem. Wow.
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This is your world. So let’s vow to make it a better place.
Let every hard than me.
Bye is grace.
We wish you luck today. We all changed.
God approves of us.
That’s what’s so friend. That’s what’s so awesome about the grace of god.
He approves a bus. Say out loud. God approves with me.
Reconciliation is a word we throw around, but what does it really mean?
Reconciliation means we go from being enemies of god to being friends of god.
That’s that’s that’s that’s basically what it is.
Reconciliation means we go from being enemies of god to being friends of god.
Now this is what Jesus did for us when he died for our sins.
He made us worthy of god’s love Because what did he do?
He took away our brokenness, and he replaced it with his goodness. He approves of us.
He knew about your mess and your cray cray before you demonstrated. He knew about all of that.
And yet, He made us worthy of god’s love, and he approved of us.
He approved of us to receive god’s love. He approved of us to receive god’s goodness.
Look at these 2 scriptures. Colasians 1 verse 21 22.
Colasians 1 verse 21 and 22, he approves of us.
He says, this includes you who were once far far from away from god, You were his enemies separated from him by your, by your evil thoughts and actions.
He says, yet now, he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body.
And as a result, he has brought you into his own presence has approved of you to come there And you are holy, and you are blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.
Oh, you gotta shout louder than that, man.
You stan you stand before him without a single fault. That’s your stance.
You stand he’s he’s approved to you. He’s approved to you to such a point. You stand before him.
What out of single fault? And then look what he says about you when Romans chapter 8 and verse 3839.
Romans chapter 8 verse 3839.
He says, I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from god’s love.
Neither death nor life, neither angels, nor demons, neither our fears for today, nor our worries about tomorrow, not even the powers of hell can separate us from god to love.
No power in the sky above or in the earth below.
Indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of god that is revealed in Christ Jesus.
Our lord, he approves of a house.
Now let’s get to this now.
There are some symptoms of being an approval addict.
Because some of you sitting right here now and you’re thinking, well, that’s not me.
So let’s examine the symptoms. You know, when you go to the doctor, you get a checkup they look at the symptoms, and they try to narrow it down to what may be the the cause of these symptoms.
There’s some signs, some signals that you may be an addict of approval.
The first symptom, the fear of rejection. The fear of rejection.
As an approval addict, you depend on the opinions of others for your self worth.
Therefore, being rejected is one of the scariest things that can happen to you.
I don’t want to be rejected.
And so the fear of rejection can bring out unhealthy emotions.
It can bring out unhealthy emotions of anger and resentment towards those who reject you.
I’m not accepted. I’m not approved.
You ever had somebody you wanted to be approved of, and they rejected you? I don’t like them.
Why? I don’t know. I just don’t. Well, the truth of it is, they didn’t approve of you.
You felt like. And so, you know, you, you, you got angry.
We might become controlling people because we work hard to create the perception we want other people to have of us.
And we use that perception to try to control people to think the way we want them to think.
Are you doing that? Are you creating a perception of yourself?
It’s not the real you, but it’s the perception that you think is gonna get you the approval that you want to win.
Or we can become closed off to an authentic relationship.
And then we had behind the facade we’ve created for ourselves.
That’s why I say the body of Christ has perfected phoniness.
You don’t know quite who you talking to.
Because at church, and then at home, Alright.
So who is this? At church’s glory Hallelujah at home.
If you don’t get your who we’re dealing with?
Did we get to know the facade?
Did we get to know that perception that you created, and we don’t really know you.
It’s so important that you can be authentically you.
And not to feel like you have to constantly live under the blanket of the perception that you created for other people to know.
And it’s okay. It’s okay.
I mean, god’s wired you a certain way, and everybody doesn’t receive you because of the way you’re wired.
That’s fine. But there’s somebody who just loves being around you because of the way you’re wire wired.
This just means you don’t stop with that relationship.
There’s some folks that are gonna gonna be just like you.
But but we are content in creating this perception because we feel like it will purchase for us uh, the necessary approval so we can value who we are because we already don’t feel good about ourselves.
Low self esteem is one of the reasons why people are are searching for, uh, uh, approval because we don’t feel good about ourselves.
And we are looking for somebody to approve of us so we can feel better about ourselves. That’s number 1.
That’s a symptom of approval addiction. The fear of rejection. Number 2, you
have trouble
saying no. Wow.
And approval addict has problems, has trouble saying no.
You find that it may be easier to say yes to things you don’t wanna do rather than deface the fear of someone being upset with you, if you say no.
You got to you got to be able to say no.
No means no. No is a complete sentence.
And some people, you you you wanna plead so much.
It’s I don’t wanna rock the boat, so I’m gonna say yes. And and and you’re compromising just yourself.
You’re you’re compromising your your value, your self esteem. You’re doing something you don’t wanna do. No.
No. Hey, Pastor Dollar.
You wanna go on a on a cruise? We’re gonna cruise the Atlantic. No.
Hey. You wanna jump in the water?
I was with these guys one time. We were having that with somewhere.
You wanna jump in the water and play with the stingrays?
Ain’t that that that ain’t that that, uh, ain’t that that thing that killed that man with another?
I said, no. Got your mind? No.
But people who are approval addicts They have problems saying No.
So what happens is, you know,
I’m not gonna say no because I already have a low self steam, and I really don’t feel like being rejected.
And they’re nice And, you know, they asked me to do I asked them to do this one thing they did it.
So I’m gonna return the favor
and do something I don’t wanna do. You might
need to get to know me
better because it’s gonna be no.
But when you’re an addict, You got a problem with this. Number 3.
Here’s another symptom. You apologize too much.
And approval addict apologizes even when they have done nothing wrong.
So preoccupied with the idea of offending someone, they might even apologize for falling down.
They might apologize for bumping their knee.
I mean, they they’re the ones who got hurt, but they’ll apologize to you. I apologize for falling.
I apologize for bumping my knee. Uh, an addiction addict apologizes too much.
Number 4. As I said before, an addiction addict they have low self esteem.
An addiction addict depends on their esteem from others rather than from god.
You you have do you think about how what kind of bond is that is?
I am depending on somebody else for healthy esteem. Seriously?
I’m depending on somebody else for healthy esteem. Wow. Yeah.
I remember one time I was dependent on our church, you know, because our church used to be over 40,000 members and every was full and everything.
And just all the time, and I’m thinking I depend on the a full church for my esteem.
That was that was becoming very dangerous to my health.
That I could not hardly preach and flow with god because the empty chairs were rejecting me.
And I felt, well, they’re empty because of me. No. It’s a personal issue. It ain’t me.
Issue. Hey, I have no problems. I’m good. I’m here.
And and I thank god for the pandemic, because it really helped me to to get out of that.
I’m free. Well, when you preach on this pool pit, when you preach on this pool pit, to nobody out there, but, like, the two people who helped working what’s going on that time, you get free real quick.
The first message I preached in this dome during the pandemic, it was it was I I gotta tell you, it was it was hard.
It was of my emotions. It was hard on everything, because what I depended on to give me approval, the shouts, the amen’s, the hand clapping.
None of that was there. It wasn’t there.
The only place that I could look to for approval was god told me to preach it.
And and so I I’m gonna preach it even though nobody’s there.
There’s a lot of approval addicts on the pulpit, I tell you.
Certain things god tells me to preach. I’m thinking I really don’t wanna preach that.
If you if you can find somebody else, it would really be really be good.
The series I did on Tithing, uh, I I knew about that 12 years ago before I preached it.
And I asked him 12 years ago, okay, so when do you want me to preach this?
He says, I’ll let you know when.
And I thought, well, maybe it’ll be good if you just tell me to preach it while there’s nobody here.
No. He waits after the pandemic is over with.
And and so I’m You have to be free from people to preach the gospel of grace.
You have to be free from people to preach gospel of grace.
Cause if you’re not free from people, you can’t say some of the stuff you’ve heard from this pulpit, it’s like, these people are gonna think I lost my mind.
And that’s literally what happened when I started preaching the gospel of grace, loads of people left.
I know it was the truth. I knew it was.
I knew it was, not because I’m looking at the scriptures and, and, and intellectually going through it.
I knew it was because it was drastically changing me from the inside out It was changing my attitude.
It was changing my emotions. It was changing how I responded and reacting to things.
This Jesus has got on the inside of me in a rearranging and changing things, and I never experienced anything like that, all the days that, that I was saved.
And then now once I became a student of grace, I’m not just teaching intellectually from the scripture.
I am telling you what is going on.
The metamorphosis that has taken place in my life And now you see this guy who’s patient and full of love and cries in front of people.
And all that kind of stuff didn’t exist before.
So and it’s the same thing with with the the teaching on on timing.
I did it for 12 years. And experienced things that I never experienced before.
And then the church as a whole did it for another, what, three and a half years.
Before we even said anything. And I’m thinking, woah, this is stuff we’ve never experienced before.
But it it, uh, it it requires being delivered from approval.
To do the hard thing that god’s asking you to do is god’s asking you to do something that may be may seem difficult in light of the approval that you’re used to getting?
Are you satisfied with the approval you get from god, or is the real truth, god’s approval is not enough.
I need men to approve of me. Paul said the same thing in Galatians 1.
When he was teaching his gospel of grace, then he was saying, if any man or an angel, preach anything other than what I preach let him be a curse.
And then the next verse, he said the same thing again. And then he said this.
Now if you’re going to try to please men you can’t be a servant to god.
Paul knew about it.
Man, I’ve preached a hundreds of thousands of people, stadium filled with people.
And I thought the success was in the approval of all of those 1000 coming together to approve of my anointing.
I was wrong. God approved for me. That’s why he anointed me.
God approves of you. That’s why he anoint it will.
What man does is not a validation of what god said.
To you to do, but you gotta be willing
to do it with 2 or 3. Then I’m willing to do it with 2 or 3.
You might not believe me if I said, well, the three people showed up. I’m a preach anyway.
It’s already been done.
Three people showed up in this thing doing, man, that we preach. Yeah.
And if I got that one person excited, I remember one time, I don’t know if Kiena would use somebody.
Somebody said, yeah. And it echo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
The echo made it worse. I’m like, wow.
When others are mad at you you feel like your value is at risk.
When others don’t approve of you, you feel like your value is at risk.
I’m telling you, man. Phew. Number 5. Here’s another symptom of approval addiction.
You feel anxious about what other people think of you. Word about do you fit in?
Word about if they’re mad at you, you’re anxious.
It creates anxiety because you’re always worrying about what somebody think of you.
People are gonna say something bad about you.
Anyway, I mean, while you’re sitting here minding your business, somebody talking about you.
And the quicker you realize that, the quicker you’ll be you’ll be free from that kind of approval addiction.
Number 6, you go along just to get along.
Even if it doesn’t work for you, you go along just to get along.
Now this can put you in an pleasant situation going along with something just to get along?
It can put you in a risky situation, going along just to get along.
It can even put you in a dangerous situation going along and get along.
You finally met Waldo with the curled up hair, and The Bowlegs, all the stuff you like in your man.
And you feel honored that he is, is wanting to be with you.
And so now you go along to get along because you need his approval of you.
And so now you’re willing to go along and get along.
And how it can be dangerous if you just keep doing that, you can find yourself in a very dangerous, compromising situation in life.
There are many more symptoms of approval addiction, but I wanna get to the causes.
I got a few minutes left. The causes of approval addiction.
Now they often stem from personal upbringing or social environment.
The environment, some, that we came up under. But here’s the first one.
A lack of self worth.
In other words, when an individual doesn’t feel good about themselves, they will seek the validation and the approval of others to fill that void.
So if their environment produce that low self esteem in your life, if that environment that you came up and produce that, um, level of, uh, of a self value.
It’s low in your life. Then you’re you’re known.
You’re just you’re this kind of person that has to have validation and approval, in order to feel good about yourself.
Ain’t that sad? In order for you to feel good about yourself, it’s not have having to have god in your life.
It’s having to have somebody else to to, to value you.
There’s a lot of women put up with physical abuse and marriages because I, I, I need you for validation.
And if I, uh, if I let you go, I’m letting go of my value.
And I I, you know, it’s just my opinion, but I, I, I think every woman needs to have, uh, a journey, uh, of her own, uh, something that you know, she you’re you’re anointed too.
You’re you’re not just anointed to just, uh, just be there and get somebody’s approval.
Um, you’re you’re you’re an on it too.
You you can you can do some amazing things too. You are wired by god too. There’s some things.
There’s something that you need to do.
And you need to value yourself as a woman and, and, you know, I I think our society is just really freaking out, especially with the church, There’s been an attack on women.
Like, women shouldn’t beaving the pool pit, and, and women should not be pastoring in women.
And I’m like, what Bible are you reading in the book of acts? The churches were like home churches.
They didn’t have, like, things like this. And most of those churches were piloted by women.
I know. I know you still got some male chauvinas in here who think that they are superior over a woman can’t add 2 plus too, but thank you, our superior, over a woman.
We all stand in Jesus Christ, we stand on in Jesus Christ.
We all stand in Jesus Christ.
Maybe not in this nation, maybe not in this city, and maybe not in some churches, but in Jesus Christ, We all stand on equal ground.
Now, we all don’t do the same thing, but when we stand on equal grounds.
Are you addicted to other people’s opinions of you?
The desire for approval and the fear of ejection can harm our mental health and derail god’s perfect plan for us.
In his series overcoming approval addiction, creflo dollar illuminates how to reach eternal peace without others’ approval.
Stop comparing yourself. God did something awesome with you. He made you authentic with you.
You don’t have to do too much to please god. Why? Cause he’s already pleased.
The day you believed was the day he was pleased.
To you don’t know how god will use you.
Do not let approval addiction stop you from getting where god wants you to be.
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Order yours today. Visit creflodollarministries.org and click e store, scan the QR code, or call the number on yours screen.
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