Hello 1nebody,

Thank God for seeing us through another wonderful week. I trust that you are having a great week.

Today, I am reviewing a sermon titled, Positioning for Opportunities by Pastor Debo Omotunde of Elevation Church, Lagos. If you want an alternative title, it will be Overcoming Self-imposed Limitations. You will understand why when you listen.

I don’t think I can do the sermon justice with my short review, so I encourage you to listen to it after reading this.

Pastor Debo started out by establishing the fact that we must overcome self-imposed limitations if we are to discern and take advantage of God-given opportunities. We must continue to work at it as Paul admonishes in Phil 2:12-13 because our transformation is a journey.

What are self-imposed limitations, you might ask?

Self-imposed limitation is what Pastor Debo describes as being in ‘a state of learned helplessness.’ He went further to define learned helplessness as a state where someone feels they are unable to do anything about their situation or accomplish anything because they’ve attributed it to internal factors hinged on past bad experiences.

You need to GET OUT of this state!

He went ahead to share the symptoms of learned helplessness. These are the ways this state of the mind shows up in our daily lives unsuspected:

  •  Avoiding decisions
  • Giving up quickly
  • Lack of motivation
  • Passive behaviour
  • Low self-esteem
  • Procrastination
  • Being more conscious of limitations than opportunities

So, now that we are aware of these silent killers, how do we overcome them?

You may have guessed it, by faith and through the word. Pastor Debo stressed that we must have a renewal of our minds through the word of God. He says that when we walk by faith, it means we are living dependently on the word of God. If we walk by sight, we will be defeated. So, we must stay anchored in the Word, so that we can see every situation through God’s lens.

Furthermore, he said something profound, which gives living dependent on the word of God a clearer perspective.“When you give your life, you are set free, but when you know the truth, you are made free.” I have translated that to mean that you can be set free and still live like you are in bondage because you don’t know any better. So, you have been set free, but because you haven’t meditated on the word and let the truth come alive in you, you self-sabotage and impose these limitations on yourself because even though you are free, you don’t know it for a fact yet.

Finally, these are some of the ways of overcoming that Pastor Debo shared:

  • Consciously cultivate new habits
  • Constraining yourself to a life of study

Honestly, there are too many profound moments in this message to cover. So, I strongly recommend you watch it. The message starts at 53:46.

God bless,
Dasola