Plumbing the Deep Well of Self-hatred – Episode #625

John:
Well, today we come to you and we’re real excited about a new project and a new booklet that is, that is being released. Jennifer’s been working on it and she was asking me if we had gone over, on the Podcast, kinda the vision I’m having for the booklets that are being release on Kindle. And I’m just going to, you know, say it again. My vision here is to recapture the messages, a number of the messages that were originally CD’s of the Month. And then we wanted to turn them into booklets and we’re, at, at the very outset we’re going to release these booklets on Kindle. And they will be .99 and you can get those and enjoy them.

The messages are absolutely amazing. The first one we released was Overcoming Fear and this next one is Overcoming Self-hatred. And Jennifer and I prayed about it and we’ve asked if we needed to do an overcoming series, and there’s been just several that have popped up that really kind of lend itself to that vein of teaching. And so we’ve got Overcoming Fear, Overcoming Self-hatred and, you know, it looks like the next one would possibly be Overcoming Shame. I would love to do one on rejection.

But anyway, we’re just gonna kinda start hitting all these amazing topics and how to be an overcomer in these topics. So the newest one is Overcoming Self-hatred and Martha has a whole message to speak about today about that because it’s more common than we would give it credit for. And I really wanted to get Jennifer in here, too.

And so I do want, I do want on the outset though to tell you that I’m very, very grateful for all those that have answered the call to pray and that are, that wanted to be updated. You know, a couple of podcasts ago we, we had mentioned that and we said, “Does anybody want to be on a prayer list where we’re updating you on what’s going on in the ministry and submitting to you prayer requests for y’all to stand with us that Christ would reveal Himself through this ministry?”

And even in GetAlongWithGod.com, the blogs, we’ve talked about the prayer and how, what the benefit of that, that it is to stand in prayer for this ministry and what prayer does for us when we actually stand there.

So another one of the booklets that we’ve mentioned, you know, a couple podcasts ago was the, my testimony, the Where Are You God. So we’re just working to get these Kindle booklets out. Now it’s not going to stay Kindle booklet. It depends on the response and how people are responding to it and the ones that really, really, really do well on Kindle we’ll think about proceeding and making a print version. Right now we just…  Between space and resources and everything, it’s all limited. And when you put out a print booklet, it takes up a bunch of space to store it. And it costs a lot more to do it.

So anyway we’re not averse to doing print versions of the booklets but they’re all gonna be released first as Kindle booklets and then we’re going to get the kind of a barometer of the response for the messages. And so thank you for going to Kindle and going to Amazon and reading these on your PC, on your Mac, on your Droids, on your Samsung phones, on your iPhones and iPads and everything. We really appreciate it. The response to Where Are You, God? and Overcoming Fear has been pretty amazing. We’ve really been excited about that.

So, Martha, tell me about the message here that we’re releasing. All we’re doing is waiting for the cover art and we’re trying to get a release from an artist and his photography so that we can use his image on the front of it and then pretty much it’s gonna go up. So probably… We’re hoping this week that it would, would go up. So tell me what’s, what’s on your heart about this amazing booklet?

Martha:
Well, John, I think like fear, we assume fear is a natural thing. We don’t fight it. The same thing is true of self-hatred. God had to tell me that I hated myself. When I was in my twenties that was one of His first lessons for me, that He called us to love ourself and to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

But we have a huge epidemic today, health crises, that I believe have the roots in self-hatred. That autoimmune diseases… I’m not saying as a blanket statement, but it’s pretty commonly known that your body turns on itself. And I have a sweet young friend who discovered she had self-hatred because she would shake her fist in the air at herself (laughs). And she said, “Oh, my goodness, I have self-hatred.

So it’s common to most people. The opposite of it would be pride. But it’s… Self-hatred produces a lot of things in the body that are destructive. And the thing about self-hatred is that it is evoked by the enemy. It is provoked, it is suggested, it is tempted by the enemy because the enemy is hate. Satan is hatred. That is his nature and he hates love and he hates God who is love.

So, actually the war… I believe if you could identify the one element of war, whether it be military or spiritual, the issue is hate. The root of war is hate. And the root of conflict is hate.

And the other thing I wanted to say – and I’m gonna get Jennifer to tell us some insights because she’s done a beautiful job on this manuscript – but I realize for some years now I’ve been interested in the seven churches of Revelation because they are all a challenge to overcome. And I saw that every situation we’re in, God wants us to win and overcome and most of the time it’s overcoming your own self. And my daughter will often say to me, we’ll talk about some situation and she’ll say, “But, Mom, you have overcome that so you have authority over it.” And that’s true! When you… To rule and reign, you have to learn to overcome in life and we don’t want to do that work. We don’t want to do that, face that. But self-hatred is to be overcome, because it is anti Christ. It is self-destructive. It is sin.

I’m going to let Jennifer read one of her favorite parts of it and she’s deeply familiar with it always and can tell the sequence and so forth in tremendous brilliance. She handles the writing and edits. She’s a dream. So, Jennifer, over to you.

Jennifer:
Well, I’m gonna piggy-back off what Martha was just talking about, which is that Satan is the instigator of self-hatred. And that I remember when Martha recorded the original message, Overcoming Self-hatred, and I remember being blown away by that revelation. It shouldn’t have been but it was. I just, I had never seen before so clearly and it, it put it in a different perspective for me that I needed. Because I didn’t think there was any way I could deal with self-hatred without kind of being self-conscious and introspective and on me. And that’s really dangerous ground (laughs), you know? For me anyway! It’s, it can go so badly wrong, so easily.

And when she said that, it was like I had the ability to see myself a little more clearly in terms of spiritual warfare. And when I side with Satan against God – which is exactly what that is… When I say, “You know what, you’ve got a good point there, devil. You’re speaking some serious truth words there and I agree. I’m, I’m the worst. I’m awful! Everything about me deserves to be cursed.” I’m just a pawn for him. I cease to be an actual player in the tapestry of eternity. I lose my position. I don’t lose it in the sense that, you know, it’s taken. I literally surrender it to Satan. I’ve submitted to him. I’m on his ground and I’m no longer in the fight.

And it gave me a place of repentance and seeing in self-hatred, where I didn’t have to be on me. Where I could literally repent for disloyalty to God, for unbelief, for faithlessness, for my own hatred. I— That was a ground that I could, that I could grasp.

And, and that’s why this was, this booklet, creating a booklet from that recording was incredibly important to me. Because there’s a lot in this that we think we know simply from the term and it’s not… There are deep waters here. It’s not a, a simple, shallow concept to just grab and say, “Right! No hate myself. Bad, bad!” If that’s, if that’s as far as you can go, that still has merit. But there’s a, there’s a lot on the line here. And as a disciple, which is what I view this series of booklets on overcomings, as these are, these are lessons in practical discipleship. This is what spiritual growth is. This is what it is to come to know Christ in all reality. These are obstacles to knowing and loving Him every day. And we don’t always see them. So these are, these are big-ticket items. And we think we know all there is to know about fear and shame and guilt and rejection and self-hatred and all these things but the truth is we don’t. There are, there are deep waters at work here and lots of obstacles. So that was, that was behind a lot of my passion for working on this.

Plumbing the Deep Well of Self-hatred – Episode #625 – Shulamite Podcast