How to Break Free from Performance Based Living - Mark DeJesus

hello everybody welcome to this broadcasts Marc DeJesus here want to share a few things with you to encourage you in your journey of transformation especially has to do with the subject of performance-based living I'm a big proponent of helping people to get free from this trap and really helping people to discover the core identity of who they are so let me ask you a question where do you find your sense of love your sense of acceptance your sense of Worth and your sense of value now we all have our front cover answers that we give to people many times they're fabricated you know I get it from God or I get it from you know we give certain answers but deep down inside there's often a deeper truth in reality to where we get our sense of value and worth in fact I find a majority of people I interact with admit this struggle this sense of yeah I find a lot more pull to get value and worth in what I do and that's really the core of what performance-based living is or we could say performance-based Christianity but just in general is finding worth value and acceptance based on what we do and not just a true acceptance of who we are as God's creation as God's children and really recognizing that and being hardwired connected to that and so our answers usually revolve around the roles that we live in and roles are not wrong they're not evil you have various ones that you fulfill throughout the day you're you're a spouse or your husband or a wife you are a mother or a father you are a worker at your job you fulfill certain roles you might be a president vice-president you might be head in charge of something you might be a committee leader you're a pastor you're a teacher you are a head of a board you are a leader in some aspect or you're in charge of some kind of responsibility one of the key things that performance-based living does is it gets us lost in our roles it get just lost in a responsibility so instead of that's a role that you fulfill in life you become deeply hardwired to it and it becomes your identity the problem with this is when you become hardwired into a role that you fulfill and that's your identity however that situation goes up or down it determines how you feel about yourself how you feel loved and how you feel about your life so for example I run I talked to a lot of pastors church leaders that their identity is wrapped up completely in what they do for ministry and they've lost a sense of identity I know this in my own life I experienced this in a very high definition manner I should say for Kay that's the that's the newest clarity of television right and in a really crystal clear manner that I had been lost in trying to find a sense of identity and what I did in pastoring in helping people and being a youth pastor or then later on being involved in music and worship an associate pastor and all those kinds of things and I crashed and hit a burnout really bad and it was good that I actually hit that crash because it caused me to really assess where am I getting my value from where am I getting my worth where am I getting my sense of significance am I truly getting that out of a sense of God's absolute undying love for me as my father and my true identity is not in being a pastor it's in being his son and being his child you see we've lost the simplicity of that and one of the frustrations I have with church culture today as when we talk to people about the gospel we talked to people about the good news of what God is bringing to them we have a bait-and-switch that we keep using with people because what we say is God loves you unconditionally come in and you are accepted just as you are he loves you he loves you he accepts you right where you are then what happens is when the person comes in they say yes we strap them with a straitjacket of performance-based living so now it's like doo doo doo doo get involved get involved give give serve serve go go doo doo doo and we applaud people based on performance we base it on achievement so what happens is there becomes a culture that attracts people that are high achievers because the more that you achieve you get a greater spotlight on you more attention is given to you more applause is given to you so therefore this increases the cycle of people finding their worth in what they do I work with a lot of people who are dads or are especially my wife and I work with females that are moms and they've spent decades being totally immersed that their identity is a mom and they neglected their true core identity of being a daughter of being God's dearly loved daughter and they neglected to tend to that area of their life and so what happens is down the road there becomes a burnout where maybe the kids are moving out of the house and and now there isn't that feedback of I'm a mom and I do these things as a mom and that's who I am and they hit a burnout this is why people hit midlife crisis or they hit certain stages in their journey where they just crash and they start thinking we heard or or doing weird things or buying Corvettes or or whatever because our sense of identity has been based way more on how we perform throughout the day or how our roles in life are doing and we have these gauges that we watch all day long business is doing great so I'm doing great business doing bad so I'm doing bad my parenting is going great my kids are behaved well my kids are not doing well so therefore my sense of value and worth starts to crash and this is really anti what God thinks about us and how he operates and moves with us because his value of you and his acceptance and worth over your life is not based on how well you perform and achieve it's based on what his son did Jesus Christ did for you and it's based on a relationship engagement I see the problem is when comfortable with relationship engagement with God we don't feel his love we struggled to connect to his love and there's an empty void in our hearts where we've never been fathered and affirmed in our core identity as sons and daughters and whenever you have not been fathered in what it means to be loved and accepted and your true identity in sonship then what happens is the temptation to perform is going to be your go-to and performance is as an easy trap because it gives very very quick feedback you do something you make money off of it or you do something for somebody and they give you a thank you if there's there's a stimulus that that immediately happens whereas living out of true love and acceptance as God's child takes time it's its heart relationship it's heart connection and we're uncomfortable with that we're uncomfortable with intimacy we're uncomfortable with our sense of value so wherever we go there is this undercurrent of pressure to do something to present something to have value in any relational gathering you have so I want to give just a couple thoughts on breaking free from this I talked about it in the exposing the rejection mindset book but I think there's there's a few things we need to be mindful of to get free from performance orientated oriented living and I think the first thing that usually needs to happen across the board is usually there's some kind of burnout that we need to hit to come to a realization that performance-based living achievement as a core sense of who we are doesn't work and for some people it takes a long time to come to terms with this because for them performance quote unquote works it gives enough feedback where maybe they're successful they're an athlete and they do really well in sports and they get so much positive feedback from it it's easy to get lost in it their business is doing well their church is growing and exploding their ministry or whatever it is whatever it is that you do is really doing well and sometimes what you do going really well can be the worst thing for your health if you're not grounded in who you are I'm finding many people are hitting the crash-and-burn earlier and earlier I'm even noticing 18 and 19 year-olds coming to these breakdowns and when I say breakdowns what happens is massive depression suicidal tendencies even a sense of great anxiety obsessive thinking overload delusional struggles all kinds of battles in the mind really high in because there is a growing sense where I think God's wanting to deal with us in our hearts he's really wanting to in a good way strip the church of our counterfeit sources of approval validation and identity and he first wants us to find it in him he wants to secondly find who we really are and most of you that are struggling in your journey the narrative over your life is God's re-establishing identity whatever struggle or whatever heartache you're going through or whatever resistance you're facing I'll guarantee somewhere in there there's a rewiring that the Holy Spirit is doing to firmly connect you to who you really are and not to what you've bought as being your true identity and this is what what happened to me in my life I remember in 2006 I left a very well-paying position on staff at a large successful Church in the state and God was calling me out and for a time and season the ministry avenues that I did didn't open up in the way that I thought and I hit another level of going man did I miss God what's going on well no I was right on target but for a season I share this in my books I worked construction and whilst you know working construction oh my god what are you doing I left everything to teach and write and all these things what's going on and in that scene I started to tune in okay God what are you singing what are you doing rather than all my complaining and the thing that I recognize is that God was reestablishing identity and really helping me to understand mark if you really know who you are you can flourish in any environment you can be content everywhere that you are you can be empowered no matter what situation you're in and I think this is part of why somebody like Paul the Apostle could say I've learned to be abased I've learned to abound I'm an always content there was a true connection of identity and so our seasons of life in our roles they change they shift they evolve but your core identity needs to be truly established on a solid foundation and so I have to begin disconnecting that Who I am is based on what I do and what the best way to do is reverse the emphasis really Who I am is what I do you see the difference normally we live off of well Who I am is what I do so everything I do that establishes who I am and really the more that we come to learn who we are that's what we do so I encourage you to change the emphasis one of the things that I began to do was I began to disconnect my identity from the roles that I fulfill in life because they became too hardwired into telling me how I should feel about myself too many people are listening to whatever roles they're fulfilling in life and everyone has probably like five to eight different roles that they fulfill in life if those roles are screaming at you and determining your sense of esteem Worth and value and they become too hard wired into your identity and they've not been put in their proper place so I like to help people to really reestablish okay who are you as a child of God in sonship and then the Royals connect to that sonship so that when you live if you go to work what does it mean to go to work as a truly loved child of God who is accepted loved affirmed by he's proud of you he loves you and he is for you not against you he's got your back what does it look like going to work with that state with that posture what does it look like going into your marriage when you know you are fully loved and accepted by God as his child your son yours daughter he's proud of he's got your back he's for you he's not against you what does it mean to engage ministry work what does it mean to engage parenting it revolutionized my parenting when I approached parenting my children as a loved son of the Living God versus I'm a dad and I got to be a dad see we just get into performance I got a try to get my kids to act right and I got to try to do all these different things to help my family be better and I began to reset it no I'm gonna approach my children as a son who is loved by his father in heaven my father affirms me approves me he says this is my beloved son and who I'm well pleased marks dearly loved he's my son he's my boy and I'm proud of him and see those needs getting filled in my heart and me acknowledging them so I had to renounce finding value and worth I had to actually you know the Bible uses the word repent which means you know turning from one way of thinking and moving into a whole new dimension of thinking a whole spinning into a whole different way and I think culturally we need to make these shifts and affirm people for who they are and not just wait for them to produce a result - then affirm we need to learn how to see the gold nugget in people's identities and pull it out and verbally affirm them culture has to shift and change and you can begin this in your home begin this in your small group begin it in your sphere of influence find ways to affirm people and who they are not a hundred percent in what they do now we all need you know a great job you did a great job but that should not be the primary way we affirm each other there should be an affirmation of who we are as God's kids that we can begin to really connect to in a deeper way and so discovering what it means to be a child is a reset the Bible talks about over and over again in fact remember when Nicodemus came to Jesus he says what I got to do here what I do to you know to engage this kingdom thing and Jesus says you have to be born again now there's we talk about born again as being a process where you get saved and those kind of things but really what you're doing is you're restarting what it means to be born into a family where you have a father in heaven who loves you and accepts you and you learn and grow up as a child and learn what it means to be a child and grow into adolescents spiritually and go into adulthood spiritually and see many of us you could be 30 40 50 60 years old and you're still stuck in a toddler stage and God wants you to to grow up in the greatest way we grow up is learn what it means to be affirmed in our identity and establish a really strong sense of who we are that's not based on what we do we tell people that it's not by works you come into the kingdom but then as soon as we come in we strap on works as our way of feeling good loved and accepted and and don't and don't mistake me you know accomplishing great things feels awesome it's great to touch people's lives it's great to do great things it's great you know when I write a book and I finish a book oh there's a great feeling of accomplishment right but I have to be very aware that each day I'm reminding myself of who I really am and the simplicity of childlike faith the simplicity of what it means to be his child Ephesians 5 has been a verse I've been just meditating on where it says be imitators of God as children it's amazing you want to be an imitator of God you want to see his likeness manifest in your life learn to be a kid learn to be his kid learn to be his child learn to set that compass in your life and maybe your 40 50 60 years old and you need to reset that and it's okay Jesus said you want to come into the kingdom come as one of these children that sense of innocence that just trusts that sense of innocence it just you know last night I was sitting on couch with my daughter and I just observed this thing that just really deeply touched me she kept looking up at me and when I would look over she would just smile we just kind of did this thing she'd look up at me I look over and she'd just smile and in that moment it brings you to a place of that's how my father in heaven sees me that's breaking free of performance-based living so I want to encourage you daily remind yourself of who you really are you want to maybe create a list of declarations that you rehearse over and over again I know one of the things that I felt god impressed on my heart was every day when I left I would usually I remember back in my single days I would I would brush my teeth get ready do my hair whatever and and shower and get dressed and I would just run right out the door and I have these right outside the bathroom there's a set of stairs that goes down to the door and and right out the front door and I felt a sense of God pausing my routine and saying would you just take a moment and sit at the top of these stairs and before you go out and face your day and do all the things that you're doing would you just focus in on my love and acceptance for you and set the compass for everything you do throughout the day and as I began to do that I found so much more fulfillment and and then one of the promptings I felt the Holy Spirit was saying to me was is if you don't establish this compass as soon as you walk run down the stairs and out the door you will look for love affirmation and validation in everything that you do and with all those people out there so reset it and receive it from me today so I encourage you practice this in real time I'm not advocating that breaking free of performance means we do nothing and we sit around like blobs it's very active but what you do is you change the source and core of where you get your affirmation from which releases the valve of pressure that weighs on so many of our hearts that we equate our existence and how well we are doing and you are not a human doer you are human being designed by God to learn to receive learn to take in his goodness and learn to take in his love today so I pray this encourages you if it has pretty share it with your friends would you give me some feedback and let me know what's been a blessing to you in your life and and I'm just going to continue to be a cheerleader for you to continue to let God form your identity and who he says that you are and rehearse it and everything that you engage in your life god bless you guys thank you so much have a great day

Channel: Mark DeJesus

Views: 3,012

Rating: 4.951807 out of 5

Keywords: Performance Based Christianity, Performance, Peformance Based Living

Id: KoH_9vG9pjA

Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 07 2017