How the Idol of Self Preservation is Resisting Your Calling

Before Purpose Was Clear, Survival Was Necessary

There are seasons when purpose feels distant and survival becomes necessary. Before our calling is clear, many of us are shaped by endurance. For those who are called, survival is often the first place where faith is tested, resilience is formed, and surrender begins to take shape.

As prophetic and apostolic people, many of us didn’t grow up “normal.” We grew up under pressure.

Before we ever understood what it meant to be called, we knew warfare.

Before we could name our purpose, we learned how to survive.

We are marked by heaven, and hell knows it.

For some of you, like myself, the warfare started way before you were even born while you were still in your mother’s womb. For others, it surfaced early in childhood through abandonment, molestation, emotional manipulation, and other forms of trauma experienced while we were still innocent and forming our sense of self.

Regardless of when it began, the impact is the same: trauma doesn’t just wound us — it shapes us. It attaches itself to our identity, our character, and our behavior. Over time, it becomes the filter through which we view ourselves, God, and the people around us.

These filters eventually become prophetic filters. They affect how we discern the voice of God, how we interpret our experiences, and how we understand the call on our lives. If left unhealed, trauma doesn’t just influence us — it defines what we believe is true.

Unaddressed warfare leaves us living in a constant state of self-preservation. We may call it wisdom. We may call it boundaries. But beneath it is often fear, confusion, and a survival instinct that keeps us trapped — mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

How Trauma Taught us to Survive

I was raised in a culture where abuse was often normalized in the name of discipline. In many Black families, “whoopings” were justified, narcissistic parenting went unchecked, and emotional abuse through manipulation, control, belittlement, gaslighting, and codependency was simply part of the environment. None of it was called trauma. It was just life. These systems didn’t just wound me — they trained me to survive. And learning how to survive became second nature.

On top of that, I was sexually abused as a child — and I never told anyone. I carried it alone. I learned early that silence was safer than exposure. Silence became part of my survival.

When I got older and dedicated my life to the Lord, God began showing me the root of a deep father wound while I was reading Rob Reimer’s Soul Care: 7 Transformational Principles for a Healthy Soul. He revealed that this wound existed before I was even born because my father wanted a son and my mother wanted a daughter.

When they found out I was a girl, my father felt like my mother got what she wanted and he didn’t. Without consciously intending to, he rejected me before I ever took my first breath.

I didn’t have words for it growing up, but I felt that rejection deeply. I wanted closeness, connection, and affirmation — yet it was never there.

These harsh realities don’t just hurt — they train you to develop internal systems of safety to protect yourself anytime you feel unsafe physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and even financially.

But what once helped you survive will eventually keep you bound.

These systems don’t shut off. Without healing, they follow us into adulthood. Over time, they distort reality so subtly that you don’t even recognize the self-deception operating within you. They hinder intimacy with God and quietly resist fully surrendering to what God is asking of you.

From Survival to Surrender

Scripture doesn’t condemn survival, but it does confront self-reliance when it replaces trust.

Jesus said, “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). He wasn’t speaking to reckless people; He was speaking to wounded ones — to those who learned early that no one was coming to save them, so they had to save themselves.

What trauma trains us to do in order to survive, the Spirit later invites us to surrender.

This is where repentance becomes necessary — not because we were malicious, but because we adapted. Repentance isn’t about self-hatred; it’s about releasing control. It’s the moment we recognize that what once protected us is now governing us. But when we commit to the call, we commit to being fully governed by God.

When self-preservation goes unchecked, it quietly hardens into pride. Not the loud, arrogant kind, but the subtle belief that I know what’s safest for me. It sounds like wisdom. It feels responsible. But it resists dependence on God.

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Humility, in this context, is not thinking less of yourself, it’s trusting God more than your coping mechanisms.

An Invitation to Heal

Healing begins when we stop defending our survival strategies and start surrendering them. Not all at once. Not perfectly. But honestly. What you release doesn’t disappear, it gets redeemed. And the same God who met you in survival is faithful to meet you in surrender.

The calling on your life doesn’t require you to stay guarded; it requires you to be healed.

Healing is not optional for those who are called. Not because God is harsh, but because the weight of the calling demands wholeness. Unhealed places don’t stay contained; they eventually shape how we lead, how we hear God, and how we relate to authority, community, and correction.

Healing doesn’t begin with striving harder. It begins with honesty — with God and with yourself. Survival may have been necessary once, but it is not your calling. The Lord is not asking you to expose everything all at once; He’s inviting you to stop hiding from Him.

There is no spiritual middle ground. What goes unhealed doesn’t sit quietly, it governs. And over time, that governance begins to look like rebellion, even when the language sounds spiritual.

This kind of rebellion isn’t loud or overt. It doesn’t announce itself as defiance. It hides behind discernment, independence, and “guarded wisdom.” It resists vulnerability. It avoids accountability. It chooses control over trust — not because the person is evil, but because they were wounded.

This is how pride can operate in the lives of those who are called — not as arrogance, but as self-reliance. As the belief that I have to protect myself, I know what’s safest, I can’t afford to be exposed again. Self-preservation becomes a functional savior, and anything we rely on more than God, even unconsciously, becomes an idol.

God isn’t threatened by our coping mechanisms, but He won’t allow them to replace surrender. He doesn’t shame us for surviving; He invites us to be healed. Because what once protected you cannot be the thing that leads you.

Closing Prayer

God, You know what I had to do to survive.

But I don’t want to live guarded anymore.

Reveal where self-preservation has replaced trust.

Lead me gently into healing.

Teach me how to surrender without fear

and remind me that my story is safe with You.

Amen.