Today’s Thought : The victim mentality

With Bishop Ronald K. Powell

I’m so glad we’re on this journey together. We are a part of a revolution – from the inside out. Our lives don’t improve through external changes. We change from the inside out.  I am convinced that if you stay with me through the duration of these messages – this FAST from wrong thinking, you will live the abundant life that God has promised.

Victim mentality is an acquired personality trait in which a person tends to recognize or consider themselves a victim of the negative actions of others, and to behave as if this were the case in the face of contrary evidence of such circumstances. Victim mentality depends on clear thought processes and attribution.

When you fast from food, it affects your ENTIRE day. We need this FAST from wrong thinking to be a part of our ENTIRE day.

• Joshua 1:8 says as you meditate on the Word, day and night, wherever you go, you’ll prosper, and whatever you do, will be blessed.

That’s because the creative power and energy of God is cultivated and released in the soil of your thought life.

• 1 John 5:4 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.

Today we’re fasting from a “victim” mentality.

This includes thoughts that say:

• “It’s their fault.”
• “I was mistreated.”
• “If someone gave me a break, I could make it too.”
• “It’s the government’s fault.”
• “It’s how I grew up.”
• “It’s not my fault.”, etc.

Viktor Frankl survived the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz by defining ultimate freedom as the ability “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to chose one’s own way.”

• The worst prison in the world is the one we put ourselves in – in our mind.
• Mindsets and victim mentalities strip us of the power God has given us to rule our lives in victory.
• This is a thought we need to take time and care to dismantle.

Let’s go:

1. No one can keep you in your current situation except you. We must begin TODAY to accept total responsibility to become victors, not victims.

2. People may have had something to do with how you got in the situation, but only YOU can decide whether you stay in the situation.

3. The “victim” mentality ends when we TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY for our attitude and direction in life.

• Deuteronomy 30:15, 19 says, “See, I have set before you this day, life and prosperity and death and adversity…so choose life, that both you and your descendants might LIVE (the victorious, abundant, God-kind-of life).”

4. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you. Full responsibility doesn’t mean, we’re in it, alone. God is on our side and He will help us.

• It’s natural to look for help – but let’s get it from God. John 16:13 says the Holy Spirit is “Our Helper”!
• When you have His help, you don’t need to blame anyone for anything! We blame when we’re helpless – but we’re NOT!

5. Understand the root word of “responsibility” is response.

• We may not be able to control everything that others do to us, but we can control our RESPONSE. In our response lies our freedom and our growth!

6. Don’t give away your power. We give away our power to live in victory, health and success – when we allow others to determine how we RESPOND.

• We have the power to choose; the power to forgive; the power to recover; the power to overcome anything. When we blame others, we give away that power to them.
• Luke 1:37 For with God nothing shall be impossible.

7. TAKE CHARGE OF WHAT GOD HAS GIVEN YOU.

• The master said to the servant who hid his talent: “Why didn’t you at least invest my money so I could have received interest?” (Matthew 25:24-27)
• He blamed the master, and excused himself. As a result, he fell to the temptation of resentment and fear. He lost everything because he had a victim mentality.

THINK IT & SPEAK IT:

No one can keep me down.

I am not a victim. I am a victor. I take full responsibility for my responses in life – my attitudes and my decisions.

Romans 12:21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

John 16:33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

God has set before me prosperity or adversity. He has given me the power to choose. I choose prosperity!

Holy Spirit, I am asking for your help. You live in me, and you are my Helper! I refuse to give away my power by blaming others. I choose to respond to life with God’s Word.

1 John 4:4 Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.

I take responsibility for my thoughts, my actions and my REACTIONS. I abandon the idea that my situation is the fault of anyone else.

I am an overcomer. I am more than a conqueror through God’s great love.

Romans 8:37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.