Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast : Ep 49
TRANSCRIPT
Do you ever hear thoughts like these go through your mind?
“I am a victim of my circumstances and there is no hope for change.”
“It doesn’t matter what I do, I will never get ahead.”
“Other people will always take advantage of me.”
“If I am waiting in line, my line will always be the slowest.”
I’m Lee Whitman with Restoring the Foundations. Today’s verse is 2 Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity (fear), but of power and love and discipline.” Another version says Power, Love and self-control.
If you relate to any one of these statements I started with, you are not alone. These beliefs are symptoms of a very common stronghold, the stronghold of victimization. Some of you listening will hear this podcast and say to yourself, well this is not for me. This stronghold of victimization does not affect me much. Let me encourage you that if it is affecting you even a little bit, that is too much. As you will hear, victimization can blind you to the effect it is having on you. The enemy wants you to remain passive and powerless and will use even a small foothold in your life to keep you on the sidelines. It is not just the superstars of life that God wants to empower to make a difference in this world. As Max Lucado says, God takes ordinary people like you and me and puts His extra on them to make them into extraordinary people.
I heard a recording recently of the new University of Colorado football coach, Deon Sanders. Deon Sanders was an outstanding profession football player and was elected to the National Football League Hall of Fame. He is a believer in Jesus who has already been called out by the liberal news media in Boulder Colorado for his outspoken Christian beliefs. In this particular recording he went around the team meeting asking his new football team what they were going to do to make today a great day. It was inspiring and amazing at the same time. He was instilling in his new team that they had the ability by their choices to make this a great day. He was making those young men powerful instead of powerless. You see he had taken over a football team that only won one game the previous season, so he has to change their mindset. They were looking at themselves through a victim mindset.
In today’s podcast I want to challenge all of us, me included, with some thoughts about dealing with this victim spirit and mindset. I recently recorded a podcast on bringing the Kingdom of God to earth. In that podcast I talked about having the opportunity to partner with Father God to bring the Kingdom of God to earth. In fact God is looking for those who are willing to do what He is asking us to do to partner with Him. Taking from Deon Sanders’ talk, I was challenged with the question, “What am I doing today to bring the Kingdom of God to earth?” This spirit of victimization would have you and me stay on the sidelines and do nothing out of a sense of powerlessness. Or it would have us blame our inactivity on someone else. If only they wouldn’t have done that to me or said that to me, I would be able to do something.
Let me give you an example of how this spirit of victimization works. We did ministry with a person who has lived a lifetime of being under this spirit. For example one of his kids got very sick right after their health insurance lapsed because he did not fill out the paperwork to renew the insurance. Since he had no money to pay for the doctors he took the child to the emergency room because the hospital will not turn away patients who have no insurance. Then when the bills came from the hospital, he was not able to pay them and instead of contacting the hospital to work out a payment plan due to his passivity, he did nothing because of a feeling of helplessness. Then the hospital turned him over to the collection agency. He then thought that the hospital was being unfair for turning him over to collections. That is the victim spirit at work.
The victim spirit partners with the ungodly belief that there is nothing you can do to change your circumstances, in fact your past defines your future. Because of what has happened to you, you will be unable to choose anything better for your life. This spirit doesn’t like for you to take responsibility for shaping your own life and outcomes; it would rather have you blame someone else. When a person ought to take responsibility to create a different outcome in their circumstances this spirit would rather blame shift and stay stuck. Then it will whine because it feels stuck in an emotional way.
There is a big difference between being victimized by things that have happened to you and having a victim mindset and stronghold. The same things can happen to two different people and they react totally differently because one has this victim stronghold and the other does not.
A stronghold is when two or more of the following problem areas come together and are energized by demonic oppression. The stronghold usually begins with the generational pressure that comes down your bloodline from your ancestors. Many people inherit victimization from their ancestors. Then you add to that generational iniquity some easily believed ungodly beliefs like ‘People will always take advantage of me’ or ‘no matter what I do I will never get ahead’. Then add in some hurts caused by something in life which reinforces that sense of helplessness. Mix all of those together with an enemy that wants to reinforce and energize each one of those, and you have a stronghold of victimization. You can’t think your way out of a stronghold. You can’t decide to use self-discipline and just stop these behaviors. Strongholds must be disassembled using Restoring the Foundations ministry.
We did ministry recently with a lady who is living under this mindset of victimization. She was struggling because she had made some very bad decisions in choosing relationships with men. As we talked with her about her past, it became very obvious where this mindset started in her life. Her father was a verbally abusive and angry man. He would often rage at the little girl and she didn’t even know what she had done wrong to deserve the rage. When she got old enough to date, she dated boys who were also angry and verbally abusive. When she married, you guessed it, she married someone who did the same things to her. She was convinced by this spirit of victimization that she deserved this kind of relationship.
When this victim spirit gets attached to a person it acts like a magnet that actually draws bad behavior to them from others. This explains why the predators in the world are able to pick out people who are susceptible to their abusive ways. It is not unusual for a person who has been sexually abused when they are young to be abused again later in life. Why? Because the demonic stronghold of victimization creates a target on them that draws other predators to this person. This stronghold marks them in the spirit realm with something that the predators can recognize.
This spirit very often attracts other things in the spirit that combine to strengthen the hold this spirit has on a person’s life. Things like abandonment and betrayal are commonly attracted to victimization. For the purpose of this podcast I want to focus on how this spirit of victimization creates a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in a person. Along with powerlessness it also has several other ways that it operates.
Victimization is like an octopus. It is not just built with one tentacle, but it has several tentacles that are common struggles for the person afflicted with this stronghold. This stronghold almost always includes passivity. Some of the thoughts associated with this passivity are things like the following:
– Why try. What good would it do anyways.
– What good would it do for me to initiate conversations with others? They are just going to reject me.
– I lack the motivation necessary to do anything for the Lord so I don’t try.
– I have to allow others to treat me badly.
– I feel like sin is always going to run my life. I can’t stop it.
– No matter what I do, something bad is going to happen to me.
As you can see this passivity adds weight to an already existing sense of hopelessness. Once passivity and hopelessness get rooted in a person’s life it leads to self-pity. Self pity says:
- Most of my thoughts are about me and what I can’t do.
- I always draw people around me who also struggle with self-pity.
- I love throwing myself pity parties.
- If I am honest, I don’t have many real friends. Why would they want to be my friend?
Self pity gives place to a lack of thankfulness. Thoughts like:
- I can’t think of many things to thank the Lord for.
- I get stuck when I am praying and try to thank the Lord.
- I have no hope, so why should I give thanks.
- I wonder sometimes if I will ever get out of this hopeless cycle.
Probably the most common characteristic of victimization is it causes the person to feel they are powerless. That is the opposite of what God gives us. Our verse for today is 2 Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity (fear), but of power and love and discipline.”
These are just a sample of how this spirit of victimization operates. Its main message is to convince you that you are powerless and there is no hope for change.
Is there something that you would like to do? Or are there some changes you would like to make in your life? Or do you believe God is calling you to do something in the Kingdom of God. My question for today is: What are we waiting for? No one else has the ability to ruin your day if you don’t let them. This spirit of victimization would have you give power to people or circumstances that do not deserve that power in order to control your life. Then we blame those people or circumstances for why we don’t get things done. If you want to get something done, as Deon Sanders asked his team, what are you going to do to make that happen? Let me use a simple example. Many people would like to lose a little weight, and some of us would like to lose more than a little. What is stopping us from doing something about it today?
You might be asking, “Will I ever get out of this hopeless cycle?” Yes, if you really want to break this stronghold, you can. Jesus often asked people who were sick if they wanted to get well. So let me ask you, do you want to get free from this stronghold? Many people under this spirit of victimization do not believe that healing and freedom are possible. If this is you, I want you to know that freedom from this spirit is possible. Jesus came to set the captives free.
In order to get free from this stronghold you will need the help of an RTF Minister. This stronghold needs to be disassembled. The generational pressure to walk in victimization must be broken. Then the lies you believe about your situation must be replaced with God’s truth. Then there are the hurts you have received in life that contribute to this stronghold. And of course you must kick out the demons that are energizing victimization in your life. Write to our ministry coordinator right now at healing@restoringthefoundations.org.
Do it right now. Don’t wait. Receiving RTF ministry will change your life so the enemy is going to try to use this stronghold to stir up hopelessness and passivity to keep you from reaching out for ministry.
Don’t settle!
