But the life Jesus called us to, is a life of being a victor, of being victorious. Does that mean everything looks good? No, sometimes it looks as though we're terribly defeated and in difficulty, for example the early martyrs, and people right down through history who gave their life for Christ. Were they victors? Yes, they were. Why? Because in the face of opposition, they never quit. They stood up for what they believed in, and that was a victory. Some conquered nations, so the Book of Hebrews is full of people who by faith won victories, victories over lions, victories over enemies, victories of all kinds. The Bible abounds with people who dared to believe God, and broke through - but for most of us the difficulties we face are far more mundane, far more subtle. They creep up on us, and they're difficulties and challenges around family and marriage and finance and relationships, the economic climate and business and so on. But in all of these, God says we can have victory.
Does it mean it'll always work out good? No, it may not work out so good. Sometimes we go through very difficult times, but God uses it all to work about a great good, so we can have a positive and a strong attitude. So victim mentality is a way of seeing yourself, and a way of looking at life. A victim mentality is a mindset, and a heart belief system. If it was just the way you think, it would be easy to deal with. In fact you could go on the Internet and find some keys that are very, very helpful. However it's deeper than that, it goes right into the heart. So a victim mentality has to do with heart beliefs, and ways of thinking that continually sabotage your life and relationships - and we'll give you a few keys so you can recognise it quite soon. The essence - a victim is a person who was abused or hurt or oppressed, and has no power to do anything to change that. They are the victim of it.
A victim mentality is when a person has a mindset, a certain way of thinking, where they refuse to take responsibility for their life and their emotions and what they're going through, and instead they put the blame on someone else. They put it somewhere else, so it's a way of interpreting how people come across, what to make of life, what to make of relationships. So as a man thinks in his heart, so he is, so there are some examples of it of course, and I want to move through this quickly so we get to solutions, but do you remember in Exodus, Chapter 15 - let's have a brief look there in Exodus 15. The people of Israel had been in slavery for 400 years. Now they had been delivered, they are no longer slaves. Although they're physically no longer a slave, although physically they are free, in their mind they still think like a slave, so - Verse 23 - they came to Marah - which means bitter - and they couldn't drink of the waters of Marah because they were bitter, so they called the name Marah, bitter.
And the people - now here's what they did. Notice instead of looking for a solution, instead of reaching out positively to God in expectation of a solution, the bitterness of their victim state rose up, and you notice what they did, one of the first evidences of victim mentality, is they complained. Complaining puts you fair and square in the mentality of a victim. When people complain, they are just pouring out their grievance, injustice, and hurt, and not taking responsibility they could do something about this situation. Sometimes it's easier to complain, than to look what could I do about this? What are my options? So they said what'll we drink? They complained against Moses. Usually when people have a victim mentality, they find a way to blame someone who is over them, a parent, a boss, a teacher, someone in authority anywhere, in their workplace. So when you hear people bitterly complaining, you know they're infected with this kind of mentality. It brings disaster on people. As a result of their complaining, Israel failed to enter their inheritance, a lesson for us, if we don't shift mentality, we cannot enter all the good things that God has planned for us.