So the remedy, notice what the remedy is, and I won't go into it in this session. The remedy is, God showed Moses a tree. Now clearly there's a lot of prophetic symbolism in that, but essentially God showed him a tree, that when he put it in the water, the bitter became sweet. It's an amazing picture of God, the solution to victim mentality is a revelation of God's love and the healing power of the cross. It's interesting the first thing that they came across flushed up their victim mentality, and the first thing that came up is associated with bitterness. When people have been hurt, abused, suffered, experienced injustice, pain, grief and various things, they often instead of resolving it, become bitter. Bitterness reflects in complaining, and so there's a remedy, and the remedy is revelation, revelation I'm not a victim. I have a Father who loves me! I have a Father who's got the answer for every situation! I've got a Father who can show me what He accomplished at Calvary, and I can respond in faith and be delivered and healed and restored, and develop a positive mentality, and experience resurrection life.
We'll give you a few simple things on that afterwards - but isn't that amazing? That's the first experience they had, and it was to bring to the surface their victim mentality. Now the other one we looked at was this. It's found in Luke 15, and this is the elder brother, the Elder Brother Mentality. Now of course there are a lot of Christians who are an elder brother. You could be a sister, and still be an older brother. The older brother is this story. Now this is the story, we'll just quickly cap on it, then I want to show you some solutions.
You remember Jesus is talking to the Pharisees. They have challenged Him, and their challenge they gave Him, in Verse 1, is this: You eat with the wrong people. You're eating with sinners, You're eating with prostitutes, You're eating with all kinds of BAD people, and you're making them all Your friends. They like You, they gather around wherever You come. You've always got a riff raff, a rabbly crowd of broken people. If You were a man of God, You wouldn't do such a thing - so they were critical of Him. Jesus then told the three stories; first one reveals the work of Jesus, the shepherd; second, of the Holy Spirit; the third, of the father. So these three stories are all one story, to show God values people and loves them. The last story is the story of the father, and the father had two sons - you know the prodigal son, and he said: dad, I don't want to live with you. I want to be out, give me the money. In other words, before you're dead, give me the money, I want my inheritance now.
He went out. You know he had a bad life, a rotten life. He blew it all, and then he came to his senses, turned around and he went back to his father with a repentant heart, and when he did that he was welcomed. No matter how much he stunk of the pigs and smelt and was broken and wrecked his life, God loved him. This is the heart of God. He loves people. You say well I've got to get my life right, before God will accept me. No! The story absolutely blows that. That's a religious mindset. God says: I take you like you are! If you can receive My love, and connect with Me, I can pick you up and journey you to where you need to be. It was God, it was the father who restored the son. It's the father who put clothes on him, the father who gave him authority. It was the father's extravagant love. We need revelation of his extravagant love.