What about some childhood experiences? Have you grown up with yelling and abuse in the home, and you've learnt to yell, and people have yelled at you? It's almost certain you'll have a victim mentality going on in your life. If there's been sexual abuse, or physical or verbal abuse, if there's been rejection or abandonment in your background; all of these things - or even a life-threatening emotional trauma - all of these things, the emotions associated with it, cause people to come to a conclusion, and it's that conclusion they reach, and how they handle it, is what determines what goes on next. So a person who sees, say a marriage breaks up, and the child's at the age of five, he interprets it as terrible pain, a lot of pain. He interprets it: this means I'm unlovable. Dad has abandoned/rejected me. People are going to reject me. Now once that's locked into a person's heart, their life will begin to cycle around that trauma, around that belief system, and believe it or not, it just keeps happening and happening and happening and happening and happening and happening. They pray and they ask God to bless them, but the cycle keeps happening and happening and happening, because it's rooted in the heart in bitterness, emotional trauma, grief and judgements made about fathers or about men.
I have seen this. Lyn would have seen this, Cecelia, all the people who counsel have seen this happen, and so there's a need to understand that the patterns often were formed in trauma or events when we're very young, so have a think about some of that. Here's the second thing is, that once we become aware man, I do behave a bit like a victim, I tend to blame others and don't take responsibility. I'm not willing to face up to things in my life and get proper ownership of it, and look at choices, and actually I don't really do too close in relationships. Men don't do that you know? Men are pretty tough, you don't get close, that's sissy stuff for girls. Now all that kind of nonsense - that's all it is. It's just a lame excuse for the real brokenness and inability to be intimate.
So how do we get free? Number one, just become aware there's a problem. That's the biggest thing. Second is to take decision I'm going to own it and start to change. You've got to own it: It's my stuff, I've got to deal with it. There's no freedom unless I make a decision: it's my stuff. You can blame people for all your life, but until the day you say: I've got stuff, it's time for me to face up and get to own my stuff, you can't change. You can come to church as much as you like, pray as hard as you like. Until you own I've got stuff, you don't change. You've got to say man, I've got some things to face. It's why we run these courses, restoration, deliverance, freedom, and various kinds of other courses. They're to help you own your stuff, start to think about how you think, start to begin to look at your belief system, how you work with finances and so on, how you work with relationships.
So you've got to own your stuff, so what is it that I feel? What is it I really believe in my heart? What issues have I got that I've never faced? Is there someone I avoid, or I have a reaction to when I'm with him, or shut down when I'm with him? You know, you start to ask that question, you're going to start to get insight where the problems are. The third thing, ask the Holy Ghost. Ask the spirit of God to help you to uncover what lies there. Sometimes you need to talk to someone, and they'll help get you - Lyn is like a razor when she does it. She goes straight down prophetically and [makes a sobbing sound] before you know it your tears have come. You're determined you weren't going to go there and cry - then you cry. Why are you crying? Because you've blocked off from your heart the true issues of your heart, and the moment someone puts a word on it, or puts the truth into it, immediately the pain will surface. We don't need to be afraid of pain or isolate from pain, or just go into our own world or medicate the pain. We need to recognise pain is part of life. There's a place of healing, connected to people and connected to God, where we can actually resolve it, through talking about it, releasing forgiveness, repenting of our reactions.