So a victim thinking is when the person refuses to take personal responsibility for their life and rather, they blame others for what's happening in their world. I'll say that again. A person has a victim mentality when they will not take responsibility for their life. That's their feelings, their thoughts, their choices, what's happening in their life; but rather they blame someone else. It was my father, my mother, it was the government, it was the preacher, is was the teacher, it was this, it was that, it's the white man, it's the black man, it's the whatever. There's always someone to blame, but prevalent in victim thinking is someone else is to blame or someone else is responsible.
Now if someone else is responsible you have no power to change. You are stuck as you are in victim land and I'll share with you just some ways that people would speak that reveals in their heart they're still a victim. You might be surprised and I'd ask that you'd have a think about some of these things I'll share with you a little later and begin to ask the Holy Spirit to show whether this is what is going on in your heart. If you hear yourself talking like this, you will know that deep in your heart your belief system is I'm a slave, I'm a victim and I have no power to get out.
Of course victims look for someone to help them out. They become very co-dependent and victims look for someone who'll take all the responsibility. Now underneath this victim mentality, it's not my fault, this victim mentality, someone else's fault, someone else is to blame is why my life is going so badly. Under that, this is the root of it. It actually is rooted in what we'd call an orphan spirit, the belief I am abandoned and I'm on my own. You will find - and I cannot think at this point of any exceptions to any person I have met that had a victim mentality, that without exception they believe they were on their own, that they were abandoned and of course we live in a culture where there are no fathers, where there is - sorry, not no fathers. Where there is an abandonment of families by fathers.
We live in a culture where so many young ones at school have no father living in their home, shaping their life and so that orphan spirit or spirit of abandonment rests on them and drives them into victim mentality; I have no one to look out for me. It's not my fault, it's your fault - and so underneath it will always be abandonment and deep bitterness and certain ways of thinking towards life. God is wanting us to become kings. We have to move out of victim mentality wherever we see it. We have to confront victim mentality whenever we engage it, so we don't get sucked into co-dependent relationships and bad relationships that just cannot work.
Many young people get themselves into relationships that will never work because someone inside that relationship is thinking like a victim and depending on the other to come through for them. I need you. I can't live without you. This is typical of the kind of thinking that destroys relationships, creates a burden and a pressure on people. Okay then, so an orphan spirit can't be cast out because it's a whole way of thinking. It's rooted in bitterness, abandonment and a whole way of thinking about life; I'm on my own and I'm bitter about being on my own. It's not my fault and so therefore to get out of that situation we have to deal with the whole belief system. I'll show you how to do as the Lord unveils it to me. [Laughs] I'm only one step ahead on this one. ... [Laughter] ... I've been convicted by my own studies. [Laughs]
I began to find as I started to look through it elements and areas where God wanted to heal me and to change my own thinking. That's good. It's healthy and so let's have a look then about what Jesus promised. I want you to see Jesus' promise in John, Chapter 14. Jesus made an incredible promise. This is the promise He made. Now Jesus has been with the disciples, He's been actually a spiritual Father to them. He said you haven't seen the Father. If you've seen Me you've seen the Father. Jesus fathered them - not physically fathered them, but He actually had a fathering spirit over Him. He revealed what a father is like and so He discipled His sons. They were spiritual sons. They didn't all turn out well, but He was a father to them.