You can move in blessing, and prepare blessing for your future; you can flow in cursing, you'll reap it as well. Many people can't understand why they have so much repeated difficulties in their relationships, because they respond to injustice with wanting to be right. I'm right, you're wrong, you've got to pay. See, wanting to be right is a problem - yeah, but I want to be right! Of course you do, that's pride, just want to be right. The heart of the kingdom is about relationships. You notice, the king was entitled to throw the guy in prison; but rather than hold onto that right, he yielded to the right, and gave him grace.
Now let's see what happens now. So what happened, this was what was exposed. Firstly, hardness of heart. In spite of his experience with God, he was hard in his heart. His experience of grace, and the blessing or the encounter with God, did not change his heart. That's the first thing you see - he was hard in his heart. The second thing you notice was, he was angry, grabbed the guy by the throat, so he had anger uncontrolled operating in his life. He'd had an experience with God, that still didn't change his anger. His anger was still his anger to be dealt with.
Notice, the next thing that you see about him is, he had absolutely no value on this other person whatsoever; totally dishonoured another believer in the house of God by the way he treated him. Then the final thing you see is, actually what was in his heart was pride. There was a deep root of pride in his heart. Now whatever experience - I've been around for years, you know. We've walked through all kinds of moves of God, and seen many kinds of things, and the thing that I have seen that's very, very common in it all, whether it's a revelation of doctrine or it's a revelation of an experience of God, or some kinds of encounters, this is what I have noticed over years without exception: that you can have all of that, but pride can lie deep in the heart, and it's reflected in how you treat people.
Jesus came to show us that loving God, also means loving the people that He created; not in a mushy way, but in a way that releases blessing to their lives. So pride in our heart is always revealed in how nice we're able to be. So if I ask if you've got pride in your heart, you say: no, of course not. You've got humility in your heart - oh well, nice of you to notice. [Laughter] The one sin people can hardly bear to admit to is pride; and yet the one thing that really is insidious, and is at the heart of the kingdom of Satan, is pride; so pride reveals itself in a number of ways. See, pride always notices the wrongs others have done - but can't see what it's done. It always notices what others have done. Did you notice? Pride will always notice what everyone else did wrong. Pride never identifies, or empathises, with the person who's had a failure; thinking they also may be a broken, hurt person, and haven't got a clue what they're doing.
I've gone through my life, and there's been areas of wounding and pain and brokenness that I had no idea were there; and in not being aware of it, I've actually hurt people over the course of my life; hurt my wife, hurt my children, hurt people around me that I love, people that have stood with me; and not even known, not even known. See, so we've got to realise that sometimes when a person hurts us, there's actually issues in the heart that they're not even aware of. Notice what Jesus said, He said: Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Hurt people hurt others. That's the nature of it. If someone's hurt, they'll hurt you; and often when you try and talk to them, they can't see it, because they've got pain and brokenness in their life. They need the restoration, and one of the things they need to do, is to get what you got, which is receive grace. Grace, the goodness of God, leads a person to become changed in their life.