I was talking to one person, and when he got into huge stress, he'd start to hit himself. I said you've got major issues from your family background of self hate, so when conflict comes, you're beating yourself up, because you believe you need to be punished. Where did you get that from? You didn't get that from God. Someone told you that. Someone treated you that way. A lot of people who are in church, who are Christians, who are believers, carry all this kind of baggage, and so they're able to experience God when there's a strong anointing present, but not easily walk with Him. They're able to enter into relationships, but not hold them, because these issues keep coming up. They're not resolved, because their value is wrongly measured. It's measured by what experience told them, their family background told them, or other people told them, and in the end no one told them the truth. You've got to get what God says, and so that's why you get into these courses. I've had to face many things in my life - still facing things, things that I've believed, which turned out they were not true, you know? Things about myself I believed, I thought actually that's not true at all, but I believed all my life and it's affected my relationships.
You have to repent of those kinds of things, and their strongholds in the mind, attached to a hurt, an emotion. You've got to pull it all down. Why? Because you've got to love yourself, as God loved you. Why? Because you've got a mission, to have to go out into the world and minister to people, so you need to allow God to get in and work in your life, because God is not just wanting us to win the world and influence the world. He also wants us to become Christ-like, to become whole on the inside, so Jesus is the model. So we'll look at that in just a moment too, so getting the idea? So of course on the one hand, if you've got superiority, which is one form of pride, and you walk all over people, invade their boundaries and hurt them; if you've got inferiority and rejection, then what happens is people walk into your life, and walk over you and hurt you, or you become dependent on people. Either way, you don't have a healthy relationship, and when you come to serve people you get burned out.
You get burned out, because you're in it for the wrong reasons. You need to get something back, instead of just seeing serving as something you do as an overflow of your life. See Jesus came to give His life, not to be served, so when He approached people, He approached: there's needs, and I can help. He didn't come thinking listen, I need you to worship me, so I'm going to do a big thing and die on the cross, then you'll have to! There was nothing like that. He just loved people, and ministered to people, and served people. Why could He do that? Because He was very, very strong in His personal identity. He could withstand the crowds. He could withstand even His closest people leaving Him, and He said you'll all leave Me, but I am not alone, My Father is with Me. See, He's defined in His identity around a relationship with the Father, and you have to build your life that way. That's why you have to build a God-centred life, otherwise everything else falls over when the pressure comes on.
Now notice what it says; don't think more highly of himself than he ought, but think soberly. That's not a bad word, sober, because any of you who've had a drinking problem will know what that means. You know when you're sober, and you know when you're drunk. When you're drunk, you're under the influence of another thing, and you stagger round, and you have poor judgement. You fall, you make a lot of goofy - you wish you'd never done these things. The next day you think oh my God, did I do that? Oooh. See, your judgement is impaired, you make poor decisions, and you have no balance when you're under the influence of drink, or under the influence of alcohol. Notice it says, think soberly, or think with a sound mind. Now how do you get a sound mind? According to what God says about you, so when you believe what God says about you, you're thinking soberly. When you believe all that other stuff, you're under the influence of another spirit, you're drunk under the influence of something, so you speak and act crazy. That's why relationships get in so much trouble, people speak and act crazy, and they think weird things. They perceive things, you know, having a few drinks, and you start to even see things that aren't even there.