See, so the kinds of things that can happen is, number one, your spirit gets wounded when people put you down. Because they release a spirit of murder against you, you can be wounded deeply in your spirit, and need to be healed. A broken spirit causes sickness in your body, so when people have been put down, often they become vulnerable to sickness, because the words have wounded their spirit. So sometimes you find people have been deeply wounded by being put down, abused in life. They actually end up very sick. The second thing is shame. Shame comes on people, because the essence of a put down is your identity is attacked, and you are made to feel and believe I'm useless, I'm no good, I'm a failure, I'm a nothing, I'm of no value, I don't even belong here. I, I, I. Message of shame is something is wrong with me, and so the devil wants to shame you continually. People may shame you. They may not even know that they're doing it.
The third thing when we get put down is, it shuts down your giftings. Now listen, you've got to understand this. You have giftings inside you. You have giftings which are an answer to problems in life. You have giftings to help people, you have giftings to express how God has made you unique. But listen, if you are echoing shame and put down, you'll never release your gifts. See when Jesus came He was full of giftings, full of anointing, full of the presence and power of God. They just said oh this is nothing, this is just a carpenter you know. What the heck could He do? You see, so in other words, they put Him down, and when they put Him down, they shut His gifts down, no gifts operated. Do not mistake, this kind of thing really affects how you operate, and how you live your life. Now just even that one scripture alone would tell you, if the friends around you are put down people, you need to change your friends. You can't thrive in that kind of poisonous, sick environment. You have to separate from it. No plant grows in a poisonous, polluted environment, and you can't grow thoroughly and properly to your full potential, if you're surrounded by people that keep knocking and put the knockers, you know, they put people down.
I've even had to withdraw from some Pastors who've got this in them. First I spoke to them about it two or three times, then I withdrew from them. I just don't want to be in an environment where people are pulling down anyone else. I don't want to be in an environment where people are scorning anyone else. The moment it starts, I get uncomfortable, and I'm about to leave. I just am not going to live in that environment anymore. I lived with enough of it growing up, and I've made resolution inside to step out of any environment where there's a knocking, shaming, putting down spirit. I either rebuke it and stand up and confront it, or withdraw from it completely, but not live in it, where it starts to rob and ebb your strength and life. You've got to do something about this thing see, and we've got to really make a decision, I'm not going to be put down. I'm going to rise up to my full potential see? It causes a loss of initiative and motivation to excel, so when you're in an environment of put down you actually lose initiative. You lose energy to get up, and do things and you don't even want to try, and not only that, you don't excel.
Now you'd be amazed how much criticism comes when you try to do something great for God. You'd be amazed how people will knock, you know, money spent on a sound system, money spent on doing a building up, money spent on making things excellent for God. I can only assume that's because in their mind, they think you give God your crap and your leftovers. I don't think that. I think we give God our very best. I think we give Him our best, and when we give Him our best, we honour Him for who He is. You don't give God your second-hands and your leftovers, but you see there's a mentality that gets like that. When we first came here into the city, my first welcome from a Pastor; oh, you'll never last here more than six months. I said thank you very much, we'll see. We'll see. It wasn't my idea to come here anyway, I never wanted to come here. God told me to come, so I expect He'll do something to help me. Within a year and a half he was gone - never join the knockers. Never join the scorners, you know? You want to walk with God, you want to be blessed in your life, the Bible says blessed is the man who doesn't sit in the seat of the scornful. Don't sit with people who are knockers, and scorners, and putters down.