See, so a person who takes on a victim mentality, their identity has now become I am a victim. I am a victim. Now you understand you can have pain and suffering in your life and experience being the victim of some situation, but that does not define your identity, who you are - unless you take on that mentality. Got the idea? So a victim mentality is a way of thinking about yourself and a way of thinking about life, where you view yourself fairly powerless in life and at the mercy of things which come against you - so it's a victim. Now one of the just - I won't go into but one of the big problems that God had with Israel, God delivered Israel, saved them out of Egypt and He had a great Promised Land to bring them in to. But what He was unable to do, unable because people wouldn't make the right choices, there are some things God can't do. He's given you free will; He can't make you change your mind. You have to choose to change your mind.
So He took them through a number of experiences called wilderness experiences, designed to break the power of victim thinking in their life and establish a faith level and confidence so they could enter the Promised Land and obtain things there. But they consistently complained and failed the opportunities that were given to them, perceived them negatively because they thought like a victim. They interpreted them negatively because they thought like a victim, and when the final time came and the opportunity to possess this inheritance that they had ahead of them, because they failed consistently to change their mentality they had never developed the faith for the big things God wanted them to have. Now that's the heart of that whole wilderness journey. God's intention and heart was to save them, get them into the Promised Land, but He had to shift their mentality through some challenging experiences of life.
But because they interpreted them negatively through a victim mindset they were unable to touch God and actually shift, so the majority of them failed to enter their inheritance. The Bible says in Hebrews 4, it warns us not to take on the same attitudes lest we end up the same way. So as a Christian you can experience being saved, water baptised, filled with the Holy Spirit, but never, never fulfil your purpose and destiny because you're unwilling to shift mentalities and outlooks. If you still think like you used to think you can't enter into the things God has for you. You've got to shift how you think; as a man thinks so he is, and that's the bit that we struggle with a bit because it requires we change. So I want to give you now three key biblical truths that are true about you. They are true about you. These things are true about you. Now you say well I don't know whether I really believe it. It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not, they're true. They're absolute truths about you.
You need to embrace these truths and think about these things. They shift your life. Genesis 1:26, and there's more I could share. I'll just keep to this area here because there are three important ones. God said let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, all the earth, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and said to them be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, birds of the air, every living thing that moves over the earth. Alright then, now today I want to just share from victim to victor, so I won't focus on all the truths here. I want to pick up a particular one.
Now you notice what God said to them. God said to them in Genesis 1:26, subdue and have dominion - so here's the first truth. You were created to win. You were created to win. In built in you, you're designed for winning in life, the ability to excel is already in you. You are created to win and the ability to excel is already within you. It's in your design. It's in how you're made up. God made you to subdue and have dominion. To subdue means something there is resisting you. Something there is a challenge to you. Something there you have to overcome. Something there you've got to assert a force and bring it under. In other words you've got to be a victor. You've got to rise up and overcome that thing, see? That's before sin came in, that was the mandate in man: have dominion. Now that's talking about man having dominion. We know that God rules; this is about you actually stirring yourself up to function like God intended you to function and bring influence over circumstances to change them so you win!