Now here's another one that's really powerful. Blaming others is proof the person has yet to embrace personal responsibility. Blaming others is proof. You hear blaming going on, it's the proof that that person has not yet embraced responsibility for their life. Now this is the core. Now once you get a hang of those three truths - I'll just give them to you back again, then we're going to look at the victim thinking and you're going to see that victims think a certain way. Anyone that's got a victim mentality, they think a certain way and realise this, that life is - life really sucks for them. They come to church and try to make everything work and somehow it never works for them, it always works for someone else. So let's go back again: You're created to win, the ability to excel is already built into you. You are created with a capacity to choose, good choices or bad choices. You have capacity always to choose, and you're created to take responsibility for your life.
Okay, now what I want to do is to show you when a person has a victim mentality they will think in a certain way. You might like to tick the number of ones you come up with and see how strong it is inside you, and if it's strong inside you then you could make some different choices. You could choose to change and your life will change. Your life will change because you made better choices. Most people wait for someone else to change, so you get in a marriage situation. Every time in a marriage situation, it's without exception one's blaming the other and waiting for them to change. Come on, what a losing attitude that is. How can you possibly win in life like that? See all you do is get resentful and angry. You can't win when you adopt that strategy. It is a losing strategy by being irresponsible. So I've jotted a few things down and so I'm going to just give them to you, just going to read them out because [unclear 00.21.06] time to think about them.
Then I'll just show you some key choices you can make that'll shift you, key choices, of course we need the Lord to help us but we've got to have this mentality and think through what we've got to change. See, it's all very well to pray God will change you, but actually you've got to change what you think. They're your thoughts you know; God's not going to change your thoughts. You've got to change - you have to work on your thought life with the word of God and changing the way you think and do things. Sometimes we need help to do it. Okay, so let's just go through. Now every one of these is the characteristics of a person with a victim mentality and life for them just doesn't go too well at all, so here it goes. The first one is they shift or avoid responsibility so it lies somewhere else, and the consequence is they feel powerless.
They shift or avoid responsibility, so a victim just doesn't actually - they just won't take responsibility for their life. They shift it somewhere else, so any situation that's happening, well it's not my fault. You can't blame me, it's not my fault! They actually put the responsibility for the whole deal outside them, and as soon as you put responsibility outside yourself you feel powerless; I can't do anything about it, I'm just waiting for them to change. I'm praying Jesus will change them. I'm waiting for them to change. Listen victim, victim, victim! Don't think that way. YOU change. Just change how you do things, how you operate things - so they shift or avoid responsibility so it lies somewhere else. The consequence is they feel powerless, but a person who's got a conquering or a winning mentality, they take full responsibility for their own actions and attitudes and as a consequence they feel empowered.
So no matter what situation there is, no matter how difficult, they say well I've got some choices I can make here. I can be responsible for my life - and they don't mix it up. This is what I'm responsible for and that's what you're responsible for. That's your stuff. This is my stuff. So a person who's a victor will think about what they're responsibility is and where it lies. They don't go round carrying other people's baggage. They don't go round picking up and carrying other people and not allowing them to be responsible. The Bible reinforces this over and over and over again. In Galatians 6 for example in the [second 00.23.06] verse, it tells us every man should bear one another's burden, which means literally that every one of us should lift crushing loads that stop a person getting up. Then straight after that a few verses later it says and every man shall bear his own burden, which is a different word - the [light, list or light 00.23.21] pack like you just get through your day.