The Following Message Has Been Transcribed And Edited For
Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation By
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Envy is an anger against something good happening to somebody. It is one of the most hurtful spirits that is hurtful to another human being. Jealousy is in the Scripture, and it is a Godly quality. He wants your worship only; in the Scripture that is jealousy. Envy is ungodly. The Scripture says it is as cruel as the grave, and we are finding out that the carnal mind is coming to puberty, and it is very destructive. It penetrates, it is a weapon, it is a spiritual weapon of the carnal mind, and it penetrates and wounds other people's souls.
I will tell anyone that will listen, anyone that is in Christ, if you discern envy in your heart resist it with everything that you have got. This is not only because you know that it is sin, but because it is a wasted effort. God the Father has enough for everybody. You do not have to be envious. Just tell Him you would like it too, but you may have to wait for it.
When you recognize envy in your heart, do not let anyone condemn you. Now, all of us are going to have to get a hold of this without condemnation. Ask the Lord to help you to do it without condemnation. Do not let your heart condemn you, do not let anyone else condemn you. The way that some people who are thinking with their carnal mind handle it, is to be in denial. Their answer to avoiding condemnation is to not look at the problem, to deny the problem. That is not God's way to deal with the problem. God wants us to look at it without condemnation. If we cannot, then we have to pray to Him for the ability. Why is this? Because denial of the problem can kill one of our loved ones.
If we have problems, most times our problems are with our immediate family. What other problem is there? It is usually with our husband, our children, or our parents. Is that not true? If we have a problem with any one of them, and we deny it or we make excuses for them, we say that it is not sin, and we give it some other name, or say that, that is just the way they are. We are killing them. As Jesus said, "You still remain in your sins." They are remaining in their sins.
As sons of God we have the ability to forgive sin so if we refuse to perceive sin as sin, if they say they did not sin against us, or they are ignorant, and we make excuses for them, their sin remains with them. Denying sin is the way that the carnal man deals with the problem. When you are a carnal man, that is a "nice" way to deal with it. You do not want to get into bitterness or unforgiveness. That is the way the carnal man is taught to deal with it, but in Christ, in the regeneration, we must look upon sin and call it what it is without condemnation. If you cannot do it, ask the Lord. He will never deny you an answer to a prayer like that. I promise you, He would not.
We are in the process today of switching over from thinking with our carnal mind to thinking with the Christ mind. God wants us to give up the old ways. Why? Because ways that worked for us when we were carnal are not going to work for us as we enter into the new age of Christ. I do not know exactly what is going to happen. I know we are a forerunner group, and that this is not being taught very much. There are not many people across the country that have entered into this stage of judgment that we are entering into. I do not know what is going to happen when the whole world enters into this stage.
The word I have for you today is that if God has called you to the judgment, it is never, never, never, never, with condemnation, because condemnation is a sin. Truth, most of the time, is not sin, although it may hurt sometimes. Judgment is on two levels. It is within our own heart, and as we take the victory in our own heart, it is to others. When we have a loved one that we are desperately trying to live with, that we are trying to survive the relationship with, the human tendency is to make excuses for them.
When you are in this place, you are killing them, because you, in Christ, have the authority to bring judgment upon them that is going to produce Christ in them, that is going to impart life to them. If you do not call it sin then the judgment is not going to fall because God only judges sin. He does not judge righteousness. If you excuse it then the judgment would not fall, and they are going to remain in their sins.
We have to start thinking, by the grace of God, with the mind of Christ. Everything that I tell you, I know you cannot do it, but my job here is to put these thoughts into your mind so that God can work with you. I know you cannot do. I cannot do it, but you have to hear the instruction for God to work with it, and that is what He is doing in this hour. That is what a preacher is supposed to do, to give you a different thought, to stimulate you to think, to stimulate you to pray so that God can deal with that thought. My job is to put the thought in your mind then the Father deals with it, and He does with it whatever He wants.
The Scripture is such a miraculous book. It can be taken on so many levels, and God will make it real to everyone that seeks Him on whatever level they can receive it, and it is in fact manifesting on every level. There are diseases where your bones rot. I am sure anyone who has a disease where the bones rot, that it is a curse. It is a curse of envy, there is not a doubt in my mind. There is also a spiritual significance to it, and depending on how and where God is working with you, that is how it applies to you.
Many years ago when the big Pentecostal revival came in, there were lots of miracles and healings. We saw many miracles of physical healing that we do not see today. We do not see them in the same numbers, and they are not as complete. Lots of times now, you will get a healing, but you still need an operation. I am getting reports from all over the country like what I went through. I got a healing, but I still needed an operation.
Why is this happening? Because when these great miracles were happening 50 or more years ago God's purpose was to make a statement in the earth that He has to power to heal. I want to tell you, try and open your heart to what I am saying. God has mercy on all of us, but He really does not care much about our bodies. He cares if you are in pain. He does not want you to be in pain, but, listen to what I am saying, He really does not care about these bodies. He cares about your heart. He cares about the seed of His son that is inside of your carnal mind which is your fallen adamic heart.
He wants to heal your heart, but the trouble is men have trouble understanding spiritual things and men have trouble comprehending things that they cannot see, so God made a statement to humanity, "I have the authority to heal."
He did it in a way that they could see and, therefore, understand. However, all these people that got healed and that got up out of wheelchairs, they died eventually, or they will die. They are still carnal men. One preacher that I knew several years ago used to express this as "a spiritual band aid." God gave them a healing, but they still died. He gave them a temporary healing. The Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself publicity. He made a world-wide public statement, "I have the authority to heal." The reason it is not happening so much any more is that now He is starting to heal us inside, but this is not preached very much, and a lot of people do not understand it.
Their hearts break because, number one, they do not see the miracles so much any more, and number two, when the healing starts to come inside, as you know, it is very stressful mentally, and it can be physically painful. He is in the business right now of healing the heart of His creation, and He will have mercy on an individual under certain circumstances.
Brethren, I am into reality. I know Christians that have died. He did not heal them, they died, and no one can tell me they died because they did not have enough faith. Scripture can be applied to the body, it can be applied to the soul depending on what God is doing with you in this hour.
I was just listening to a tape today, a three year old tape, where I was telling everyone how sick I had been and that it was a miracle that I was there preaching that night. I listened to myself say, "You know, I know I am a preacher, and I hear about all of these preachers going to India and Africa and I do not know, but it is going to take one miracle for God to get me in a condition to go." He gave me the miracle. It is not that He loves me more than He loves the person that died, but He has ordained that I am called to carry this word, and I lived and the other person apparently had nothing more to do in the earth and they died. That is a hard word that upsets a lot of carnal people, but it is the truth.
The Lord told me today that this congregation is a congregation of spiritual teenagers, and that most of the church is in kindergarten or grade school. Here we have teenagers, but it is time to grow up. As a human being, I apologize for any and all hurt that I have brought to you, but my Lord has commanded me to push you out of the nest. I am sorry if you break your wing, but He has bruised you and He will heal you. I say to you under the anointing (the Scripture, I believe, is in the book of Proverbs), "Beat him until he is blue, he shall not die." You shall not die.
We are going to talk about denial. I want to define some terms for you because one of the things the Lord has shown me is, frequently there is a lack of communication because two people can be using the same word, but it does not mean the same thing to both people. I want to define some terms and relate them to the problem of denial.
What is denial? Denial is the failure of a person to recognize and identify sin, usually because it is just too painful. Denial is sin because everything that is not of faith is sin, but once again there is no condemnation in this. We have to see what we are doing if Christ is going to come forth in us. We must assist Him if He is going to come forth in us.
Denial is the refusal to acknowledge the truth about something as God sees it. We are talking about the truth, not your opinion. It has nothing to do with your opinion. In other words, if there is a discussion between two people and one person says, "That is witchcraft," and the other person says, "I am sorry, but I do not think so," this does not glorify God.
It is not a question of whether Believer A is right or Believer B is right. There is a truth in Christ. Either the spirit that manifested was witchcraft or it was not. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your opinion. God is challenging us to give up our opinions and to get in touch with His mind and to start to see things as He sees them.
For the time and to the extent that we are refusing to do that, or that we cannot do that, or that we simply are not doing it, we are in denial of the spiritual truth as God sees it. It does not glorify Him in any way to say, "I do not see it that way." We have got to get HIS mind. There is not a doubt in my mind that if we are willing to give up that manifestation of pride which says, "I do not see it that way," if we are willing to lay it down, God would let us see it as He sees.
I pray continuously, "Dear God, let Your mind be my mind, every thought that I think, let it be Your mind, and if it is not Your mind, convict me of it, let me know the difference."
Our opinions are worthless, they are dung, and they are destructive to our mind and to the mind of our loved ones. Frequently, we will identify a problem, we know it is a problem. There is a knife hanging out of our back so we know there is some kind of a problem, but we identify the problem with our carnal mind. Did you ever hear the expression that if the first step of the ladder is no good you will never get to the top?
If you are making a dress, and you start off with a pattern that is three times your size, no matter how much effort you put into the construction of this garment, you will never be able to get any use out of it. You can do a perfect job of cutting it, and sewing it, and making buttonholes, and then you go to put it on and it does not fit.
If you make a mistake at the very beginning, and you keep on going, if you take a wrong direction at the beginning and you keep on going, everything might look like it is right to you but you are going in the wrong direction. It is like taking a kit of makeup because you want to bless somebody, and you have all of the foundation, and the powder, and eyebrow pencil and you get a kit that is perfect for you, a white person, and you take it to a black person. They cannot wear your makeup.
You have to be in sync with the mind of God from the very first step, because from the point at which you go off, the point at which you separate from His mind, from that point forth, no matter how good a job you are doing, your reasoning has got to be off.
If you have looked at one part of the problem with your carnal mind, every conclusion that you draw after that is going to be wrong. Denial is identifying the problem wrongly and dealing with it with a mind apart from God. What are you denying? As far as God is concerned, you are denying the problem. People will deny things in very different ways. Sometimes they will deny that it is there. If there is an alcoholic in the family, some people will deny that the person is an alcoholic.
Someone told me recently that their father used to beat up their mother, and the next morning when he was confronted he would say, "I did not touch her, she walked into a wall." Now, he did not deny that there was a problem. He saw her black and blue eyes. He knew that she got beat. He did not deny that there was a problem. What he denied was the truth of how she came to be in that condition.
Denial is the incorrect identification of a problem. The correct identification usually must come from the mind of Christ; although, I have known unsaved men and women, particularly in the professions, doctors and lawyers, that sometimes do have an ability to size up a problem and deal with it. We see people that help alcoholics and drug addicts; they are psychologist and social workers, but right now we are talking about people "in Christ" for two reasons.
First of all, if we are dealing with a human problem, a personality problem, an alcohol problem, as good as these psychologists and social workers are, they are there without spiritual power, and they are doing a great deal of good without spiritual power.
Someone said to me once, and I take no glory for this, it is all Christ, "I go and sit in the psychologist's office, I sit there hour after hour, and I walk out and I feel the same, and I talk to you and you do not tell me anything very much different than what they tell me, but the counsel together with the power of God just sets me free." If the world is doing so much good with alcoholics and drug addicts, what can we do in Christ? We can do miracles in Christ. Denial is an incorrect identification of an existing problem.
Let us talk about the term, "to enable." That is a very common word that is used in alcoholic circles. What does "to enable" mean? It means you agree with their incorrect identification of the problem. To enable someone is to agree with an incorrect identification of the problem. You might say, "That is right, you did not touch her, I saw her walk into the wall." Therefore, the man that beat up the woman does not have to repent. He does not have to confess that he has a problem. He does not have to confess that he needs to get some help, or he is going to kill the poor woman one of these days. He does not have to accept responsibility for it and, therefore, does not have to repent.
Let us put it in Scriptural terms. He does not have to confess his sin and, therefore, does not have to repent of his sins, and does not have to take any action to help either himself or his victim.
If you have read any of the books on AA, etcetera, every person involved in compulsive behavior has someone most of the time that they are in intimate relationship with, who enables them. I used to know someone who was an alcoholic, and once a month he would wreck the whole house. There was a statue in front of the house, it was like a bird bath with a statue in it. He would wreck the statue, he would break all the windows in the house, and knock the door down. When he woke up the next morning he was over his drunk. He would go out and buy material and fix the house. He was a carpenter. He put in all new windows, and he bought a new statue.
I am told that you could drive through this neighborhood, and if you did not know what was going on you could think you were losing your mind because you drove through one day, and you looked at this house almost destroyed, and you drove through the next day and it was restored.
People thought they were going crazy. He would say, "I never wrecked the house." Denial, denial, and his wife said, "Oh no, wreck the house? No, he does not even drink. I never saw him with a drink in his hand. He just got mad, he had a bad day at work." Now listen to this, the man has got a problem. He has got a victim, usually his wife, or it could be any relationship, children, friends, it goes any way. One person has the problem and is usually aggressive, although you do not have to be aggressive, but there is a problem, and the other person comes along and says, "Do not look at it that way, he just had a bad day."
That is so we do not have to deal with the problem. There is no help for you. In denial, there is no help for you. As painful as the problem is, you will just continue in an ungodly pattern until you live out your life in this earth, and you pass away.
Let me make some comments on "ungodly pattern." What is an "ungodly pattern?" We have patterns in our life that we follow. Some of them are pretty harmless. I get up in the morning, and I have breakfast. We have patterns in life, and there is nothing wrong with that. Those are harmless behavioral patterns. However, sometimes we have destructive behavior patterns. Sometimes we refuse to clean the house. We had a woman in this ministry when it first started, and she could not clean her house. She had raised six children in a filthy house. She could not clean the house. It was an emotional paralysis.
For the purposes of this meeting, we are talking about emotional ungodly patterns. What is an emotional ungodly pattern? The man wrecks the house, and her son tells her he has a problem, and the woman says, "Oh no." That is an ungodly pattern that has been going on for so long that you have cut a groove in the track, and you keep going round and round, and it is very hard to get out. There are emotions involved in getting out. The number one emotion is fear. How am I going to deal with it?
Do you know that when a person has been abused, there is a very high percentage chance that they will wind up in a relationship with the same pattern. People who have been abused go one of two ways. Either they get into another relationship where they are still a victim, or they find it within themselves to become strong, and they become the abuser and marry someone who will become their victim. What has happened here is that they are in the same pattern, but their role has changed.
In the first relationship they were the victim, and someone was abusing them. Then when they grow up, they marry and become the abuser. Such a person can be married and get divorced and get married again, but still find them self in the same pattern.
You are in an ungodly pattern. Either you are in the same role as when you were a child or you overcame that role, and you became the tyrant, and you marry someone who is going to permit you to victimize them. Then you have children, they grow up, and they have the same or similar pattern. It goes down the family line. In the church we call it a curse.
Recently, there was a family I was looking at. They had three children, and God was just showing me the situation in the family. He said, "Well, look at this child's marriage, it is a duplication of the parent's marriage that they came out off. Look at this child, the role is reversed. With child #1, she is in a marriage where she is playing the role of her mother. Child #2 is in her own marriage where she is playing the role of the father. It is the same pattern with some changes, if not exactly the same."
People that are blessed enough to be born into a family that is rooted in Christ and a Godly family where they are taught to love and respect one another, they have no problems making Godly marriages. They automatically choose a mate that is kind to them, that communicates with them, and that is responsible toward them.
We repeat our childhood experiences. If they have been bad childhood experiences, if we grew up in a family where there has been no communication, where there has been no respect, where there has been no honor, we will marry someone who will help us to repeat the situation. Why? Because that is the only situation that we are comfortable with. We have lived in it for maybe 20 years until we get married. We have learned how to cope with it. We have devised a plan to cope with it.
Some people hide, they become very quiet. Others become very aggressive and argumentative, but after 20 years of living in this dysfunctional family we have devised a plan of dealing with the problem.
Why would we want to go out and marry someone where this pattern would not appear? We would not know how to relate to them. There are people in my life that have a problem with authority figures. They have been abused by authority figures, and from the day they meet me they expect me to abuse them, and if I do not abuse them they do not believe it. They think that I am thinking abusive thoughts towards them.
In Christian circles, it is called a curse. In worldly circles, it is called an ungodly pattern in the mind. It must be broken, and there is only one way to break it, and that is to wreck it. This does not come without pain in the church or in the world. You go to psychotherapy for ten years, it is painful.
By and large, psychologists will help you with your day-to-day problems. If you come in and you are having a problem with somebody, and your thinking is not Godly in the problem, they will give you another thought. Such as, "Maybe she did not mean to do this terrible thing to you, maybe she did not mean to reject you, maybe she just forgot." They will give you another thought. Psychoanalysis may take 10 years and thousands of dollars, and it is very painful and you want to know what it accomplishes? It accomplishes what Christ is offering you right here. It accomplishes what He has done for me, a whole new personality, and a whole new life to go with that personality.
What He is doing here is destroying our carnal minds and giving us His mind, and everybody here at some level, in some measure, whatever it is for you, is thinking wrong or you would not be here. You would be out ministering to others. There is no condemnation in this. He is here to destroy your ungodly thinking, so when I say something to you at least pray about it. It is not to your edification to argue with me because I am the one that has been through it. I am the one that has had a deliverance, and I am the one that He has raised up here. At least pray about it, because I know what I am talking about. I understand you cannot just take my word for it, but it does not edify to argue with me over it. If you do not agree, you do not agree, but take it to the Lord.
COMMENT: I am having difficulty with personal reflections that I do not have with doctrine. I can look at doctrine and take the time to judge it, but when it is personal things, I have to look at it, and if I cannot see it or agree with it, I cannot go along with it without the Lord revealing it to me. I thought we should just be sticking mostly with doctrine.
PASTOR VITALE: God is doing that here, but He is also dealing with our minds. Why? Because we will never understand the doctrine unless we are understanding it with the mind of Christ. Our carnal mind does not want us to understand this doctrine. This is Armageddon, it is the battle of the mind.
This is warfare of the mind, the mind of Christ against the carnal mind. You are not just here for doctrine. That is a big mistake for who ever believes that. You are not in any church just for doctrine because until we are in full stature there has to be some room for improvement.
What God is dealing with right now is the thinking of the carnal mind that is influencing us. God does not want us to be influenced by the carnal mind any more. He wants to be the only force that influences us. It goes two ways. You cannot understand this doctrine unless your carnal mind gets crushed, and as the doctrine comes forth it will crush your carnal mind. It is working together. Why? Because this doctrine is the language of Christ Himself. That is why it is so different than the doctrine that is in the church in the imputed anointing.
The men who preach under the imputed anointing are carnal men preaching under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, but this doctrine is coming forth from the very Christ mind.
COMMENT: As a minister, can you discern and list all the carnal things in my mind? Can you discern all the carnality and list them so that I can deal with them, or do you have to wait?
PASTOR VITALE: I pretty much have to wait until God shows it to me. I do not sit down and analyze you and see all your faults. I try very hard not to look at people's faults. The way this ministry works is that God brings you into relationships in the ministry. You are all in a relationship with me, and we are having relationships with one another. As I perceive wrong thinking in your mind, He has given me the job of pointing it out to you, and a violent conflict is never of God.
Even if I am wrong, I am doing the job that God gave me, so fighting with me over it can never glorify God. Never. I hope you can understand that I am not your enemy. I am here to help Christ come forth in you. I am here to help convert you into Christ.
Sometimes it happens that if someone has developed in their childhood an ungodly pattern of rebellion against authority, they bring that against every authority figure in their life. If they grew up in a dysfunctional family, and they developed rebellion against their parents (this happens in almost every dysfunctional family because they are so angry at their parents for not doing what they are supposed to be doing for them, their child mind knows this, and rebellion develops), when they get married, they run a very high chance of bringing it into their marriage. They bring it in, either in the same role, or in the opposite role and project it onto every authority figure that they have.
I know for years, I was in rebellion against every employer that I had. When you do this, it is not fair to yourself, and it is not fair to the person, because, just like a person in a second or third marriage, you are bringing all the baggage to them. You are bringing all the bad experiences, all of the hurts that have accumulated in your life, and you are projecting them onto this other person.
The thing that is so vicious about it (and I am not calling anybody vicious, this is the viciousness of the sin in your mind that hates you because you are coming into Christ), is that the person that is doing this really, really, really believes that their perception of this other person is true, and very frequently it is the farthest thing from the truth.
It is sin unto yourself because in your mind you are living a lie about this person, and lies never glorify God. It is sin unto the other person, because it puts them in a bondage. No matter what they do, no matter how hard they try, they cannot convince you that they love you or that they are for you, because you have, in your mind, put them in a box, unconsciously.
You have made a judgment that this is what they are, that this is what they are like, you are not going to let them do it to you again, and you are up there ready to fight someone who has never harmed you at all.
When I went to the convention last year, the pastor said something that really blessed me. I would like to share it with everyone. He was giving a short lecture to the people that were taking a tour of the church. We had stopped in his office to see his office. This man has a thousand people in his church, and he said to us, "Every time somebody comes up here and sits in this chair to see me, I try with all the strength I have, to meet them as if I am meeting them for the first time." What he is saying is, with all the strength he has in Christ, when he interacts with a human being he forgets every hurt they have ever done to him, and he looks at them as a brand new fresh relationship, giving the person every benefit of the doubt.
Some of us cannot do it. Some of us are in a bondage in our mind, and we do not even know that it is there.
You will find this in situations where people have multiple marriages. They keep getting married and getting divorced. Well, what is wrong? Sometimes they keep marrying the same type, and the marriage is no good. Sometimes they marry people, and they do not give them a chance because they are looking at them through myopic eyes ("myopic" means "shortsighted" or "blurred vision"), which distorts the person's true image. They are looking at them through the other person, and it is very common in the world, but in Christ this cannot continue, if Christ is to come forth in us. We are to see everybody with the eyes of Christ.
We have people that are very well-meaning people and are trying to live for God, and they will be in a state of mind where they "forgive" and they go on, but it is really a religious work. God wants to bring His Christ forth in us, and He wants us to relate with people through that mind, not through a carnal mind that is going to "forgive," but through the mind of Christ. If there is anything like this in any of our minds, He wants it torn down. It has got to come down.
This is something very important to take to the Father in prayer. You have to ask Him to show you if you are doing this in any way, if you are looking at people through a screen, and are not seeing them as they really are.
I saw a comedy movie recently, and the man's wife was completely freezing him out. He would talk to her, and she would answer him with one word and put her nose back in the book. She wanted nothing to do with him. She was totally withdrawn; she would not talk to him and she would not relate to him. He was in bed, and she was going into the bathroom, and he asked her for a glass of water. She would not bring it to him. She got into bed, and he was trying desperately to communicate with her, and he said to her, "Why are you so angry with me?" and she said, "I am not angry with you." Denial.
Why do people deny? They do not want to deal with it. He starts to move closer to her, and she said, "Do not come close to me. Stay right on your side of the bed and do not move." He said, "Well, would you tell me why you are angry at me?" She said, "All right, I will tell you why I am angry. You never talk to me, you are completely alienated from me, you have put up a wall between us. Every time I talk to you, you do not answer, and I cannot stand it any more."
She said everything that she is doing to this man that was trying desperately to communicate with the woman that he is married to and living with. Now I want to suggest something to you, brethren. There is only one way to deal with a mind that is in that condition, and God showed it to you in your dream. That mind has got to be punched.
Now, anyone listening to this tape, do not go and say that Pastor Vitale said to go and punch your wife. It is a spiritual thing. You said the other night that I was hammering at you. I was. There is no other way.
Whether you get the treatment in the church, or whether you go into a drug program, or you go to a psychologist, there is no other way. That mind set must be torn down. The way it is torn down is through the impartation of truth which is usually resisted by the person with the problem, so you have to hear it again, and hear it again, and hear it again. It is a warfare, whether it is in the church or whether it is coming from secular psychologists or whatever, and it is painful. Ask anybody that has been in any form of therapy. It is very, very painful, but there is no other way. It has to come down.
In a recent meeting, I stated that XXXX had been victimized and that she was abused, and there was nothing ungodly about saying those words. That is the truth. It is important that you take this before the Lord because I said the word "victimized," and your carnal mind heard "unloved." It is very important to understand what your mind did. What you mind did was that it interpreted what I said. Communication is when we succeed at understanding what the other person is saying. For you to interpret my words is making me something that I am not. That is a problem in anybody's life, because I did not say that, and I did not mean that.
I was not hurting the person, I was trying to help her. Your mind made it into something that was hurting her, you stood up to defend her, you interpreted what I said, and you totally misunderstood me. I do not doubt that you were grieved in your spirit, but maybe you did not fully comprehend what was grieving you. This is definitely something to bring before the Lord because it has happened several times with us. You think that I mean something, and I do not mean anything of the sort.
COMMENT: You tell us to test the spirit, and each of us moves differently in the spirit.
PASTOR VITALE: That is not trying the spirit. We will have to talk about what trying the spirit is. That is not trying the spirit.
It is an ungodly thing, it is dangerous to yourself, and dangerous to your loved ones, if you are doing it in your family. It is not fair to them because it is denying them the right to be who they are. When someone does this, what they are doing is making that person something that they are not. It puts them in a jail, and there is nothing that they could do for you to see them as they really are, because you have this thought in your mind. It is not a good thing.
You have to be responsible for what you say. When you stood up, you did not say, "I do not approve of the method." When you stood up, you went into a whole dialogue about her being loved, and what you were doing was accusing me of harming her, and you arose to her defense. This is what happened. You misinterpreted what I was doing. Now, right now, I am responding to the words.
You totally misinterpreted what I said, and that is a very serious business and something to put before the Lord. We are not to interpret people's statements. Communication is my understanding of what you think, and your understanding of what I think, not interpreting what we think.
I have had people come to me, and I have said certain words, and they say, "That is what you mean," and I say, "No, that is not what I mean." What that does is, make me something that I am not. With regard to your thinking that you did not like the way that I handled it, you are entitled to not like the way I handled it, but you had no right to interfere, because I am the head of the ministry, and I was ministering to her.
What you did was challenge my authority as head of the ministry. You do not balance what the minister is doing. I was ministering to her, and you cut right into that ministry and counteracted what I was saying to her. It is not to be done in the ministry. If you think that I was not handling it right you have the privilege of prayer, but not to hinder me at what I am doing.
I want to talk about "victimization." Let us take the word "victimize." Does anyone have a definition for victimize?
COMMENT: Scapegoat?
PASTOR VITALE: To be put in a position where you are being hurt so that somebody else can be gratified. For example, if you have a TV set, and there is another person who does not have a TV set, and they come and steal your TV set, you have been victimized by that person. They think that they have a right to steal your TV set, but you never told them to do it, and now you do not have a TV set. You have been victimized by that person. They have taken something from you to gratify themselves. You are their victim. That is a natural expression.
We see spiritual and emotional victimization also. It is very, very common to see women victimized by their husbands, men who frequently do not come home. I met a woman once who was married at a young age. She was very overwhelmed with romantic love. He was a famous scientist, and her eyes were all lit up and he married her, and in her words, "he put her on a shelf and never looked at her again." He just wanted a wife because he was a famous scientist. He wanted a wife and a home and a family.
Now, there is nothing wrong in getting married for those reasons if the other person is in agreement, but she had her hopes and her dreams, and he was not honest with her. He let her think what she was thinking, and when they got married she found out that he had no intention of doing everything that he promised. This woman's dreams were stolen from her. She had a dream of a certain kind of marriage and a certain kind of life. She was victimized by him.
Some women victimize men. Where women victimize men is where they usually want their money, although I hear that is changing these days. It used to be that way years ago. When women did not have very high paying jobs, they would marry a man who had a good job and then not do the best they could to love him. That is victimization.
We can be a victim of life. Those of us that are mature know how life can be very painful. How many miscarriages did you have?
COMMENT: Ten.
PASTOR VITALE: Ten miscarriages, that is a hard thing; ten miscarriages, that is a hard thing. Some people could look at it and say, "a victim of life, a victim of a curse, a victim of a problem."
One could be a victim of a relative, a victim of a mother or father, or husband, or son, or daughter. A scapegoat is also a victim, but different from a victim, in that a scapegoat is blamed for things. We see that this is very common in close relationships, such as husband and wife, mother and daughter. The adult or one of the spouse says, "It is not that I do not want to visit your mother, but my wife does not want to go." The scapegoat is also a victim, but a victim is not always a scapegoat.
Let us talk about "abuse." An abused person is also a victim, but abuse more commonly refers to destructive, harmful things. You can lose your TV set and maybe you will feel bad for a minute, but that is not really abuse. There is such a thing as physical abuse. You can be battered, you can be beaten by somebody, and there is something that is very real which is emotional abuse.
You can be battered with somebody's tongue. You can be verbally abused, and verbal abuse is not just the words. Verbal abuse can be abuse with words, such as what we call four-letter words or curse words, or they can be acceptable conversations, but they can be propelled by an abusive spirit.
What is an abusive spirit? The spirit of witchcraft, the spirit of Jezebel, spirit of pride and spirit of envy. A spirit of pride can be very penetratingly destructive, and a spirit of envy too. Those are basically the warhead spirits, the spirits that have warheads on them. They enter into your heart and really hurt you. Then we also have mind abuse, where somebody is continuously just denying the truth and telling you that it did not happen that way.
It can be one of two ways. Either they do not remember correctly, and they insist that it was another way, or they are doing it on purpose for whatever their reasons. It can be conscious, or it can be unconscious, a confusion of the facts and circumstances. It is a form of mind abuse that can really be very harmful to a child.
I know someone once who came into this kind of therapy after a very difficult childhood. They were told, "Your mind has been so confused by your dysfunctional family that you could not tell the difference between day and night. If you knew it was day, and they told you it was night you would think that maybe it was really night out there." That is how much their mind was abused by denial of the truth. Children have perception, and they look at things, and they see how it happened and the adult who is God to them comes along and says, "Oh no, that is not what happened." That is mental abuse.
Then there is emotional abuse where you refuse to love somebody, a child or a marriage partner. People can get a divorce if their spouse would not touch them. Emotional abuse is grounds for divorce. There are many different kinds of abuse. I would like to speak about one more word. It is called the love/hate syndrome, but before I go on to that, I want to finish talking about trying the spirit.
Trying the spirit tries the spirit that is propelling the words. It has nothing to do with trying the words. It is asking the Lord to let you understand which spirit is speaking the words. You do not try the spirit by interpreting someone's words.
You have to ask the Lord to help you every time you make a decision, because when you said you did not like what was coming forth, you were saying that was not Christ in me. It is a problem not to be able to discern Christ, and the reason we had the warfare was that some people discerned it, and some people did not, which is fine. It was a new order mass deliverance, but good has to come out of it.
Everyone here, if you open your heart, God will surely witness the truth to you. It is essential. We cannot continue not being able to discern Christ in conflict. Christ is in the conflict. He is in conflict, and He is in war with our carnal mind. If every time you see a conflict, you just assume that Christ would not do that, you are making a big mistake because He does do that.
You have to get before the Lord and ask Him to help you with this and work with Him, because what is happening in this ministry is that Christ is really stirring up, and He is becoming very active, and people who cannot discern Him are attacking me. The Lord has to do the work. I am not asking for anyone to do any religious work. God has to convince you, but this ministry has to pull together because I remind you we are the eldership, the foundation (on top of Jesus) of a ministry that He is building here.
The kind of thing that happened Friday night cannot continue, where I am ministering to somebody, and I am getting attacked by two other people.
That cannot possibly glorify God and, at the very least, if you really felt that it was not Christ, the thing to do was to pray. You say, "Father let her reveal Christ," but to stand up and openly attack me is defeating the entire purpose of what God is doing here. I am not your enemy, brethren. It does not matter what you think. The only thing that matters is the truth, and if you open your heart I know the Lord will tell it to you. I am the head of the ministry, and I am here to minister to people. If you do not approve of the way that I am doing it, it is not appropriate for you to stand up and attack me. You do have the right to pray.
You were used, you were victimized by your carnal mind to interfere with the work of Christ. The major point is that even if you were right in that it was not Christ in me, the way you dealt with it was ungodly because I am the head, and you interfered with my ministry. That is never acceptable. Please pray about it. There is a heavy spirit of rebellion coming against me, and I believe you are carrying a childhood problem, and maybe a problem from your marriage, and you are putting it on me.
I see a pattern in your life where you feel yourself to be the "defender of the children." You thought that I was abusing the sister, and you rose up to defend her, but this is not your childhood family, and this is not your marriage. This is the House of Christ, and you cannot do that. You cannot attack me like that.
I want to tell you this without any condemnation, that you are hurting me. I was in a very difficult situation, I was being attacked, your carnal mind victimized you to join with the enemy, and I was wounded in my soul. I understand fully that you think that you are doing the right thing, and I am telling you that it is a spirit of rebellion, and sometimes it is Jezebel, and it is cutting my heart out. It is crucifying me.
The point of it is even if you were right, you had no right to do what you did because, among other things, you really embarrassed me in standing up and saying what you said about me, but that is the least of it. It does not matter that I am embarrassed. My pride will have to live with that.
You can have a strong personality and channel it in God. I have a very strong personality, and it can be channeled in a godly manner, but the kind of behavior where you come against me like that is very ungodly. I want you to know that you wounded me, and my job is to just put it in English and give you the understanding.
Do you understand that no matter what you were feeling, that the spirit that you rose up in was not Christ, because Christ would never have attacked me? It was a wrong spirit. The spirit was not Christ.
You have been hurting me because an aggressive spirit has been coming at me through you, and I know that if you knew it, you would never let it happen. This is what has been happening. I have not been attacking you, there is a battle going on between the Christ in me and your carnal mind, and your carnal mind is receiving the wounds of Christ.
There is a battle going on between your carnal mind and the authority that Christ has placed in me. I am sure that you must feel it, but it is Christ coming against your carnal mind, which is not sin. When your carnal mind comes against Christ, it is sin. What He is challenging you to do is, by His grace and in His time, to recognize it. Then, instead of rising up against me, to attack your carnal mind.
Now, on to the Love/hate syndrome. Has anybody ever heard of a love/hate syndrome? Give us your definition.
COMMENT: It is where you love a person but hate the things that they do.
PASTOR VITALE: No, that is not a love/hate syndrome. Loving the person and hating what they do is a Godly thing. It is a Godly thing to love the person and hate the sin. A love/hate syndrome is an ungodly pattern, and we talked about patterns earlier. A love/hate syndrome is a relationship whereby one minute, or one day, or from event to event you either love or hate the person.
Now, it is not that you hate what they do, but you love/hate the person, and this is a reality. People are into this in the world, and psychologists know that it is possible to love and hate somebody at the same time. They know it is possible to hate somebody that you love, and it usually only occurs in close, intense relationships between husbands and wives and parents and children.
It occurs in relationships that should be intimate, where you are really close, where you have a close soul tie. Something goes wrong in that relationship, and one day you are sort of day dreaming, and all of a sudden you realize that your mind is filled with hate for that person that you are supposed to love, and you are horrified. You are horrified that you could feel hatred for your husband. A man is horrified that he could feel hatred for his wife. A child is horrified that he can feel hatred for his mother, and a mother is horrified that she could feel hatred for a child.
I am not talking about hatred of the things that they do at that moment that you hate them, but that you hate them, then it passes, and then you love them.
For example, someone who is an alcoholic. You love them, they are the most wonderful husband in the world, you life is wonderful, and boom! He goes on a binge, and he hits you, and he wrecks the house, and maybe he abuses the children, and at that moment you hate him. Only Christ could love at that moment. I declare to you (I am going out on a limb), only Christ could love when your husband is beating you. I do not believe that there is a human being alive that can love a man the moment that he is breaking her arm. I do not believe it is possible.
If you find yourself in a close relationship, if you find yourself in that intimate relationship with someone who is abusing you or victimizing you, it should not be surprising to you that at fleeting moments, thoughts of hatred are passing through your mind. I think it is very understandable to experience this, but some people are so horrified at the possibility that they could hate their own child or their own mate that they block it out of their mind.
We are dealing with denial again. "I cannot possibly hate my husband." "I cannot possibly hate my mother." "I cannot possibly hate my child." Do you know how this was first discovered? I do not know if it was first discovered by Freud, but it was first documented by Freud. I believe it was Freud who first documented this condition of love/hate, and he found it in a woman whose mother was a cripple.
The young woman had to spend her whole life caring for the mother. If I am not mistaken, she could not go to college, and it certainly interfered with her ability to get married. Her whole life was consumed with taking care of her mother, and she had been raised in a very strict traditionally Christian home. She was raised with Christian morals where you take care of your mother. She did everything; she fed her, she washed her.
To the undiscerning eye, she was the best that a daughter could be, but in her heart of hearts she hated her mother because her mother's illness had stolen her whole youth and her whole lifetime. Outside of Christ, she could not overcome this hate. What happened to her was that she became very ill, and when Freud examined her, he coined the phrase "an hysterical illness." This was an illness that began with deep emotion of rage, anger, and hatred, and it manifested in a physical affliction.
Here we see the classic example of a love/hate syndrome. She loved her mother, but the circumstances of her life made her a slave to her mother's illness. Being a fallen human being, she did the best she could, but she could not take the victory over her emotions. What was the best that she could do? The best that she could do was that she ministered to her, she cared for her, she did not run away. She did it. She took the victory over her behavior, but she could not take the victory over her emotions.
We have a love/hate syndrome, and I declare to you that no matter how much you love the members of your family, no matter how much the members of your family love you, when they are abusing you, when they are victimizing you, at that moment I have a lot of trouble saying that, that is a sign of love. Now, I am not saying that you are not loved. I am not saying that your family does not love you. I am saying that there is such a thing as a love/hate syndrome.
Why am I telling you this? I am telling you this because I cannot believe that when someone is abusing you and victimizing you over a period of years on a regular basis that it is accurate to say to someone, "Rest in peace, you are loved."
What that would do to me if I were that person (and I have been that person in the past), is to make me think I was crazy. If somebody was victimizing me, and somebody was abusing me, and someone came to me and said, "They are just ignorant, you are loved," that would make me think I was crazy.
What that would say to me is, "Is this a sign of love? I must be losing my mind," but if someone said to me that there is such a thing as a love/hate syndrome, and it is possible for those who love you to abuse you, I can relate to that, but do not tell me that they are loving me when they are abusing me. When they are abusing me they are in the hate mode.
The way I started out this message tonight was to tell you that we are supposed to be in training to deal with problems the way Christ deals with them, and that before Christ came into our life we were taught as good Christians to make excuses for people because that was how we survived. They did not mean any harm, and this way the family stayed together and the status quo was maintained because what else are we going to do? When Christ comes into our life, He is never glorified in the status quo, never. He wants us to deal in righteousness with righteous feelings and with righteous words.
Your feelings were righteous, but your words did not come out right. That was what happened. He wants to instruct us to put the two together.
We have to start by analyzing what happens to us. We have to look at it, and we have to ask God to help us to look at it with His eyes. Then we have to ask Him to teach us how to deal with it. If you have any experience in your life at all, any reason to believe that in the past maybe the right words did not come out of your mouth, I highly recommend to you that you call someone in Christ and say to them, "This is how I think God told me to deal with this. Can you give me a second witness that it was God?" I encourage you to do that, so that we talk about it before the deed is done. I encourage you to do that, but I cannot force you to do it.
At the very least I can give you another thought, and you can put it before the Lord and say, "Well, was that you, Lord, or is this you?" I make myself available to help you in that way. I feel very bad that it never occurred to me to talk to you this way before the incident. It never occurred to me that I should have done that. I am available to everybody always for counseling in any problem that you are in, that you are not sure how to proceed. I am available to discuss it with you and to give my opinion, if you ask for it.
God wants to be glorified in you. He does not want you hiding your head in the sand like an ostrich any more, and neither does He want you dealing with the problem in an ungodly way. Anyone who is dealing with problems in ungodly ways is going to be corrected. I did make that mistake on Thursday night when I ended the meeting too early because the guest speaker wanted to leave. I had never had a guest speaker.... well I had one guest speaker in five years.... and he obviously wanted to leave, and that was how I dealt with it, by bringing the meeting to a close. That was the wrong way of dealing with it. I should have told him he was free to leave and continued with the people here. I made a mistake, and I stand corrected. We have all got to make changes, and grow. Growth and change must take place, and until we are in full stature there is always a new experience that we never had before.
Just to sum this up, we are to wait for the instruction of the Lord to confront an issue. The first thing we do is identify the problem, pray it through, and make sure that we are looking at it with the eyes and the mind of Christ. We check our self out for condemnation. We check our self out for a wrong spirit in us, because it is very common that the people God sends to us are usually people that love righteousness.
I believe the people that are called to full stature are people that have a love of righteousness, usually from birth, but frequently, because of their childhood and life experiences, their ability to express that righteousness does not come out in a way that would glorify God. You have the raw material, and what He wants to do is to put a new coat on you that He should be fully glorified in the raw material that you have. He wants the whole thing from the beginning to end to glorify Him. He wants your righteousness to be revealed through a correct identification of the problem, and a correct solution of the problem, and a correct delivery of the solution. He wants what you say to be said in the right spirit.
As I told you before, there are people in the world that have this knowledge. There are people in the world that are born into families, usually families of professionals, who grow up knowing this, because they see their parents practicing it from their earliest years. Usually, they are the children of attorneys, people that have been trained to deal with people, to communicate, true communication.
I will say it again. It is important to understand what the other person means. It does not matter what words they say, you have to understand their meaning of the words, not your meaning of the words. It is really, really important. Communication is to understand what they are really trying to say. That is communication. If you have noticed, you will hear me say to you frequently, "What do you mean by that? Am I misunderstanding you?" Or, "Oh, I thought you meant that."
It is very important that we learn to use the words to express our thoughts that are going to convey that thought. Everybody here wants to live for God. Nobody means any harm. Everybody here that I know is living for God. We have to learn to choose the words that are going to express what we are feeling. A lot of people do not know how to do that, and what happens is that they use other words. The other person thinks they mean something else, and it is a mess. It is very important that you ask God to help you to use the right words.
Use the right words, and stay in the right spirit. I will tell you one more time, Christ does rebuke. We read it in Psalm 18. Some people make the mistake of thinking that any strong rebuke cannot be Christ. That is an error. Christ rebukes.
Psalm 18, Verses 24-26 say, "Therefore hath the Lord recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in His sight. With the merciful Thou will show Thyself merciful; With an upright man Thou will show Thyself upright. With the pure Thou will show Thyself pure; and with the froward Thou will show Thyself froward."
In the King James Version, my margin says that "froward" means "perverse." How can a man be perverse? The Lord is not speaking about sexual perversion here. He is speaking about a perverse heart. If you studied with us in our series #71, "Daniel's Beasts," you will have discovered through that series, that in comparison to the heart and the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ, the heart and mind of the fallen man is perverse. It is grotesque. It is so perverse and so far from God that, when a fallen man, the carnal mind, looks at the glorified Christ, fallen man thinks that Christ is perverse. Likewise, in this hour, men who are not yet in full stature (but through whom Christ is being revealed), are considered perverse by carnally minded men.
Carnally minded men will look at Christ manifesting in a person of God and call that spirit evil, wicked, attacking, witchcraft, Jezebel. This is because they think they are Christ, and they perceive the difference in this other spirit and, therefore, draw the conclusion that since they are righteous, the other spirit must be unrighteous or perverse. This is a manifestation of pride, brethren.
Getting back to Psalm. 18, Verse 26, again my margin says that this phrase, "....and with the froward Thou will show Thyself froward," means that with the perverse the Lord will oppose them. Brethren, the Lord will oppose perverseness in a soul. The Lord will oppose behavior that is coming from a spirit that is perverse in relationship to Christ.
I declare to you, brethren, that when the Lord Jesus Christ is dealing with the spirit of Jezebel or witchcraft or rebellion, He is not saying, "Pretty please." He is rebuking them strongly, and our type is Jesus in the temple turning over the tables of the money changers. For indeed, if you are permitting your carnal mind to rule through your mouth, and your thoughts, and your behavior, you have turned the temple of God into a house of thieves.
Now, stop to think for a moment. If someone is in a spirit of rebellion, and they are shouting at you, to expect Christ to be meek at that time is a mistake because He does not do that. He puts down the rebellion, He rebukes it. Jesus did it throughout the Gospels. Jesus rebuked, and that is what I do here. I have had several people come to me, saying, "Why do you treat one person one way and another person another way?" What I am doing is responding to the spirit that is coming against me.
If someone is speaking to me gently, I am speaking to them gently. If someone is coming against me with an attacking spirit, I am putting down the rebellion with attack in Christ. That is a very important point. Christ puts down rebellion, and it is in the Scripture. We just read it.
The reason you were feeling the sister's pain is this. What is happening among several of you is that your carnal minds are linking up, because Christ is attacking the carnal minds in everybody. The carnal minds in the people that this is happening to are rallying to defend one another. Let me remind you that Satan is a spirit. She is the unconscious mind of a many-membered people, and her carnal mind is in everybody that is not in full stature. It is possible for Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, and the carnal mind in one vessel, to bring reinforcements to another vessel.
Now, the way they express it in old order deliverance (I have heard one person express it this way), is that a demon down the road can be talking to the demon in your mind or the demon in our mind can be talking to a demon down the road. They will set up a trap, and the demon in your mind will get you on the right road, and when you hit the demon on the road, whack, they will trap you. I have heard someone express it that way.
The way I am expressing it to you in new order deliverance is that it is the carnal mind that we are dealing with, and the carnal mind will call for defenses. Believers that are not aware of this would yield.
The whole key to Christ standing up in us is awareness. We must identify the enemy as being in our own mind so that we do not yield to him. In people that have not yet developed this skill, Satan, the unconscious part of the carnal mind, will stir up the carnal mind of anyone that he can, to join in to stop the deliverance from coming forth. That was what happened. XXXX got stirred up, and I had to rebuke her. I had to tell her and a couple of other people, to stop.
The carnal mind got drawn into the battle because Christ was waging war with the sister's carnal mind, and every other person in whom the carnal mind could stir up reinforcements got stirred up. You felt her pain because you are going through a similar deliverance. God is attacking your carnal mind too, and you are linked in your carnal minds. That is what happened.
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