ANGER, AGGRESSION & INTIMACY
One Family
We are one family, the family of man. Have you ever heard the humanists and the hippies say that we are the family of man? They are right; we are one family. The whole problem is that we died, and in our death, we became divided from one another. First, we were divided from the living God because death is separation from God, and then that which is our spiritual condition was reflected in our soulish and physical condition. The soul separated and we divided into many members, different nationalities, and different ethnic groups that each had their own language and different mentalities. We began fighting with one another, just as we are fighting against God, and then eventually we separated out into physical bodies. We are all divided, but we are just one. It is a great mystery. We are just one.
It is impossible for Jesus to love one group of people and not another group of people because we are only one group of people. The fact that we look different, we sound different, and that we frequently think different, is only an illusion which reflects our separation from God. The more likely an individual is to accept all people, the more likely they are to be closer to God. Of course there are people in the world that are doing this out of their carnal mind, but people in whom the true spirit is being built find that they cannot separate their reactions to people because of the old carnal prejudices, because Jesus said, How can you love God whom you have never seen if you cannot love human beings?
1 Jn 4:20
20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? KJV
Therefore, if you truly love God, then all men are welcome in your life. You are supposed to love everybody, even those who sin against you. Of course, you do not stand there and let someone cut your arms off; let us not have a martyr's spirit here. If you have any hope at all of entering into the high spiritual realms where Christ is you cannot be divided from men because of manifestations of the curse in their life.
How To Deal With Immorality In Others
What are manifestations of the curse in their life? Division; division based on gender, religion, language, doctrine and age. There is no division for the person who is truly moving in Christ. So, try the spirit on yourself. Christ is for everybody.
No matter how reprobate a person is, you cannot divide yourself from someone for moral reasons. Of course, you do not partake of the person's immorality, but neither do you refuse to admit someone to your service, or even into your life, based on their immorality. That does not mean that you start hanging out with immoral people to the extent that their immorality absorbs you into their immorality. Hanging out with immoral people is the function of spiritual adults in whom Christ is strong enough to absorb them into your morality. Resist not evil, but overcome evil with good.
Rom 12:21
21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. KJV
This is not talking about a religious work, and this is not talking about denying people's sin. This is talking about forgiving people's sin but exercising a godly control over the relationship. The Scripture clearly says that if you are not grounded and founded in Christ Jesus, and you are hanging out with sinners, you will become like them. That is what the Scripture says, and it is true.
1 Cor 5:11
11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. KJV
2 Cor 6:14
14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? KJV
In this world, sin is stronger than the person who is leading a reasonably moral life. Nobody is completely moral. The world knows it. That is why parents try to control the friends that their children have. It is true, but it is not true in Christ Jesus. Now, do not go out and start hanging around with all kinds of immoral characters that can drag you down into a spiritual morass that will destroy you, but as the Lord raises you up into spiritual manhood, step carefully as He leads you, believing that the Christ in you has the power to raise up people who are morally weaker than you are. You have to know who you are in Christ. You have to set your standards and live by them, hanging on to Jesus every step of the way, and you will be able to drag these people up to where you are. They will not drag you down; you will drag them up. But you cannot do it if you are afraid. Brethren, someone has to go out and minister to the spiritual leper. Someone has to do it. And you have to touch him. You cannot be afraid to touch him, because it is that touch that is going to raise them from the dead. It is time for the Son of God to appear in the earth and set the spiritual criminal free.
Intimacy With Christ
Do not just lay it in your heart to do something; as soon as you start trying to understand it with your reasoning, you probably will not do it because your mind is not like His mind. He does not think like you think. Therefore, unless you know that you are thinking with the mind of Christ, your best bet is to stop thinking. He does not need your carnal mind to help Him. Your carnal mind is in His way. Some people just move in the Spirit, and others have to work at it harder. You have to relax. Jesus clearly said that the spiritual person is blown about like a leaf is blown in the wind.
Jn 3:8
8 The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. KJV
You have to be spiritually loose to be directed by the Spirit. The Spirit of God does not knock you down, tie you up and drive you. If you are trying figure out what spirit is moving you, one of the things to look for is whether or not you feel driven. Satan is the one that drives you. Satan is compulsive. Christ is like a gentle breeze, and if you are open to Him, you just move. You do not know why you do things, you just do them. I do not know how to tell you to get into that condition other than to tell Jesus you would like to serve Him in that capacity. He will have to do it for you. It is a form of communication between you and the Father; a sensitivity that exists between the two of you that you just do things. You may not realize it was the Lord putting the thought in your mind until after it is done. It is that intimacy with Christ that will move you in the Spirit.
Provision In Christ
People who do not understand the move of the Spirit think it is a high manifestation of spirituality to hear an audible voice, to see a vision, or to have some glorious spiritual experience, but I declare unto you, that is not the ultimate with God. The ultimate with God is subtle. The ultimate with God is a relationship of such an intimate nature that you cannot tell the difference between Him and you. The ultimate is union with Christ in your spirit, such a complete union that you do things because you really think it is your own idea to do them. Maybe it was your idea, but only because you were so completely joined with Christ in your mind that His idea was your idea. So it is accurate to say it was your idea (if you can hear what I am saying). That is the ultimate: unity with Christ to such a degree that there is no difference between you and He, and then you do not need an audible voice. You do not hear an audible voice from someone that you are completely joined to. You are they. You do not need a vision from somebody that you are completely joined to. Why would you need any form of external communication from yourself? Amen? Any form of external communication from the Father says to me that you are not one with the Father, and that is OK. The Father has relationships with people with whom He is not joined to, but the ultimate is to be joined to Him. The ultimate is to have the Spirit of God as your spirit. When the Spirit of God is your spirit you will have great experiences with God, you will do great things for God, and when you are truly joined, you will cease from this experience known as death. Because how could you die when you are joined to the Life of the Ages? How could you die when you are one spirit with eternity itself? Therefore, once again I say to you, do not seek after the doctrine, do not seek after the experiences — seek after Christ. Pant after Him, lust for Him, desire Him with all of your heart, your mind and your soul and all these things will be added unto you, because in Him is all provision. In Him is everything that you need.
Matt 6:33
33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. KJV
If there is something that you think that you need but that you do not have, either you do not need it or the Lord is using the lack of it to build some element of His character in you, and you may not have it for a season. He may give it to you later on, but He may not. Our ultimate goal should be total submission and obedience to the Christ. In that is peace. You cannot have peace if you are constantly seeking, constantly seeking, constantly thinking there is something that you need that you do not have. We are called to peace. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, not next year — we are called to peace right now. Peace comes through complete dependence on the Lord.
Submission
We are to be dependent on Him as women used to be on their husbands. You do not see it much anymore, but the type of our relationship with Christ is the way marriage used to be. Many women did not like marriage the way it used to be and it certainly was harder on the woman than the man. I remind you that every experience that this human race has experienced is a natural type of spiritual thing. It was very hard, and it is still hard being a woman because, spiritually speaking, it is hard being a woman; you have to submit.
We have a type of that submission in this world, natural man. It is very hard being a man. It is not easy carrying around all that responsibility. You have freedom, but you also have the burden of responsibility. Everything in this world is a type of the spiritual reality, but in this world it is difficult being a woman because the men are not perfect. However, in Christ Jesus, the man is perfect. Therefore, spiritual marriage is perfect.
The person in authority, by the relationship he has with the people under him, either makes them or breaks them. If you are a father, a husband, an employer, or a minister, you make or break your people in direct proportion to your ability to love them with the love of God, and to treat them and bring them into a godly relationship with you. People cannot grow when they are oppressed.
God Has To Break Us
A relationship with the Father is the ultimate relationship, but to get everything that God has for you, you must give up everything that you have gotten for yourself. You cannot have both. You cannot have everything that the Lord has to offer you and still hold on to your independence. It just does not work, so He is breaking you and bringing you into a condition of dependency upon Him. That does not make you a weak person, it makes you a man to everyone underneath you, and a woman to the Lord Jesus Christ; changing spiritual sexual rules. You are like a one-star general in the army. You have tremendous responsibility, and you are a man in relationship to everyone underneath you. But to the five-star general, you are a woman. You cannot move in a godly authority if you cannot submit to God. The Lord is breaking us because we cannot give up our own ways. We cannot do it if we want to. He has to break us, and that is what these trials are all about.
Is Jesus A God?
QUESTION: In the book Secret of Life - Right Identification?? you mentioned that Jesus was a god, and His Father was a god. My question is, would you think that anybody out there would be praying to not only these two gods, but to Peter, Paul and all the other disciples that were under Jesus?
PASTOR VITALE: Catholics pray like that, yes. I hope I did not say Jesus is a god. I would like to see that if that is what I said because Jesus is not a God. Jesus never said He is the only God, He said that He is the Son of God. Every other god is really a demon. I believe the Jehovah's Witnesses express Him in that way, though as a god, indicating that Jesus is one of many gods that are equal to Him, but we do not believe that here. Jesus is the only true Son of God. The Son of the Living God, and all the other gods (and there are other gods) are all false gods and dead gods.
What is a god? A god is a life form that is superior to the life form that you are. Spirit is superior to soul. Of course, the devil is superior to fallen man. She is the god of this world and she exercises dominion over us all the time. A natural person without the strength of Christ has no chance against the devil.
COMMENT: The Son of God is God. The Holy Spirit is God, also. The Holy Spirit is the Father. So, if you do not understand the doctrine... Do you understand what I am saying?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, OK, that was how it registered in your mind.
COMMENT: Not me, I understand what you are saying here, but someone who does not understand the doctrine may misinterpret it.
PASTOR VITALE: I am not sure what you mean.
COMMENT: What I am saying is that if I did not understand what you were preaching here, Pastor Vitale, and I came across that, I would assume, because I am not being taught, that you are saying that Jesus is a god. So, if I do not know that, I believe you said at one time that we are all gods because we are made in His likeness, or something.
PASTOR VITALE: I will wait until you finish talking and then I will answer you.
QUESTION: So, the mind of Christ is a god, is that what you are saying?
PASTOR VITALE: No, I am not saying that. I am going to try and explain it. I do not believe I said anywhere that the mind of Christ is a god. Please read it again.
QUESTION: The mind of Christ is God. His Father is God. This is what you are saying, right?
PASTOR VITALE: The mind of Christ is the Son of God, not a god.
COMMENT: Not a god. No, that is different. But someone could interpret it like that.
PASTOR VITALE: Well, if they interpret it that way, it is their problem. That is not what I preach. That is what the Jehovah's Witnesses preach.
QUESTION: Now do you see what I am saying?
PASTOR VITALE: No, not really. If you could explain to me why you are taking it that way, I could try...
COMMENT: I am not taking it that way. I am just trying to... I do not want to go into it.
PASTOR VITALE: ...because I do not understand what you are saying. I do not believe I have ever said that Jesus Christ is a god, because that implies that He is one of many equal gods, which is pretty much what the Jehovah's Witnesses teach. He is the Son of God, but that is not the same thing as saying He is a god. I do not understand your question.
COMMENT: Please explain to me what the Son of God is God means, if you please.
PASTOR VITALE: You are asking, How could the Son of God be God? Is that what you would like me to explain to you?
COMMENT: Yes.
PASTOR VITALE: OK. Who can tell us who the Son of God is? Is the Son of God a man? Who is the Son of God?
COMMENT: The Son of God is a mind.
PASTOR VITALE: A mind, yes. The Son of God is a mind. When the Father reproduces Himself, His Son is a mind. The Father (the male) and the woman that He joins with to have His child is this creation, which is made out of dust. So the union of Spirit and dust produces the mind in the creation. The Son of God is a mind. Because the man, Jesus of Nazareth, had the mind of God born in Him, He was therefore able to call His whole person the Son of God, because whatever our mind is, that is what we are. Right now, the creation is fallen and the mind in us is death, therefore the whole human race is death. We are in hell, and we are dead, and we are death. We are death, we are sin, and we are hell. OK? But when the mind of God is born in us we shall be gods. We are not gods now because the mind of God is not born in us yet. It is in the process of being born in us, and when the mind of God is born in us, He will destroy the mind in us which is death. Then the only mind in us will be the mind of God and we shall be gods. But, we are not gods now.
Self-Deliverance
QUESTION: I was going to ask you a question concerning deliverance. I am not all that experienced in deliverance, but I have been having some weird experiences, and I do not understand them. For example, lately I feel like I have been getting deliverance without my even knowing, like it could happen at any time. Every day I would pray and repent of this and that, and God deliver me; I am praying every day to bring deliverance in my life, and I feel Christ in me growing. I feel that as I am praying and reading your literature, something is happening to me spiritually. I feel deliverance is taking place in my life as I am reading your books, as I am sitting in the meeting, and I could be manifesting at any moment. I could be at work reading, and I feel led to cry or scream, but I know I cannot because I am working. Or, it could be even here right now as I am sitting, and I know I cannot because you are teaching. It just does not only happen when you lay hands on me, but it could happen at any moment, like when I am listening to the messages. I am wondering what I should do when this is happening; when I feel like I am manifesting and I feel like it is the time for me to be getting a lot of deliverance? It is not just happening like it did two years ago where I had that deliverance and then I did not have it for another year or couple of months. I feel it is happening more often in my life. I do not understand what I should pray at the moment when I feel like I am manifesting in a place where people would not understand. What do I do? Do I suppress it? How do I pray?
PASTOR VITALE: You do not suppress it. You could do self-deliverance. I have done a lot of self-deliverance on myself. Tell it to come out. Ask the Lord for His will and tell it to come out. I was delivered from hay fever by doing self-deliverance. I was delivered from paranoia by doing self-deliverance. Just go after it, rebuke it; just like what we were doing for you tonight, you could do it for yourself.
QUESTION: And if I am working and I feel that I am getting deliverance, I can ask the Lord that if it is going to come out, let it come out in a private way without anybody knowing?
PASTOR VITALE: Yes, I think God could do that. Anyway, in most deliverances you just cough and choke.
COMMENT: When I have these big deliverances; when I am feeling these spirits stirring up in me, I do not feel to just cough or burp, I feel like getting really violent and crying.
PASTOR VITALE: That is hard, when you are working, but I cannot tell you what has happened in this house over the last fourteen years. I have cried, I have screamed, I have pounded on the floor; I got continuous deliverance for five years. It never stopped. I got deliverance four nights a week in church. I got deliverance five nights a week driving home from work; I played the messages, I got deliverance in the car. I got deliverance going to work, and I got deliverance coming home from work. It just never stopped for five years; it was continuous. And most of it was belches and yawns. I had violent deliverances in church, but going to work and coming home from work I got deliverance continuously, basically just belching and yawning. Just ask God to get it out of you. Thank you for sharing that with me because it is exciting to know that you are manifesting from the books. I read them myself. They are very powerful. I start to shudder; my teeth start to chatter when I read them. They are very powerful. If that happens to me, no wonder people cannot bear them.
People Cannot Bear The Truth
I was reading in a psychiatry book today, and it was very interesting. The man who wrote this book is not a Christian; he is just a psychiatrist talking about human nature. He was saying that denial is a big problem because people just cannot bear the truth. It is too hard to face the truth about yourself, about what you really feel, about what other people really feel, about what other people are really like. Basic human nature is primitive. Brethren, we are the beast.
For those of us who live in a civilized society, we would like to believe that we are not the beast. This particular psychiatrist claims that modern society has done much good but they have also done much harm because socialization has its benefits. We learn manners, we learn how to treat each other with respect, to limit as much as possible our bestial nature, which is really designed to rise up like the animals of the jungle and kill. So it is good to be polite to people; it is good to have a system of socialization that will minimize the possibility of violent encounters. Did you know that that is what society is all about? That when you go to the East, you see the Japanese and the Chinese people bowing to each other and being extremely polite? All this behavior is designed to minimize aggression, because man is very aggressive. Man is very violent, and he is still very primitive.
We see, in this hour, humanity's attempt to civilize himself, reaching the point of self-destruction. We have gone as far as we can go thinking it, and we do not find within ourselves (except those who are in Christ, of course) the ability to make it after we have been faking it for thousands of years. We are finding out that we are still primitive jungle beasts. This was the premise of this man's book. So what happens? Man goes into denial. We are taught in our homes and in church that people are a certain way, and then we find out that they are not. The people we have loved, honored, and respected the most, the pillars of society, including the pastors in the church, the government officials, etc. have been putting up a false face. In their emotions and in their hearts they are as primitive as man has ever been. They are filled with sin, wickedness, evil, violence, anger and rage. Some people cover it up better than other people, but we are still animals; it is just that we have painted a whitewash over ourselves. Jesus told the Pharisees that they were like unto whited walls. That means they were walls covered with whitewash. Walls in the Scripture typify salvation. He meant, Your own attempts to save yourselves is like whitewash; it is just on the outside. Whitewash is a very thin paint that wears away very quickly. In the same Scripture, He said, Inside of you are dead men's bones.
Matt 23:27
27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. KJV
The dead man that is inside of you is Christ. This creation was a combination of a man (the Son of God, the man being the mind in the creation) and the beast, the emotions and the flesh of the man. But the man died, and the only thing left is the beast. We are the beast, the beast without a rider on his back, and we have been trying to tell ourselves for a couple thousand years now that we are not a beast, that we are civilized, that we are in control, but we are not. The beast has been in control.
Denial
The result of this, is that our society in general has gone into an epidemic of denial where when the parents raise up a child by trying to force their image on the child, without ministering to the child to develop their own person, and the personality of the child splits. The personality of the child was never fed, never nourished, and never taught to be independent. That child remains infantile, and never grows up to make decisions, to become a God-fearing person in their own right. A false self is developed, in the image of the parent. They do not become themselves. They become or grow into that image that the parent has impressed upon them, but it is not their real self. This is called a splitting-off the personality, and the real self is hovering behind the false self, an infant who has never grown up because they have never been nourished. The ability to think, form opinions, and make mistakes has never been developed.
False selves can look pretty good—they can look competent, they can look calm, they can look sophisticated—but huddling behind that false self, that split personality, is the infant that was never nourished in the manner that would have permitted him to become all that he could be.
Fear
It has become a national plague. Denial of the true self, of the true motives, of one's fear, of one's anguish. What are we afraid of? All men have this infantile fear. They either overcome it in infancy, or they do not. A large majority of the population does not overcome it because parents are not perfect. It is the fear of abandonment; the fear of being overwhelmed or engulfed, which both have to do with the mother. Either it is a fear that she will go away and never come back, or it is a fear that she is going to get so icky-sticky close that you will be overcome (because some mothers do that). The third fear is the fear of non-being; the fear of having no existence whatsoever. These are infantile fears, and they have nothing to do with your intellect; they completely bypass your intellect. They are gut emotional reactions. The average person does not even know that they have them, because we think we are all grown up. We think we have got everything under control, but the tell-tale signs that we are not all that we think we are the strange reactions we have to the events of our life. Negative reactions, however they are happening in your life (sometimes they are emotional, and sometimes they appear as physical illness); if you square root them, they all go back to these three fears.
Expressing Emotions In A Godly Way
The way to come out of these fears is to have relationships that are rooted and grounded in the love of Christ, which is unconditional love, acceptance, and an ability and freedom to express your emotions. People need to express their emotions. There is denial across this country (I do not know about the rest of the world), where people are being taught, either verbally or by their caretaker's behavior, that it is not acceptable to express your emotions. We are taught as children to deny our emotions. This is a plan for mental illness. You cannot deny your emotions; they have to go somewhere. What we can deny is an ungodly expression of our emotions. Anger is an emotion. If you could learn to verbalize that anger, if you could learn to recognize what is raging in your heart, if you could learn to know yourself and have some idea of what is making you angry, there is a true release in saying, I am angry, I do not like what you did, I do not like the way I feel. You can have a release from your anger. It is not acceptable to express your anger through aggression. Aggression hurts other people, and it is sin. Paul said, Be angry, and sin not.
Eph 4:26
26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: KJV
We are emotional beings. If we suppress our emotions, it will hurt us somehow. Those emotions have got to come out, whether they come out in mental illness, physical illness, or in aggressive behavior, which is either overtly aggressive or passively aggressive.
Passive-Aggression
Overtly aggressive behavior is towards other people, and it is destructive. It can be physical or verbal. Hatred, condemnation, and accusation is verbal aggression. Jesus said it is the same spirit that causes a man to murder.
Matt 5:22
22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. KJV
And of course, we have the actual physical expression of aggression, which would be physically taking someone's life. Passive-aggression is aggression that is either turned in towards oneself, which usually results in either mental or physical illness. Aggression is murder; it kills. It either kills you, or it kills somebody else. Passive-aggression can also be turned to other people. This type of aggression is very hard to recognize. It can be physical, but passive-aggression is so subtle that it can be denied. For example, if you run your car into your enemy's car, (whoever that enemy is: your husband, your wife, your brother, your sister), and you claim that your foot just slipped off the pedal, you do not know how it happened, and you really believe it, that would be a form of passive, physical aggression.
An example of passive-aggression turned inward is the accident-prone person. Do you know any accident-prone people who are always cutting themselves with knives, or are always in the emergency room getting stitches? I once knew a woman like that. Every time she went to cook, she would slice her arm up. Accident prone, self-destructive; it is passive-aggression turned towards oneself.
Aggression kills. It either kills you, or it kills somebody else. And that death could be a slow death. The fact that you do not physically cease to be does not mean that you are not dealing with the spirit of murder. It is possible to murder slowly.
Verbal Passive-Aggression
Verbal passive-aggression is the hardest to recognize. Some people call it a left-handed compliment, which is a form of passive-aggression. It is saying something to someone that, if your ears cannot distinguish it, sounds like a nice thing. It sounds like a compliment, like a kind remark, but there is that subtle twist in it, a spiritual knife that just goes in. If you are a spiritual person, you will feel it. If you can recognize this subtlety intellectually, you will know what you are feeling. People who are spiritual do not recognize it intellectually, but they feel the knife going in, and they begin to wonder, Why am I feeling this way? Why am I angry at this person? They did not do anything wrong to me. Maybe you are reacting to a left-handed compliment, which is really a spiritual arrow propelled into you by words that appear to be godly or loving, but they are subtle. They are not only trying to kill you, but they are not even honest enough to tell you that they are angry.
Learning To Respect Ourselves
We see that people are as primitive as the animals in the jungle. We just manage to cover up our aggression, because many of our needs are met. Nobody's needs are completely met. We find out what people are really made out of when their needs are not met: when they have no food to eat, when they are cold, when they have no comfortable place to sleep, when they are lacking needed affection, acceptance, love, and affirmation. People need to be validated, they need to feel that they are worthwhile, that their existence is meaningful and positive, that people like them, but we shall never receive validation, respect, or love from outside of ourselves until we learn to love and accept ourselves. Whatever we are on the inside we will attract from the outside.
We see man struggling with his primitive nature to keep it contained, to keep it covered over, to keep it whitewashed. We do not want anybody to know that we are afraid. We want them to think we are competent and that we have everything under control. We want to believe it ourselves. This whole nation is in denial, and we are starting to break down. We are starting to see more and more people who cannot keep up the facade anymore. All of these behaviors: drug addiction, alcoholism, nicotine addiction, all forms of compulsive behavior, gambling, compulsive spending, arise from unresolved infantile fear. We are denying our children the right to express emotions instead of teaching them to express their emotions in a positive way. We rebuke our children for expressing them because we ourselves do not know how to deal with our own emotions. Frequently, we rebuke them because children ask us questions that we do not know the answers to, and because we are laced with pride and cannot tell them, I do not know the answer to your question. We turn on the child.
Someone told me something recently that just really made me stop and think. A child asked his mother why it was Jesus up on the cross and not their dead father, and they were punished for it. I think that is a very intelligent question. For a child that does not know anything about Jesus, they see a man hanging on the cross, and they want to know why one man was up there and another man was not. The child was punished, most likely, because the parent did not know the answer. Does that make the parent a bad person? No, but the fact remains that the child was punished for asking a very intelligent question. I do not know many adults that would ask that question.
Suppressed Creativity
It has become a national activity to suppress our children's creativity. An honest question deserves an honest answer. If you do not know the answer, you should say that you do not know the answer. But to crush one's creativity is one step towards destroying a mind. In this nation, there is a large number of people who cannot think. It has become a sign of our society. If you have a problem, especially with the government, there is nobody you can talk to. You call the main number and you call is answered by a clerk who cannot think. They are like robots. They have their instructions written down, and if you ask a question that cannot be answered by what is written down, there is nothing they can do for you. When you go into to a store these days you cannot find a clerk that knows about the products being sold. There used to be a time when you went into a store and all the clerks or salespeople knew about the products. Today, what you find in most stores are people that know how to take your money and give you the package. They cannot answer your questions.
Creativity in this society is being destroyed. People have found that it is more desirable to not think than to think. More and more, employers do not want you to think, they just want you to by-rote and routinely do the job you have been hired for. They are looking for machines. People are drying up from the inside out; their creativity is being crushed. They do not even know who they are. They do not know why they enraged, they do not know why they are violent, because Satan has gotten a hold on this society and is putting man in little pigeon holes. Man cannot bear it. We were designed to be creative people. We were designed to have our spirits joined to the Spirit of Christ, to rise above our primitive emotions. The only way we can do it is with union with Christ.
Bondage To Material Things
All creativity is in the human spirit. In this hour, she is joined to Satan, and completely crushed. Many people are in a form of spiritual slavery. We do not have physical slavery anymore, we have spiritual slavery. There is a song called Sixteen Tons, sung by Johnny Cash, and there is line that says, I owe my soul to the company store. Material things, brethren! We are in bondage to material things. God wants us to fulfill our creativity. Yes, we need enough money to live on, we need a house, a roof over our head, clothes on our back, and other basic things, but God does not want us selling our soul to the company store, because we will not be able to bear it. We will develop a false self, which is not our true self. It is a self that probably hates our true self, because on some level it knows that we have not fulfilled our creative potential.
The False Self
People are filled with anger and filled with rage. Some people admit it and some people deny it, but it has got to come out. Either it is going to hurt your mate or your children, it is going to make you sick, or it is going to direct you to some form of self-destructive behavior. There is help in Christ Jesus, but when He comes into your life, He has to tear down the ways that you have been living all your life. Life, or existence, is a question of survival. Everybody is dealing with infantile fear. Some people are coping better than others. Some people go through their whole life without even having to deal with the reality of it, and they never even know that they are suffering from infantile fear until enough stress or difficult circumstances come upon them to flush it to the surface. Some people believe in their false self. They believe that is really who they are. That is why Jesus said that the alcoholic and the prostitute will enter into the Kingdom before the Pharisee.
Matt 21:31
31 Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. KJV
The Pharisee is a false self. Pharisees think they have everything under control; they think their life is OK, but underneath it all they are dead men's bones. They are just beasts who have control over themselves. They do not think they need any help because they are in complete denial of who and what they really are, and of what they feel and think, and they are going around killing either themselves or other people. They have amnesia, for all intents and purposes, and they might as well be a multiple personality; it is another side of them wielding the knife.
Jesus has come to tear down these walls of denial, and to reintroduce us to our real self, to our real emotions. Do not deny your emotions. If you hate somebody, or you are enraged at somebody, for your own sanity's sake, you need to confess it. It is important to understand what confession is. Jesus said, Forgive your enemies. For years, I thought that that was for the benefit of my enemies. No, it is for my benefit. Unforgiveness kills the unforgiving person.
Matt 5:44
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; KJV
Jesus also said, Judge not, that ye be not judged. I always thought that that was for the benefit of the other person. No, do not judge because the satanic judgment will come on you.
Matt 7:1-2
1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. KJV
Jesus said, Those who are merciful will receive mercy. Be merciful for your own sake.
Matt 5:7
7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. KJV
Expressing Negative Emotions
The world has a saying, What goes around comes around. You cannot go around making people miserable and expect to be happy. You cannot go around being cold, withdrawn, aloof and unfriendly and have friends. It is essential that we learn to express our emotions in a way that does not kill. Ideally, we will learn to verbalize them as an I expression, I feel, I feel, I feel. And sometimes, in extreme cases, to take out a baseball bat and beat up a dummy. There used to be a deliverance church in Manhattan that had special rooms with baseball bats and dummies which allowed people to release their emotions in a controlled way.
There is a therapy in the psychology movement called the primal scream which encourages people to scream out their frustration and anger. If you do not get your frustration and anger out in a godly, controlled way, it will come out of its own will and accord in an ungodly, uncontrolled way. If you take authority of your own life in Christ Jesus, and you determine the parameters, or the circumstances under which it will come out, you can express this rage and begin to expel it from you. It does not have to come out in the form of a demon, though if it does come out in the form of a demon, praise God. It can, but it does not have to come out that way. When I say a demon, I mean the kind of formal manifestations that some of us have experienced.
Your Words & Your Heart Have To Line Up
You have got to express your emotions, because if you deny them, you are living in a false world. For those of us who are living in a false world, and trying to have a relationship with a person living in the real world, we find that that relationship is troubled. There is continuous fighting because if one person is sensitive, they are not so much responding to your words, as they are responding to your heart. If your words are saying something different than your heart is saying, and you are in a relationship with somebody who is responding to your heart, you have a severe communication problem. If you do not know what your heart is saying, and your words are saying something different because you have a false self that is in complete denial of what you are feeling or thinking, the only relationship you could have is with somebody who will believe your words.
Most people are spiritual beings; they cannot respond to your words when they do not line up with your feelings (and you wonder why you go from relationship to relationship to relationship)! Something is wrong with what you are saying and with what you are thinking because you are denying your true feelings. And you are denying your real feelings because you think it is not nice to have those feelings.
Confession Of Sin Is Important
Brethren, feelings are feelings; nice or not nice, they need to be dealt with. You do not necessarily have to express them to another person. If you are enraged at someone because they have done something to offend you, you might want to tell them that you are greatly distressed over what they did to you, but maybe you have an awareness that your rage is not appropriate towards them. I have experienced intense anger towards another person, but my rational mind knew that that person had not done anything to me that would warrant such rage. Depending upon who the person is, you might tell them, and they might help you with it. You could talk to God or to a close friend about it, so long as you do not let your rage manifest in the form of an accusation. Why would this happen? Because a false self is telling you that you could not possibly have done anything wrong, that it must be the other person who has offended you. That is why confession of sin is so important; it is confession of one's true feelings. Most of our feelings are sin. Only that which comes out of Christ is not sin. Confession helps us to be in touch with our feelings, helps us to express and deal with them. It helps us hone up our lives, improve our relationships, and establishes godly communication. It helps us make changes when we are wrong, and helps us to express to a close person that we are trying to develop an intimacy with, that their behavior may be hurting us. Maybe they do not know they are doing it.
True Intimacy
Intimacy has nothing whatsoever to do with sex. You could be intimate with your mother, your father, with a close friend, or with your pastor. You could be intimate with your husband or wife and have sex also, but sex is different from intimacy. When you get it all together it can be very positive. Intimacy does not mean sexuality, although it is used that way in this society. Intimacy is a close personal relationship whereby two people flow together in harmony, without either one trying to control the other, but respecting them and accepting their individuality and their creativity. Intimacy is a relationship where both people take responsibility for themselves and their behavior. Intimacy is a relationship whereby two people can separate and come back together again when both parties are in agreement with spending that time together.
To me, true intimacy is a fine example of the love of God. It is a very high spiritual level of love that not many people attain because most people have never reconciled their feelings of infantile fear. As soon as they find this intimacy; as soon as they find a relationship that is gratifying and overall blessing them, that old infantile fear of abandonment rises up, and they want to lay hold of that person, capture them, and make them their own. Why? Because the relationship is making them feel good. But, what you do not realize, brother or sister, is that as soon as you try to capture that person with whom you have found intimacy, you will destroy it because you cannot capture intimacy. You must let it remain independent. You must continue to let it be creative. That infantile fear of abandonment destroys intimacy. You think you have found what you have been looking for, and you end up destroying it.
Fear Of Engulfment/Abandonment
The other infantile fear that man deals with is fear of engulfment. If, from the earliest stages of your childhood, you had a mother who was overwhelming, you may be an adult person with a fear of engulfment. Why am I picking on the mother and not the father? Because traditionally, the father is out of the house at least five days a week, eight or nine hours a day. It is the mother that the child is with continuously. It is the mother who is doing the disciplining. It is the mother (to the childish mind of the child) who poses the greatest threat of his/her never being able to individuate; to break away and become a completely independent, self-sufficient individual.
This is at least one reason why a father is so important in a family; this is two-fold. The child who sees the mother as all powerful in his/her infancy, and also sees the mother submitting to another authority, recognizes that the mother is fallible, that she is not God; she submits to a higher authority. It helps the child break that emotional tie and enter into his/her own creative adulthood. Secondly, the father is very important because part of his role is to help the mother see when she may be too close to the child. In certain societies (patriarchal societies, you do not see it in the United States), if the father perceives that there is too close a tie between the mother and the child, he will take the child and send him/her to a relative for a year or two. He sees that the child cannot make the break (for whatever reason, without condemnation); that the mother and child are too close, and the tie has to break. We see people throughout our society still embroiled in childhood-level ties. Forty-, fifty-year-old men and women cannot break the ties.
Fear of engulfment will keep you from developing intimate relationships. This engulfment spirit is with the mother or caretaking figure. You may have no memory of this at all; it is bypassing your intellect. It is something that happened in your emotions when you were one-year-old. On some spiritual level you discerned that there was some emotional need in the caretaker that was being satisfied through her caring for you (probably unbeknownst to you, but it overwhelmed you), and today you are an adult having a problem developing an intimate relationship with another person. As soon as someone gets too close, they take off running for the hills.
We see this manifested in many women who continuously find themselves involved with members of the opposite sex that are destructive for them. They think it is bad luck. They have all kinds of excuses for why this happens, but the truth is that there are unconscious forces operating through them which are causing them to avoid a relationship with any person where there is a possibility of true intimacy. The fear of engulfment is so great that they operate on an unconscious level. They would rather do without the intimacy than risk engulfment.
Facing The Fear Of Abandonment/Engulfment
The answer to the problem is to face the fear. How can you face it if you do not know you have it? If you have problems in your relationships: 1) if you do get close, but your relationship is destructive, or 2) if you do not ever get close, you know that you either have a fear of abandonment or a fear of engulfment. Ask the Lord to show you which one, ask Him to help you to overcome, and ask Him to help you to confess these fears as sin, the sin of pride. Your life is being controlled by fear. This is not of God. Confession of sin will be the first step to setting you free from destructive and painful relationships, and a lifestyle of pain and torment and hopelessness and despair and distress. True intimacy is expressed in liberty; liberty to the other person, liberty to yourself. True intimacy is a relationship of mutuality. It is a relationship where people come together out of a mutual agreement, and separate to do their own things. It is a relationship which brings creativity and life and acceptance and vibrancy to the relationship. It is a relationship that glorifies God.
The Lord is calling His people to get to know themselves that we might worship Him and serve Him with all that we could be. He is calling us to have godly relationships. He is calling us to be productive, creative human beings. He wants to join with us. He does not want us to be robots, but to walk and to talk with Him. He wants us to think, He wants us to reason, He wants us to know Him, and He wants us to know ourselves. We cannot really know the Lord unless we know ourselves.
Projection
We hear a lot about projection in this fellowship. I have had several people come to me and tell me, You are just like my mother. I tell them, I am not like your mother. They said, Well, to me you are. I said, That does not make me like your mother. That means you have a problem in the way you view me. There is something in your mind that makes you see me that way, but I am not your mother.
We see the same problem between much of the Church and God. We look at our Father in Heaven and we think He is our father, the devil. But, He is not. He is God, and it is time for our minds to be cleaned up so that we can see God realistically, as He is. The walls are coming down. Get ready for the rain because the Lord is tearing down everything in us that is phony. He wants us to see clearly, not through a glass, darkly, but accurately and with the mind of God.
1 Cor 13:12
12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. KJV
QUESTION: You were saying people view you as if you were like their mother. If I was to see you as my father, you would say it is a problem with the way I think. What is that problem again? You were just talking about it.
PASTOR VITALE: The problem is called projection. It means that you have had some bad experiences in your childhood, in your case with your father, and whenever you see an authority figure you expect that authority figure to be like your first experience with authority. If you have had a bad relationship with your father, you will expect every authority figure to treat you in the same way, and most of the time you will, in fact, think that that person is treating you that way. Their words and their motives will be twisted in your mind, and you will really believe what you are seeing, but it will not be true; it will be an illusion. That is how man has this ungodly image of the Father God. We think He is like our father, the devil, but He is not. It is called projection. We need to ask the Father to help us to see people as they are, not as if we are looking through a mirror of our past experiences. Women do that with their husbands, and husbands do that with their wives. It is very destructive to a relationship to not see the person as they are, but to see them as our past relationships.
Fear Of Repetition
We are talking about a fear of repetition. If our early experiences are that the loved one abandoned us, we are expecting that our husband or our wife will abandon us. If our childhood experience was that the loved one overwhelmed us, and babied us, and did not let us grow up, we are expecting our husband or wife to do the same thing, and we are holding them at arm's length. They may or may not be doing that. Frequently, we marry people just like our early caretaker. We get caught in that groove no matter how much we dislike it, or even hate it. We get caught up in the kind of a relationship where we are continuously abandoned, or we are continuously overwhelmed, and we repeat it with every relationship that comes into our life, until such time we are set free by some form of intervention. I was telling you earlier, that in my opinion, every religion that I have investigated, with the exception of witchcraft, seems to accurately identify the human problem, and that human problem is that we are lacking. We are lacking.
The Solution
The place where religions differ is in our solution to the problem. In addition to that comment, I will say that it is just more obvious to me than ever how modern psychiatry is very, very much into identifying the human problem. Just about everything that God is teaching me I find in these books. All the books do is clarify what God has placed in my heart. Psychiatry is a form of the study of human nature. Religion is the study of human nature and the solutions to the problem. Psychiatry, therefore, could be identified as a religion. It delves into human problems and offers a potential solution for the problems. Psychiatry comes under the heading of humanism. It is very much a religion. I find that I can learn a lot from other religions regarding their insight into the identification of man's basic problems, but I do not agree with their solutions. I believe Jesus Christ is the solution. He is the power to do what needs to be done.
There are some aspects of psychiatry where they are right on. The question is the power by which they get it done. Some of the solutions are very accurate; I just do not agree with the methods they use to bring these solutions to pass. But with the power of Jesus Christ these walls have to come down. By the power of Jesus Christ our true feelings have to be exposed. We must face them for what they are. We must face the evil in our loved ones. We must face the evil in other men and learn to deal with it in Christ in order to lead a productive life.
The more immature we are, the more likely we are to expect the other person to change. And the more mature we are, the more likely we are to know that we must change, that we must learn to cope with every form of evil in this world, both within ourselves and outside of ourselves, and that within Christ Jesus is the ability to cope with all kinds of imperfection and all kinds of people, and to turn what could be a disaster into a positive relationship. In Christ Jesus, we find the ability to not be destroyed by wickedness or by disappointment in others, but to have the power in Christ within ourselves to help the person who has disappointed us.
Be A Giver, Not A Taker
Be a giver, not a taker, and you will find true happiness. If you continue to be a taker and a negative person, if you are continuously looking for your relationships to satisfy you, you will be disappointed for the rest of your life. But be a giver, be the one who gives and get your needs met by God, and by the people who He sends to you to meet whatever needs He will send through a human being, and you will find your happiness. Nothing is perfect, but you will find your happiness to the extent that He gives it to you. It is truly better to give than to receive. For years I did not understand that. It is not that there anything wrong with receiving, but if your whole lifestyle is based on a desire to receive, you will surely be disappointed. Either you will not receive, or if you do receive, what you receive may not be of the quality that you are hoping for. Man is never satisfied. There is great satisfaction in giving. It is truly better to give than to receive. That is a reality. Seek Jesus, brethren, to be all that you can be, and He will bless your relationships. Be a giver, and not a taker; be a lender, and not a borrower; be a credit, and not a deficit, and you will be a happier person.
Acts 20:35
35 I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. KJV
Healing Relationships
QUESTION: You were talking about childhood experiences, and that any past experiences that the child has can affect them throughout their adult years. If the child comes from a divorced family, and is used to seeing relationships where people in their families are always fighting, where the wife is a Jezebel, and there is negativity among aunts and uncles or grandparents, what impact could that child have as he/she matures into an adult?
PASTOR VITALE: It does have a devastating impact on the child. It makes the child insecure. Fear of abandonment is usually very strong, and children who become adults who have grown up in that atmosphere have a lot to overcome. They need a lot of healing, and they need strong relationships with a mature person in Christ, who is not going to abandon them, who is not going to engulf them, and who will not encourage them to deny their feelings. They need someone who (themselves) will not be in denial, but will tell that person the truth in the love of God. That kind of relationship (or relationships, if God gives you more than one) with a mature person who is very grounded in Christ, and who is having healthy relationships, can help you to grow out of the areas of your life in which your development has been arrested because of ungodly relationships with parents. If the Lord has placed you around mature people (they do not have to be in Christ, but they are most likely to be in Christ), then that is your healing—in relationships with spiritually healthy people who will not abandon you, who will not engulf you, who will not overwhelm you, who will not try to control your life, but will tell you the truth. When they see sin or ungodliness in you, they will not abandon you. And when you start to lean on them somewhat, they will not overwhelm you or try to control you, but they will strengthen you until you are standing on your own two feet, and they will set you free.
If you have such a fear coming forth from your childhood that you will not establish, or will not enter into an intimacy (even with your pastor, for example), it is my understanding that I do not see how you can begin to heal until you enter into an intimate relationship with the person that God puts in your life. This is the same situation in therapy. You cannot be helped by a psychiatrist until what they call the therapeutic relationship is established. You can go to a psychiatrist for twenty years, but if you never submit to him, if you never put your trust in him, he cannot help you. The healing is in the relationship.
So, for people who keep themselves at a distance from everybody, there is no healing for them until that wall breaks down and they come into a true relationship with a healthy person. Just as it takes the greatest amount of fuel to get the car moving, it takes the greatest amount of time and effort to get into a healthy therapeutic relationship which will produce healing, because people are afraid. They are afraid of abandonment, they are afraid of engulfment, they are afraid to let their defenses down, and they are afraid to trust. You could be in therapy for years and not even begin to move. It could take five years to establish the relationship, and once the relationship is established, you could move very quickly. But you cannot be in self-preservation mode to the degree that you do not let any intimacy touch your life, and have any kind of a life. If you will not allow intimacy to touch your life, your life will be shallow, and your relationships will be shallow, whether you are talking about a marriage, a husband, a father, a friend. If you do not let people share your feelings with you, if you are so afraid to trust and you keep a big wall between you, your relationships will be shallow, and inside you are going to be hurting really bad. You have to take your chances. People who are least likely to form intimate relationships are the people who are determined to not be hurt. If you are so determined to not be hurt that you do not let anybody near you, you may not be hurt, but the isolation that you will suffer because of not letting anybody near you is more devastating and destructive to you than any hurt that you could experience. Do you know what I'm talking about? OK.
QUESTION: What happens after the healing?
PASTOR VITALE: Hopefully, you will enter into some excellent relationships and have a very rewarding life.
QUESTION: Not afraid of being close to anyone?
PASTOR VITALE: That is your ultimate goal, yes, but being afraid, in and of itself, is not so terrible. It is the question of what you do with that fear. Many people are afraid, and they do what they have to do anyway. The question is, what do you do with the fear? Will that fear control you? Will that fear stop you from entering into intimacy, or will you not let it stop you? The fear is not going away. Fear is one of the basic primitive emotions that every human being has. It is not going away. Will it control you, or will it not control you?
Hidden Anger
COMMENT: When Xxxx was talking about childhood issues, it made me think about something. I came from a dysfunctional alcoholic family. My mother (who was an alcoholic, but is no longer drinking) is in her 80's now, and she lives with me. Not too long ago she went to the refrigerator, opened it up, and then slammed it because something that she wanted was not in there. I felt such an anger rise up within me that I could not believe it. It was red hot, and it brought back to me remembrances as a child when I would go to the refrigerator and there would never be any food in there, because that was just the way we lived. And the Lord allowed me to see that I must have had hidden bitterness that I was not aware of, and that I had to forgive her for it. Then I was able to say, Lord, I lay it on the altar, and You burn it up, because I know it is part of my carnal mind that He wants sacrificed to Him, and I saw it as something that He was revealing, and that He was healing by His power.
PASTOR VITALE: That is excellent that the Lord helped you to realize where that anger was coming from. The anger that most of us experience goes back to our infancy; between a couple of months and the first two or three years of life. It is a gut reaction that completely bypasses our intellect. It is an emotional experience branded in our soul. That is excellent. I am glad to hear you are making that kind of progress because I think that you have a lot of unresolved childhood conflicts. Glad to hear that God is working with you. Thank you for sharing that.
Healing Is A Painful Process
QUESTION: You were describing that you can have excellent relationships after the healing process takes place. Let us say a person is in a relationship where the other person hurt them, and did to them what their parents did to them, and they have overcome and were healed, and have established relationships with other people, friends, or even a marriage. If the person enters into another devastating relationship, would that person be strong and not let that bad experience overtake them or ruin them after they just got healed?
PASTOR VITALE: It is a process. The way you get strong in relationships is to overcome your fear and enter in. At the beginning, you will have destructive relationships because that is all you are capable of having, but as you overcome your fear, engage in them, and practice forgiveness and all the things that Jesus preaches, you will get stronger and stronger with each relationship. It is like getting an inoculation against a disease. What they do is they inject small amounts of the disease into your bloodstream to build up antibodies. The way we get strong is to overcome. It is to have painful relationships and take the victory in them through forgiveness of the other person, for praying for your enemies, and blessing those who despitefully use you. There is no way to heal without experiencing the pain, and then you just build up an immunity towards the pain and little by little you find yourself being attracted to healthier relationships. This is a great mystery: the more sensitized you are to pain, the more likely you are to find yourself in a painful relationship. We are told in the Book of Job, That which he feared came upon him. The person who is determined to avoid pain will wind up with the most painful relationship. It is just the way it works.
Job 3:25
25 For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. KJV
QUESTION: Why is that?
PASTOR VITALE: It is human nature. That is the way it is. When you learn to deal with the pain relationships will get healthier. If you are out to protect yourself, this self-preservation is pure destruction. The greatest degree that you are looking to protect yourself from pain is the percentage that you are going to wind up in a hurtful relationship. The more you try to protect yourself, the greater your chance of winding up with a painful relationship.
COMMENT: It is almost like we are magnets.
PASTOR VITALE: Definitely. Your fear of being hurt attracts hurtful relationships to you, exactly. Exactly true.
