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THIS IS AN UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF:
LIVING EPISTLES MINISTRIES
MESSAGE #160
EMOTIONAL PAIN & DEFENSE MECHANISMS
The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For Clarity,
Continuity Of
Thought, And Punctuation By The LEM Transcribing & Editing Team.
LIVING EPISTLES MINISTRIES
TRANSCRIBING & EDITING TEAM
(Listed Alphabetically)
** Transcriber
# Editor(s)
Of This Message
Aurelia C. Bridges, Team Leader
Tape 1
All ministry that does not come out of the mind of Christ is not acceptable to God, and
ministry that does not come out of the mind of Christ must be motivated by something
so we are going to explore that. Basically, I see two categories right now as motivation
for ministry that did not come out of Christ, and one motive is, there are several things
lumped together in it. I think the root is pride. We want to do it, it is the pride of man,
it is all over the church, we want to do, we have power, we can do, and basically this
kind of ministry comes forth whether the person is asking for it or not. That means
there is an element of witchcraft in it also. Counsel to anybody that does not ask for
your counsel is witchcraft. Do not counsel people that don't want you to counsel them
with the one exception, if you are 100% sure that God has told you to do it, and if you
convince yourself that it's God and it is not God then you are the only one that's really
deceived.
This form of ministry can be destructive to the person that you are ministering to. If
they haven't asked for your counsel and you are giving it to them, it is propelled by
witchcraft and it has got to be doing them damage, and if you are doing this to a person
that's hurting at the moment you are hurting somebody that's down. The purpose of this
message is to help whoever is going to hear this tape to understand that this is not a
light thing. Ministry our of the carnal mind indicates that there are deep spiritual
realities raging behind it, and God wants us to understand and hopefully it will help us
to put a leash on our carnal mind, and to stop this because the hour is coming where
the Lord is not going to tolerate it. The judgement is about to fall with a great intensity,
and I don't believe the Lord is going to allow his little ones that are severely suffering
from the tribulation that is bringing them into the image of Christ to be hurt by
someone's carnal mind who wants to minister. I don't believe He's going to allow it to
happen. I don't have any details of how He is going to deal with it because we know
He loves everybody, but the church has got to come into order. So the second
motivation that He has shown me for ministering out of the carnal mind is that someone
will hear the pain, the message tonight is on pain, someone will hear the pain, either
they are expressing it verbally or they are crying or sometimes pain is expressed
through socially unacceptable behavior so someone will recognize this pain consciously
or unconsciously and try to stop the expression of it. Why? Because the other person's
pain is causing them distress. As an example, Believer A is expressing their pain, they
are in great pain, could be emotional pain, could be physical pain, could be pain that
is acted out through socially unacceptable behavior, and Believer B is being touched
by this pain, but she doesn't want to feel this pain. So her reaction, conscious or
unconscious, most likely unconscious to Believer A's pain is, I want you to stop
expressing that pain because your expression of pain, which could be Godly or
unGodly is causing Believer B pain. We have two Believers. One Believer is
expressing pain in a Godly manner and Believer B is being touched by that pain and
feeling the pain and she does not want to feel it, and the way she deals with the pain
is to shut Believer A up. God is not going to tolerate it in the Kingdom. He will not
have this done to His little ones, and in Amos 6 there is a verse in that chapter where
the Lord pronounced a judgment on those who did not have compassion and mercy
upon the Joseph company, those who were in jail, those who were the prisoners. Is
that not part of Jesus' ministry to set the captives free? It is not likely we are going to
set the captives free if we don't first have mercy on them, and it is very common when
someone is in pain because they are in the Joseph company, not that they are without
sin, everybody has sin, but there is a reality to suffering because God is doing a work
in you. There is a reality to suffering because God is changing you into His image, and
we said in the last message on Amos 6 that even compassionate people in the world are
very likely to not have mercy on people that are suffering for Christ's sake, and in
Amos 6 one of the ways that we can determine if it is Christ or the carnal mind
manifesting in somebody is whether or not they are having mercy and compassion
on the person who is in jail because they are being formed in
Christ's image. So
we find the carnal mind of man not wanting to hear about this pain, and the Lord has
been preaching here for a while now that a large percentage of the church is denying
the judgement. The carnal church, I call them that for lack of a better word, they deny
the judgment for the church, they think it is for the world, and that they are going to get
raptured and taken away, and then we have the Kingdom church denying the judgment
totally saying, believe full stature and you will be in full stature. So we find that man,
fallen man, does not want to hear about this judgment. I guess it must frighten him.
I don't know about anybody else, I just know me, and going all the way back I knew
I needed help. And if this is the way you have to get it, so be it, but I am a realist, and
I know God has other realist in the church, but I believe we are few in number. So, we
have a church full of believers some unconsciously, some consciously rejecting the
judgment. Some consciously accepting the judgment but really rejecting part of it
unconsciously, and then we have some who accept the reality of the judgment, but are
involved in certain kinds of behavior that they are not aware is really rejecting the
judgment. Somebody could say, I believe in the judgment, and I accept the judgment
but they are caught up in behavior patterns that they have inherited from their family
that they are still practicing that in reality is rejecting or working against the person
who is submitting to the judgment so what God wants to do today is talk about some
of those ways in which we can unconsciously be working against the person who is
submitting to the judgment or making their judgment harder for them without realizing.
We just want to expose it, we want to shed some light on it so people listening to this
tape can examine themselves and try and understand their motive because that's what
we are into. We are into motives. Why? Because our motives
will determine
whether or not we are Christ or whether or not we are the carnal mind, and flesh
and blood is not going to inherit the Kingdom of God. We are shortly going to cross
over a spiritual line, and we will not be able to bring these carnal methods of ministry
into the Kingdom and Brethren, what is going to happen is that if we haven't developed
the Christ-like ways of ministry, if we haven't developed that way which is acceptable
to Christ, when the Kingdom comes to the earth we won't have anything to offer the
people and how ever God is going to do it He is not going to let us minister carnally
and we will be left without an ability to minister. Everything we are doing here is in
preparation for the Kingdom, and it is destruction to the carnal mind. If you are feeling
pain, if you are feeling discomfort believe me so am I. You can believe it or not, I am
in agony frequently, and the reason I am in agony is because my carnal mind is being
squeezed into the image of Christ. My carnal mind and all of the emotions and
emotional reactions associated with my carnal mind are being forced to line up with
Christ , and it is causing me great pain. My saying this to you is a healthy way of
dealing with pain. There is nothing wrong with talking about it. You can talk about
it. It is called
sublimation, in other words you have this pain, what are you going to
do with it? We have a whole series of choices of what we are going to do with it. We
can deny it and say it is not there, we can do many things. We are going to find that
there are three categories of unGodly ways to deal with pain, and a slew of categories
of Godly ways to deal with it. The truth is going to set us free.
Judge yourself this day and grow and check out your emotions. If you find that hearing
someone stand up here and say, I am in a lot of pain, and it causes you distress get it
before God and find out why it is causing you distress. Is it making you afraid? Why
is it causing you distress? And what ever the reason is for causing you distress, ask
God to give you an understanding and an ability of how to deal with that distress or that
pain in a way that's going to help you and possibly help the other person, but to hurt the
person that's speaking, to stop your pain, is not acceptable to God.
We talk f rom time to time about psychology in these meetings, and we are going to use
a few psychiatric terms today so any Pharisees that are listening to the tape, all the
knowledge and wisdom of the world is not bad. The knowledge and wisdom of the
world can be very valuable to us when it is under the control of Christ, and I am sure
we all know that psychiatry/psychology have done a lot of damage to the human race.
One of the factors that was operating when our nation began to fall back in the 50's was
the exaltation of psychiatry and psychology. They made it so important, and the
counsel that they gave to a lot of troubled married people was, if you are really not that
happy then get divorced, and psychiatrists and psychologists all over the country were
counseling people against God's law which is to get divorced, and we now have a
disaster in this country, and that was a very real factor in the fall of our country,
because we have definitely fallen, but just for your information psychiatry/psychology
is not all ignorance. First of all they make changes, they definitely make changes. I
cannot compare the psychology today to the psychology of the 50's, but what I am
going to tell you know I don't know if it is a change or if it existed in the 50's, but I
know today that you will hear psychologist telling you, you have to have boundaries.
What I am saying is they are really preaching the scripture. Now whether they were
saying this in the 50's or not I don't know. What's happening today, children are in
schools with no moral teaching, no scripture, no direction. The way psychology
expressed it is, don't make a value judgment, you cannot say this is wrong or that's
right. If you see a young couple fornicating, it is not for you to make a value judgment
that it is wrong, mind your own business, so we have a whole generation of young
people, a couple of generations of young people that have been taught that there is no
right and wrong. At least publicly they have been taught that and a lot of them have
been taught it by their parents, that there is no right or wrong, don't make a value
judgment, and the country is perishing. When the sexual barrier was broken down we
found a lot of people in the 50's saying, well we are adults, we are in our 20's, we love
each other, and it is allright to have sex outside of marriage, who are we hurting? And
if you interviewed those people in those days, they still had a lot of morals and they
were moral within their immoral relationships. They had an exclusive relationship, it
was one man and one woman, but we see, and God knew this all the time, but ignorant
man didn't know this, that as the generations continued every generation came down
another peg, and now we have 9 year old children sexually involved with many
partners, doing things that would have shocked the first sexual revolutionist back in the
50's, and we are seeing a generation of children that have no boundaries. Well,
boundaries is the word that the psychologists are using. I saw on TV this morning a
young couple with the woman in great pain. She had just had a baby, a new born baby,
her husband was having an affair with her sister, and eventually when the baby was six
weeks old she ran away and abandoned her, and here was this man on the TV in
between the two women. The sister left her husband for this man and then he went
back to his wife. What a mess. So they brought the psychologist on the program.
What does the god of the humanist say about this? Even the humanist that was telling
everyone to get divorced, that was saying it was alright to have a sexual revolution,
even they know that a society without rules cannot stand. So now they are saying, well
you have got to have boundaries, don't you know you are not supposed to do that with
your wife's sister? Well, no they don't know that. Every generation breaks another
law, and you cannot teach your children to keep the law if you are not keeping the law.
They will not listen to you. So if the Lord doesn't intervene, what is coming 20 years
from now? Nine year old girls sexually active with many partners, 13 year old girls
having babies, women leaving home abandoning their husband and children.
Everybody is breaking every rule that there is. Every rule is coming down so the
psychologist are saying, well you've got to have boundaries. What it means is you have
got to have morals, but they don't want the morals as set out in the Bible. That's too
strict (for them). Well if no one is obeying the laws of the Bible, why are they going
to obey your laws? Who's going to set the standard, who's going to say it is allright for
two consenting adults to have a monogamous, exclusive sexual relationship outside of
marriage, but it is not o.k. for a 17 year old to have it? Who's going to say that it is o.k.
for married women to have an abortion, but it is not o.k. for a single women to have an
abortion? Who's going to make these rules? If you have rejected God as the absolute
law giver, who's going to make these rules? And how are you going to get people to
obey? They've opened a pandora's box, and even the most liberal people in this hour
are saying, this is out of hand. And the children are running wild because they are not
going to obey laws that their parents don't obey. They've torn down God's plans. God
has certain rules, and if those rules are broken no matter how ignorant you are you are
hurting somebody. God is challenging us to face these things. I don't believe anybody
here wants to hurt anybody. I don't believe that, so God is giving us all this information
and He's challenging us to examine ourselves and look in ourselves and make the
necessary changes.
I am using psychiatric terms and there is nothing wrong with using anything out there
if it is under the authority of Christ, and I also want to say this, that what God has been
pouring out here at Living Epistles, whether you can recognize it or not, is deep
understanding of the mind of fallen man. It is amazing if you would pick up a book of
psychiatry and what you would read in it and how similar it is to what He has been
teaching us here. It is mind-boggling how similar it is and going all the way back to the
time we preached Tape #2, The Seduction of Eve, God began to show it to me at that
point, and I will just say this much, that as we have seen in particular in our series in
Daniel 8 that righteous Adam was given the lordship over a creation that had more than
one part. According to Daniel it had two parts, it had two horns, and righteous Adam
was told to rule, told by God to integrate the creation. Now what does that mean?
It
means he was told to rule his thoughts. Just like the Bible teaches us, lay hold of
every imagination, examine it and if it is not of God cast it down. That was what God
told Adam to do. Why? Because some of the thoughts were from God and some of
the thoughts were from Satan and God said to righteous Adam, rule and make a
judgment on every thought that comes into your mind, and if it is a thought that is not
of God do something with it that's going to stop it from destroying you. Now, we as
human beings we have the same situation whether we know it or not. Every human
being alive has a conscience, and the job of that conscience is to integrate all of the
thoughts that come through our mind and decide which ones are acceptable to God and
which ones are not acceptable to God, and then we have to make a decision as to what
to do with the thoughts that are not acceptable to God. Now almost all Christians know
that certain things aren't acceptable to God. We all know you are not supposed to
fornicate and steal and lie and commit adultery, but as Jesus told us, in this New
Covenant we are into the subtleties of the mind. Jesus said that sin is in the mind, and
I see God bringing forth all of this mind teaching, and what happens to a believer when
Christ comes into his life is that Christ is once again righteous Adam who is integrating
all of the thoughts, He's taking the thoughts of the Father that are coming through Him
and the thoughts of Satan and the carnal mind that are coming from our fallen nature
and He's integrating them, He's combining them, and He's dealing with them, some of
them He's killing completely, other thoughts if they are under the authority of Christ
they are acceptable. If they are not under the authority of Christ they are not
acceptable, and the psychiatry manuals will tell you that this is the job of the
conscience, and that's what Christ is doing.
He is our new conscience. So every
thought must be subject to Him and controlled by Him and directed by Him, and He is
challenging us to give up our old ways before He takes them from us forcibly, and the
problem that we have with very well-meaning believers is that we frequently cannot
recognize carnal ways of dealing with problems. There are two sides to that. The first
side is that we have been dealing with problems that way all of our lives. Our mother
and father and grandparents dealt with it this way, and we really don't comprehend that
it is carnal. It is the only way we know how to deal with it, and the other side of the
problem is that we really have not laid hold of or grasped Christ's way of dealing with
the problem. I've been talking a lot about what you should not do, but I really haven't
talked enough about what you should do so let me give you the alternative.
The Lord gave me these psychiatric terms to help us because I know what I know in
my heart, and I guess I've been having a little trouble expressing it to you so we are
doing to use those terms as out outline and hopefully we will give you some thoughts
that will help you make the switch over, make you stronger in Christ.
This one statement is an overriding rule over the whole thing:
Carnal ministry hurts
the person. Ministry in Christ alleviates them of their pain. Now if it is the will
of the Lord at that time to bring forth deliverance, praise God for it, but it may not be
the will of the Lord to bring forth deliverance at that moment so the question is what
do we do if someone is in pain and we pray for them and there is no deliverance that
comes forth, well what do we do for them? The carnal mind wants to shut them up,
and this does not glorify God. So we have two problems here. You pray for
somebody, God doesn't bring forth a powerful deliverance, they are still in pain, and
we have two situations here, the person that's ministering has to deal with the hurting
person's pain, and the question is, what are we more concerned with? Their pain or our
pain, what are we doing here? Are we rushing to protect ourselves from being hurt?
Why can't we listen to them express their pain? What is our motive? What is our
primary intention, what are we hoping to do here? Protect ourselves or help them? The
problem with people in the church that makes them flee from very troubled people is
fear that it will happen to them. We have people in the church that come to the Lord
and they are really not in such bad shape, I know people like that, their lives are in
order, maybe they were drinking so they stopped drinking, but they have marriages,
homes and businesses, they are healthy. Then we have people that have problems. The
come into the church and God heals them almost immediately, and then everybody
that's been around and that's honest knows there is a group of people in the church
whose problems are not healed immediately whether they are physical infirmities or
whether it is mental illness. There are people in the church who didn't stop drinking
right away, people in the church committing adultery, people with family problems, and
the tendency of the people in the church whose life is in order is to condemn the people
that have the problem, and we see this on many levels. Many Christians go into mental
institutions. One pastor did not believe at the time that Christians could have a demon,
he went into a mental institution, had a breakdown and the church condemns them, they
say it is your fault because you have no faith. Everybody here knows that. I am going
to suggest to you another level that this operates on, and that is when someone is
expressing their pain in a meeting and the old order deliverance doesn't work. They
don't come up from out of the prayer and say, the pain is gone, and they need to talk
about it and they talk about it for any reason, maybe God is telling them to talk about
it. the minister has to deal with that pain. They have to deal with their own pain
because to try to shut that person up is killing them. Brethren, we are called to have
mercy and compassion. Now, a lot of people might think that old order deliverance of
standing over somebody and rebuking the spirit is mercy and compassion. Well, it is
in a measure mercy and compassion, but I want to suggest to you that the ultimate
opportunity to show whether or not you are capable of mercy or compassion is when
you've got a hurting person and there is no help for them. When they are in pain, what
are you going to do when all of the known methods don't work? Are you going to do
what the preachers do for the people that aren't healed? Are you going to condemn
them and tell them that it is their fault that they are in pain? Because the old order
deliverance didn't work and they are still in pain. Are you going to tell them that it is
their fault? Are you going to condemn Joseph or are you going to have the true mercy
of Christ? It is very nice praying for people when they are sick and when they have a
demon, but I don't think that is the ultimate test. The ultimate test is when you've got
a person that's in agony, what are you doing for them? Are you condemning them or
are you supporting them? Are you shoring them up? And if you want to support them,
how do you do it? Brethren, people who are in pain do not want counsel. The
worst thing you can do for people who are in pain is counsel them, they don't want
you to tell them what they need to do. If you rush somebody into an emergency room
that has just slit their wrists and they are dying, they don't need to hear that they
shouldn't have done that. . . .and this is another manifestation of what is common in the
church, it is the condemnation of the hurting person. I want to tell you Brethren, it will
not come into the Kingdom. Examine yourself. Have you given the hurting person
peace? Have you put the balm of Gilead on their spiritual wounds or have you agitated
or aggravated them more? And if you have done that, why? And we are going to find
out why today.
I am suggesting to you that the reason you have agitated and aggravated them more is
that you are feeling their pain and that you cannot bear it so you then have two choices.
Will you condemn them to shut them up, taking care of your own pain, or will you
ignore your pain and comfort them? One of the mature ways of dealing with this
situation is that if you ignore your pain and put them first and comfort them and love
them and show them mercy it is possible for you to get relief from your pain because
you have dealt with their pain.. It is called altruism (concern for
others). Now you
may not know about it, but it is a reality and the average person is going on what they
have been doing all their life, but there is another way. If you are feeling somebody
else's pain and it is causing you such grief that you can't bear it, you can stop your own
pain by condemning them or you can also stop your own pain by comforting them, and
it can be done. You have a choice, you may not know it but you have a choice.
The Godly methods that we use, Christ would say the Godly methods, the world would
say the healthly methods, of dealing with pain, we are going to call them mature,
maturity. Let's call it defenses, mature defenses. We have three categories of immature
defenses. Now, two of those three categories I will label them unhealthy. Unhealthy
for the person using them and unhealthly for the person ministered to. The third
category, we are going to call immaturity. It is just immaturity that can be overcome,
but there are two categories that gives methods of dealing with pain that are not
healthly, and if you recognize yourself in this the Lord is challenging you to go before
Him and ask Him to help. I will never condemn you but neither will I let anyone
condemn me. I will not be condemned because I am in pain. I will not be condemned
because I suffer. I will not be condemned by anybody, and neither should you be
condemned. To the best of my knowledge I've never condemned you, and should I do
it I will apologize to you. We are here to find out the truth because the truth is going
to set us free, and lies will never set us free, and neither will they set free our children
or our grandchildren or our great grandchildren.
We will do the two unhealthly categories first. The name of the first category is
narcissism. Narcissism is the love of ones own self. It comes from the name Narcissi.
In Greek mythology he was supposedly a beautiful young man, and he fell in love with
his own image, he loved himself so much that he pined away for himself to the point
that it caused his death, and according to Greek legend he was transformed into a
flower, the Narcissus That's where we get the name of the flower the Narcissus, and
I am going to suggest to you that the moral behind this Greek legend is speaking about
fallen Adam. He fell in love with his own image, and pined away for it when he fell
down into a lower life form. According to the legend he fell down from a man into a
flower, but we know that righteous Adam fell down from a god into a fallen man. Now
remember that there was a visible creation, and it was an image, and it was the image
of Adam, it was the image of righteous Adam, and he forget that it couldn't exist
without God. He thought he didn't need God any more, and we fell. He fell and we fell
in him. Narcissism is the love of
self to the point that one will do anything to
preserve ones self, and what one does is
put all the blame on somebody else.
It is
a refusal to accept responsibility in any way, it is always the other person, they
never have anything to do with it whatsoever. We see that narcissism falls into two
categories, and the first categories deals with feelings that a person might have,
unGodly feelings, a person that is narcissistic on some level recognizes unGodly
feelings, but their sole motive is to protect themselves so they automatically project
those feelings on to somebody else. They say, I know these feelings exist, but they
can't possibly be in me so they must be in you. So we have projection. Now, this can
exist on a lesser or a greater level. I am sure all of us see people doing this in our lives
all the time, but there is a line and when you cross over that line it really becomes
mental illness, and at that point we start entering into what the psychiatrist call
delusions about external reality. In other words, what they see out there is totally
untrue. Let me give you an example. If someone has a lot of witchcraft and control,
if a person grows up in a family that they are continuously controlled to a very unGodly
degree, lot of witchcraft was working on them, and now as a young adult have almost
an obsession or fear of being controlled and having witchcraft worked on them, and the
reality is that this person has internalized the witchcraft that was worked on them.
They are now the worker of witchcraft. Whenever they perceive it operating in
themselves they make a judgment that it is the other person. They have internalized the
witchcraft and the control that the parents did on them, and much to their distress have
become just like the parents, but cannot face it. They are narcissistic, they are out
totally to preserve themselves so whenever this witchcraft stirs up in them they draw
the conclusion that it is you and is not them, and in severe cases where you go over that
line and it becomes mental illness, they start imagining things about the other person.
Not only do they think they perceive control on you, but they think that you are trying
to kill them, all fantasies come into their mind. So we see that on a lesser and on a
greater level. This projection affects their feelings, we are specifically dealing with
feelings here. Why? Because pain is a feeling. So when the narcissistic person is
confronted with pain in his own emotions, the first thing he is going to tell you is, I
don't have any pain, that's your pain. In other words, let me relate to what we are
talking about here. We have Brother A and he is ministering to Brother B and Brother
B is in a lot of pain and Brother A has prayed old order deliverance, he's done
everything he knows how to do and Brother B is still in a lot of pain, and it is touching
Brother A and he does not want to feel this pain so he says, it's not me, I'm not feeling
this pain. It's not that we are feeling the pain together, let's help each other. I'm not
feeling this pain, you are feeling the pain, and now I want you to stop talking about it.
He utterly denies that he's being touched by this problem, it is always the other person's
problem.
The second category under narcissism is the use of perception to control problems.
There are different ways to control problems. The narcissistic will distort the facts.
There is a situation that's causing them pain, somebody wants to fight with them, they
don't want this argument, they don't want to face the argument, they don't want to
confront the issue, so either they totally deny the issue. Did you ever try and have a
Godly discussion with someone, this happens a lot between husbands and wives. The
woman goes to the husband and says, darling I'm hurting, I'm really rejected, I need you
to love me, I need you to put your arm around me, and the man will look at her, it is
usually the man, and he says, what are you talking about you have nothing to be upset
about and walk away. He has utterly denied the problem, denial. He has denied your
emotions, he has denied your pain, he has denied that there is a problem, and why has
he done it? To perserve himself. He does not want to have to confront an issue to do
with feelings and emotions and pain. He doesn't want to feel the pain so he won't
confront the issue. He will either tell you it is all your problem and not his. Brethren,
it is never all the wife's problem, never. There
is no problem in the family that just
affects one person. It is a family problem. It affects everybody, everybody has got
to be feeling it. The Bible says that. If you hurt your toe the hand feels it, and that's
even true in natural people because they are a family too. It is not true that it doesn't
affect you. So, we see people that are narcissistic that are totally consumed with their
need to protect themselves so they put all their pain on you, they don't have any pain.
They deny the external circumstances, that they even exist, or if you can get them to
admit there is a problem they will utterly distort the circumstances. They will say there
is a problem there. "Well, our son's wife left him," maybe they can't deny that, at that
point you would have to be really mentally ill to deny that if the woman is gone, if the
wife has left him. Let's say their son was beating his wife and she left because she
couldn't bear it any more. Well, they will utterly destroy it and deny that he was
beating her and make some sort of excuse or whatever, just distort the circumstances
totally, make it acceptable. Why are they distorting it? They can't deal with the pain,
they don't want to deal with the pain, they don't want any responsibility at all.
Narcissistic people will do any thing to protect themselves, and what they usually do
is blame you or blame the other guy. They will deny that the problem exists or they
will distort the circumstances, saying you don't really have any pain or you shouldn't
have any pain.
We are talking about feelings here, the problem is feelings. Narcissism is intimately
associated with external problems. We can say that because any feeling that the person
has, has been projected on to someone else. As far as the narcissistic person is
concerned they are dealing with something outside of themselves, it has nothing
whatsoever to do with them, they are fine, nothing touches them. Any feelings they
might have, have been projected on someone else and they are either totally denying
that a problem exists or they are completely distorting the problem. Someone lying
there in severe emotional pain and they are saying, oh it is not so bad. You have a
young person who has just flunked out of college that is so emotionally disturbed that
they can't even go to school, and you have someone say to them, oh stand up and fly
straight, you are o.k. Well, Brethren this does not glorify God. People need to have
their problems acknowledged. They need to hear you say, I understand. They need to
hear you say, I know you are in pain, I'm sorry that you are in pain. Now why can't
some people say that? I am going to suggest to you that it is pride. How can I say
that? Because all three things that I just said without the person saying it is, I can't help
you, I know you have pain and there is nothing I can do about it except tell you I am
really sorry that you have it, but pride will not let this person say, I'm sorry you have
pain. They've got to do something so they will give you counsel, they will give you
advice, and you are killing them. Why? Because you have failed to show Joseph
mercy, but instead you have set yourself up as God and told them that if they would just
do such and such they wouldn't have this pain. Pride, pride, they can't admit they can't
help you so we are right back to our basic definition of narcissism, they are out to
preserve self. One of the most important things to natural man, not talking about those
entering into Christ right now, is an ability to feel power over our life. Well, to be able
to say to somebody, I can't help you, I am so sorry you are hurting, but I can't help you,
that is a realization that we have no power in this circumstance and pride will stop us
from saying that. Pride wants to have power and control over every aspect of their life,
and let me tell you something, for somebody to say I have no control over my life, God
does what ever He wants, then on the other hand to stand up and say, well you can't
hurt me because you just can't touch me. There is a contradiction there. Can you see
the contradiction? Because God lets us get hurt, He crucified His own Son. God lets
us get hurt, and why does He let us get hurt? So we can have compassion on other
people. I think almost everybody that is mature in the church knows that so to think
that you have no control over you life, that you have given your whole life to God but
to also say that you can't get hurt is a contradiction because what that is saying is that
you are in total control of your circumstances, and I want to tell you I have no power
to prevent myself from getting hurt. I can't do that and serve God at the same time.
God wants us to be open, He wants us to be vulnerable, He wants to be our only
defense and God is crucifying us so that His life can appear in us. Now if you think
that you have got everything so under control that you can't be hurt, you have got a
problem with Christ and that defense is not of God. He is our only defense. Now He
might allow something like that until He begins to be formed in us, and what happens
with some people that are too strong is that once Christ begins to be formed in us the
strong fallen personality wages war against Christ. The strength that He gave us before
we conceived turns around and starts to wage war against Christ, so what was good in
the old order is not good in the new order.
The second category of unhealthy response is called
neurosis. You may have heard
some people are neurotic. Neurosis is rooted in fear. Now remember narcissism is
rooted in self preservation which is pride. Neurosis is rooted in fear. Narcissism
denies that this problem has anything to do with them. Neurotics know that there is a
problem and knows that it has something to do with them where they are desperately
trying to avoid being affected by it, and their fear is of anxiety and internal conflict.
The Narcissist denies that it is possible for them to have fear or internal conflict, it is
not their problem. The neurotic knows that they can have anxiety and internal conflict,
and they are so distressed by it that they employ unGodly methods to control their
circumstances in order to avoid fear and anxiety and internal conflict. Now the first
neurotic defense. . . .if you are listening to this tape and you can recognize yourself
here, if you are employing one of these neurotic defenses that does not mean you are
a neurotic. I am not doing this to label anybody. It is possible for someone to be
employing a neurotic defense and not be neurotic. It is the same principle as saying,
if you commit one act of adultery you are not an adulterer, but when you are a habitual
adulterer without remorse or repentance you are then an adulterer. I don't anyone using
this tape to say that Sheila has called them some kind of psychiatric disease. That is
not what I am doing. This information is to help us to look at ourselves so that we can
dismantle our carnal mind and let Christ come forth in us. That's the whole purpose of
this.
The first neurotic defense that we are going to speak about is
control. The person that
recognizes the problem, now remember the narcissus either denies or distorts that the
problem is there or minimizes it and says, that it is nothing and distorts it or makes it
somebody else's problem. The neurotic knows that the problem is theirs, and they
know that it has the potential to hurt them, to cause them anxiety, pain. We are talking
about pain Brethren. They don't want the pain, they don't want the anxiety, neither do
they want internal conflict. What is internal conflict? Well, maybe if they recognize
this problem they are going to have to make a decision as to what to do about it and
then have a conflict over it. Conflict is painful. If you don't know what to do, and if
you don't know how to lay hold of God, if you don't have decision making, problem
solving skills, conflict can be very painful, and sometimes even if you have problem
solving skills conflict can be very painful. I knew a woman once who had a lot of
trouble with her daughter, and God's answer to the problem was to send the child away.
Well, she knew what the answer to the problem was, but it was very painful and there
was a conflict in doing what God told her to do. Why? Because part of her didn't want
to do it. So, the purpose with the neurotic defense will try to control the circumstances.
They know it is there, and they will try to control you, and everyone here knows that
control is unGodly. The only control that is acceptable to God is control by God-ordained authority within certain parameters. Parents have control over their children's
lives, the government has some measure of control over its people, the army has control
over its soldiers, but there is always a line that you can go over. We cannot be
controlling people's behavior. There are people in the church that do this. I see it
frequently. A new believer will come into the church and frequently new believers
have a lot of problems, and they will come in and be doing something that's not
acceptable in the church, and someone will come over and try to control them. Now
I am not talking about the pastors, Godly authority, to tell you not to do this thing. I
keep coming back to this same thing again. Maybe someone comes into the church and
they are really hurting. You know, people don't like to see people's pain. I can't get
away from the pain. Obviously, if someone is doing some unGodly behavior control
has to be exerted to stop them. I am talking about someone doing something that is not
unacceptable enough to overtly ask them to stop. Let's say for example, someone
comes in and they are talking about their sexual activity that they just came out of, and
the believers around are very distressed. Now they don't have the authority of the
pastor and the pastor is not there so we have two people neither of which have
authority over the other, and one believer is talking about something, whatever it was,
that's upsetting the other believer. I see it in the church all the time. They will just
change the subject. That's very rude to change the subject, that's rude. It is an
acceptable method in our society, not only in the church but in our society, of dealing
with that problem, but I want to tell you it is not acceptable to God. When somebody
is talking about something that's causing you distress it is not acceptable to just change
the subject and start talking about something else and ignore them. God wants you to
do the hard thing. God wants you to say, brother I really can't listen to you talk about
that because it is unGodly. Now you have to start resisting that stuff. We are Christian
now, and it is not Godly to be having that kind of talk in here because I want to tell you
Brethren, if this person is a new Christian and they don't know that they are doing
anything wrong and you just change the subject you have not helped them at all. As
a matter of fact, you have harmed them because they are probably feeling rejected not
knowing why you have changed the subject. It is widespread inside the church and
outside the church. Brethren, it is not Godly. God wants you to tell your brother in
love why you don't want to hear this conversation. Now maybe the tables will be
turned around, maybe they are not talking about anything unGodly, but what they are
talking about brings back a memory that's causing distress to you. It is still unGodly
to change the subject, just cut the person off. I believe God requires you to say, brother
excuse me I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but I really can't talk about that right now.
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate! This country is lacking sorely in
communications, at least the people that I see. Sorely lacking in communication. We
are to be continuously communicating acknowledging one another and affirming one
another, recognizing one another, interacting with one another, and if the person is
doing something unGodly we are supposed to tell them in kindness and in love and
Godly, but if they are not doing anything unGodly and we are upset we have to really
ask God why we want to change the subject. We have to really ask ourselves if it is
Godly for us to change the subject. Some people get upset if you talk about your
infirmity. There is a line that you cross over, you don't have to listen to anybody moan
and groan all day long, but if somebody is really, genuinely sick and they want to talk
about it and the Spirit is not unGodly, you have to ask yourself why you don't want to
hear it. Obviously, hearing it is causing you pain but you have to know that, that
person is not in an unGodly spirit. If they are not over doing it, and they have a need
to tell you for five minutes about a problem, maybe you will be able to pray for them,
and you don't want to hear it and they are in a right spirit you've killed them, you've
broken their heart. On top of their physical pain you have rejected them, you have
refused to show them mercy. Brethren, we have got to start showing mercy. How do
you show mercy? It is so simple. "I'm really sorry you are not feeling well, would you
like me to pray for you?" Even if the person is out of line, if they are talking about it
too long, "is there anything I could do for you to make you more comfortable?" A
failure to do this Brethren, is either pride because we can't help them, we don't have the
power to help them, or it is self defense, we do not want to be upset. Now there is
nothing wrong with not wanting to be upset. Here's the catch, it's not unGodly to not
want to be upset. The question is what do you do to not be upset? Do you deny the
person the mercy or is God going to show us a way that we don't have to be utterly
tormented, but that we can help them if we just make that effort to learn a new way.
As I told you before, it is called sublimation. You can take your pain and run away
with it or you can take your pain and use it to help them and God is glorified in the
second, not in the first.
We are talking about neurotic defenses. The first one is trying to control the situation,
changing the subject, controlling the conversation. What's the alternative to the
neurotic defense of controlling the situation. The Godly defense, defending yourself
from getting hurt is honest communication. Say, that is not a Godly conversation and
I can't listen to it, it is going to damage me, and it is going to damage you. Now that
has defended you against getting hurt, but it hasn't killed the other person. It has given
life to the other person. It has not condemned the other person. If you just change the
subject or do some such thing like that, that puts rejection and condemnation on the
other person. If they don't understand they are saying, why doesn't she want to talk to
me. Even if they do understand and they knew they were talking about something
unGodly, but they have a problem, we all have problems, everyone of us is not perfect
and we have problem areas, so if you are with somebody and they have started to
manifest a problem area, are you going to run away from them and leave them in their
pain? Why? To protect yourself. Or are you going to rise up in Christ and lay hold
of the situation and confront it in Christ and prevent yourself from getting hurt and help
them to overcome. That's what God wants you to do. But large majorities of people,
especially in the church unfortunately, will condemn the hurting person. The motive
is the same. Can you hear it. They don't want to get hurt themselves, but the way they
stop themselves from getting hurt hurts the other person and that does not glorify God.
There is nothing wrong with not wanting to not be hurt. We must learn to deal with it
in Christ so that we don't condemn the other person to protect ourselves.
Control is the first neurotic defense. Right away we try to shut the person up or force
them into church or force them to read the Bible, we always have an answer for their
problem. That's not what they need, they need mercy, they need love, they need
compassion, sometimes they need to be touched, they don't need your counsel when
they are bleeding. It's the last thing they need.
The next neurotic defense, psychiatry calls this
displacement, displacement, and what
that does it is either a conscious or unconscious shifting from one object to another, and
we see this a lot in adulteress circumstances. First we have control and then we have
displacement. We see this a lot with women who find out that their husbands have
cheated, and they almost never blame their husbands. All of the blame goes on the
other woman so instead of directing their fear, their conflict, their anxiety against their
husband they send it on the other woman. Why? Because if they direct it at their
husband they ruin their marriage so they switch the object, the person, about whom the
conflict is raging. It would be too painful to confront their husband about adultery so
if they can they confront the other woman about adultery. Everything is the same
except the object is changed because there is a greater degree of pain in confronting a
husband than confronting the woman. The woman you don't need, you just want her
out of your life. You want the man back, you just want the man. On TV the woman
was raging at her sister and had said not one word to her husband. She made it very
clear she is not going to divorce him, she wants him, and she wants her family life so
being mad at him isn't going to do her much good so she had all this pain and she was
directing it at her sister.
We have something called
dissociation. I don't know that its too common in the
church, but what that involves is more or less taking on a characteristic, modifying your
character radically to avoid distress. In other works, if you are basically a very mild
person and someone calls you on the telephone or approaches you, you hate fights, you
hate conflicts, you don't want pain, and you know that they are coming at you and you
don't want to confront an issue. I've seen very mild people rise up in great strength and
attack the other person before they can even open their mouths. They rise up in
something that is not characteristic of them, very strong, aggressive, in other words put
it down before it even starts. I don't know how much that applies to us, but it is on my
list.
The next one we will deal with is
inhibition. We see that in the church. What this is,
is that you have an impulse. It is a limiting of your conscience to avoid anxiety and
pain; for example, if you see a husband doing something unGodly and you know that
to challenge him would lead to a divorce and ruin your whole life so you might
compromise your conscience and say well, that's acceptable, that's my husband and he
is doing it, he stole the money, it was justified, it was o.k. You really know that it is
not o.k. but you are saying that it is o.k. because if you don't say it is o.k. it is going to
cause a conflict in your life. This is the man that you are living with. He is your family,
your whole life, your family is on the line, and it would cause an internal conflict in you
and pain to have to deal with the fact that your husband took money that didn't belong
to him so you say, well I can understand why he did it so you lower your moral
standard for him, it is not justification, it is a lowering of your moral standard. Why?
To avoid pain and internal conflict. Now we know when we get married one person
has to be dominant and the other person has to be submissive, but when it comes to
conscience we are not supposed to limit our conscience; therefore, if somebody does
that it is an unGodly defense against the fear of anxiety and internal conflict.
Compromise, we might call it compromise.
Then we have
intellectualism. I want to read you what this says: The control of
effects and impulses by way of thinking about them instead of experiencing them. It
is a systematic excess of thinking and it is done to defend against anxiety caused by
unacceptable impulses, and it results in the repression of either idea or effect.
Intellectualism, to talk about something instead of feeling it. You are killing the person
that's in pain. People who are in pain need you to acknowledge their pain, and it is not
unGodly, it is not self pity. There is a line that it can go over where it can become self
pity. You have to discern the spirit, but intellectualism will talk about something
because the person does not want to say to you, I'm sorry that you are hurting, I'm
sorry for your pain, and the reason they don't want to do that is either because there is
nothing they can do to help you and they don't want to admit it or they are so sensitive
that if they admit that you have pain they would be feeling your pain and they will do
almost anything to stop from feeling that pain. They don't want to feel that pain. We
are talking about pain tonight and how people react to it and how people deal with it,
and more people deal with it in an unGodly manner than in a Godly manner. This has
been my life experience. Maybe you live on the other side of the country and you've
had a different experience and maybe you live right here and you've had a different
experience, but I've found most people in the church and I've been in the church and in
deliverance for 15 years, they will pray for you, they will cast a demon out of you, but
they don't know how to have mercy on you, and it is so simple Brethren.
All you have
to do is show them that you care that they are hurting. They don't want your words
and they don't want your solutions to their problems. They may want you to put your
arms around them and to care about them. That's what they want and that's what they
need. Then after the crisis is over, if God gives you a word of counsel for them well
then you give it to them, but in the crisis we are dealing with emotions, and when we
are dealing with an emotional problem the answer to the problem is emotion. They
want an emotional response from you, a Godly emotional response from you, they need
a Godly emotional response from you, they don't need your counsel in the moment of
their pain. You are going to hurt them more. That does not glorify God.
Intellectualism, talking about a problem when someone is in agony, explaining to them
why they shouldn't feel that way. Brethren, you cannot legislate emotions, you cannot
tell somebody that they shouldn't feel a particular way. If they are feeling that way,
they are feeling that way. You might want to tell them, if it is appropriate, that this
emotion has to be restrained because it is destructive to them, but emotion is not always
destructive. The average person that dealing in these defense mechanisms that we are
talking about now, whether it is conscious or unconscious, thinks that the expression
of emotion or the expression of pain is unGodly, and this is not true. There is an
unGodly expression of pain, but there is a Godly expression of pain, and we get to it
at the end. It is called sublimation. You have this pain, you have no power to make
it go away. One of the Godly things you can do to deal with it is to talk about it as long
as it is in a Godly spirit. If you are saying, oh woe is me, oh woe is me, no that is not
Godly, but if you are talking about it as a matter of fact, that this is what has happened
and this is what you are going through it can be a cleansing for you, a healing for the
person, it is called sublimating the problems, taking this pain and expressing it in a way
that's not hurting anybody, that's going to help you. Now, you say it is hurting the other
sister, that's why she wants you to shut up, the other sister has a problem so there is
nothing wrong with what you are doing as long as it is in the right spirit. It can go over
the line and become self pity. You have to be able to discern that. I've listened to a
person's problem for up to 15 minutes until it became unGodly and then I told them,
that's enough, you have to start resisting this, but people need to talk Brethren. They
spend millions of dollars every year on psychiatrist. (end of tape 1)
TAPE 2
. . . .because the average person doesn't want to listen. The average person is involved
in one of these unGodly ways of dealing with pain, either the other person's pain or
their pain. The whole country is dysfunctional. The people are spending millions of
dollars in psychiatrist's office. I had somebody come to see me not too long ago for a
couple of counseling sessions. They said to me that nobody would talk to them. No
member of their family would talk to them, and I had all kinds of counsel to give this
person, but God told me to shut up and listen. They need to talk. There is a time and
a place for everything. Even if it is Godly counsel if it is not the appropriate time you
are damaging them. It has to be God's counsel, it has to be the Spirit of God, and it has
to be the right moment to glorify God. Intellectualism, they will explain to you why
you shouldn't be feeling that way.
Rationalization is justification of attitudes, beliefs or behavior that might
otherwise be unacceptable. Now this is real close to inhibition. Remember we said
inhibition causes you to compromise your conscience, but rationalization justifies why
somebody is behaving in an unacceptable manner. Now we see this a lot in the church,
people that think they are being good Christians and the make excuses for sin. That is
not acceptable to God at all Brethren. We are to call sin, sin without condemnation.
Just about everyone of these things will condemn the person that's hurting, just about
every defense mechanism that we are talking about except the few that are mature
defenses will condemn and cause damage to the hurting person.
Next is
repression. Now this doesn't hurt the other person. This hurts ones self, and
it consists of the expelling and withholding from conscious awareness an idea or
feeling. Now remember denial hears what somebody is saying but says it is not true,
but repression utterly puts down an idea or feeling in ones self to the point that it is
gone. Comment: Is that like mind control? Sheila: I think of mind control as trying
to change somebody else. Repression is done upon ones self. No, it is not mind
control, mind control will change your mind. This is like utterly eradicating the idea
or feeling, just saying that it is not there and affecting it. It is one thing to say it is not
there, and it is another thing to actually cause it to disappear.
Denial deals with
external things. Denial would be me saying, that couch is not really green. Denial
would be saying that you are not hurting. If you are sitting there and telling me that you
are in pain and I say to you, you don't look like you are hurting to me, that is denial of
your feelings, but repression is not even acknowledging the feeling, crushing it to such
a point that in your mind it doesn't even exist and has to do with ones own feelings or
thoughts, it's not even there.
The third category of defense is immaturity, immature defenses. These are just childish
ways of dealing with problems. It is o.k. when you are a child, but when you carry
them into your adulthood they could pose problems for you. The first defense is
acting
out. Now we have a plague in our nation today. We see a lot of adults acting out.
What does that mean? Now remember everything we are talking about is pain, we are
talking about anxiety and pain. Acting out means that if you
feel pain, you engage
in unGodly behavior to discharge the pain. Everything we are talking about is trying
to get rid of pain. Nobody wants pain. There are Godly ways to get rid of it and
unGodly ways to get rid of it, or to direct it or discharge it. So we see a lot of children
acting out; for example, a temper tantrum is acting out. A child wants a piece of candy,
the mother says no, and the child screams and yells and rolls on the floor and kicks its
feet. In our society today you see a lot of adults having verbal temper tantrums. I don't
think too many of them roll on the floor, but they are having verbal temper tantrums if
they are told no. They rise up, they say things they shouldn't say, they attack, they
insult. Sometimes if one of the persons is married they will go out and find another
woman or another man, they will do something, their pain will be directed in their
behavior which is always destructive. Now in these other areas we were talking about
repressing pain, denying pain, but in acting out we let the pain go, you let it rip.
Now basically, narcissism and neurosis deals with pain through the use of the mind.
We can project, we can deny, we can distort, we can try to control someone. It's all
with the mouth. Control, dissociation, inhibition, it is all with the mind, but now we are
in immature denial reaction, and this is the first time we are up against something that's
beyond the mind and words. We are now talking about actions, pain causing our body
to do something.
The second one is
blocking. Now blocking is usually only temporary in nature. It is
close to repression, but repression is very serious because it buries the idea of the
thought so deeply that we know in Christ that roots of bitterness can grow up from
something like that. We know that if we repress anger or hatred or unforgiveness that
we can have a root of bitterness and it will just destroy us, but blocking is a lesser
manifestation of repression. It is usually temporary. Sometimes you are just too
immature to deal with the problem, then you rally, you come out and face it. So
blocking means you don't deal with it. You don't deny that it is there. You don't
attribute it to anybody else, you don't try to control it, you just won't deal with it, you
just refuse to deal with it, you block it out of your mind, saying I'll deal with that
tomorrow. The psychiatric term for this is hypochondriasis (?), we see this in a lot of
children and some of these children bring it into maturity. They are grief stricken
because of what has happened in their childhood, they are hurt, and the way this deal
with this problem is that they put the blame on themselves. We see this in children a
lot where parents get divorced, they blame themselves, and it results in self
condemnation, and if they don't have a loving adult talking them through it they can
grow up into being self condemning adults that will never have a healthy relationship
because they are blaming themselves for everything, taking the blame, and what they
have done is they have internalized their grief or their loneliness or sometimes even if
they have aggressive behavior and if the parents says, Johnny you have just got to stop
breaking the furniture they can take it so personally and internalize it. These children
who do this frequently get sick. There is a way to direct this aggressive behavior in a
child. If they are getting the proper support from an adult. Get rid of your aggression,
put them out on a baseball field, give them an axe and let them chop wood, let them get
into sports. This again is called sublimation. The unhealthy response to pain is to
either crush it, deny it, or try to control it, but if I could put it in one sentence I would
say the healthy response to pain is not to deny it, but to find a way to express it that's
going to let you discharge it without causing any damage. Now, if you have a sexual
urge and you are married you can't go out and have sex with that woman. So there are
other things that you can do, you can direct it towards God, you can direct it into an
athletic activity. the whole point is don't crush it, don't deny it, don't repress it.
Express it, if you are in Christ confess it as sin, say that it is there, and ask the Lord to
help you direct it. The key word is: Deal with it. Let's deal with it. These things have
got to be dealt with Brethren.
This is a problem some people might have. It is called
introjection. If you grow up
with parents that have unGodly attitudes and behavior toward you, it is possible for the
child, no matter how much they dislike or even despise the behavior of the parents, to
become just like them. I find it very common. People saying, I'm not going to be like
my parents. They did this to me, they did that to me, I'll never do that, and then as the
years go by they find out that they are doing exactly or very similar things that their
parents did, and it is called introjection. It is the internalization of characteristics of the
person that's hurting them, and the psychiatric basis for it is this. This is how it
happens to you according to the psychiatric journal. That most children really love
their parents and here is this love object hurting them. Every time they try to get close
to their mother or their father they are hurt, so according to this journal we are told that
becoming just like them is a way of getting close to them without being hurt by them.
I don't know if that is true or not but that is what the journal says. It is used, of course,
unconsciously, to establish closeness and a constance presence of the object without
the anxiety and the pain that comes from the relationship. Then it says that if you fear
your parent, internalization or introjection of their characteristics serves to avoid
anxiety by putting the aggression under one's own control. If you become just like the
parent that's abusing you and you become an abuser you are still in an abusive situation,
but now you have become the one in control, and that's very common. Children who
have been abused either go on and continue to be abused or they come up out of it and
they become abusers.
The next category is
passive-aggressive.
Passive-aggressive behavior is aggression
toward a person through passivity. We have a lot of people in the church or in the
world that they cannot conceive that they are aggressive because they have a mild
demeanor about them. Sometimes it is called in the church a silk stocking Jezebel. The
person never raises their voice, they never yell, and they are in denial about how their
behavior is affecting other people. What is aggression? It means that you are attacking
somebody. Aggression is a word related to warfare, it means that you are hurting
somebody. I've heard people speak in very soft, gentle words but the words they are
saying are very hurtful, and then if the hurt person comes to them and says, why did
you attack me like that, you hurt my feelings? The person that is passive-aggressive
will say, oh I didn't mean it that way, you took it the wrong way, or I was just kidding,
but there is no such thing in Christ. There is no such thing as kidding in Christ, and the
burden is not on the object to not be hurt. If someone says something that's hurtful. If
Brother A says something that's hurtful and Brother B gets hurt the burden is not on
Brother B to say I refuse to be hurt. The burden is on Brother A. Why did you say it?
Why did you say it if you thought for the slightest second that that was going to hurt
Brother B, why did you say it? You said something that could hurt your brother. It is
not the responsibility of Brother B to refuse to be hurt. It is the responsibility of
Brother A to not say anything hurtful. I hear people saying that to me, oh you shouldn't
be hurt. No, you shouldn't have said it, and if you say something or I say something
and I didn't intend to hurt you but I hurt you and I hear that you are hurt I will say to
you, I'm sorry that I hurt you but I had to do it, but I'm sorry that I hurt you. Now if I
didn't have to do it, if it was just ignorance on my part then I will say that I am sorry
that I hurt you. Sometimes I say things that do hurt you, but I have to. Why? Because
I am hurting your carnal mind in my capacity as minister here. Then I'll tell you I'm
really sorry that I hurt you, but I had to do it. We can't go around just hurting people
and saying hurtful things and telling the other person that it is their responsibility to be
tough enough to not get hurt. That is not Christian Brethren, and if you are in that
position, if you are a person that is receiving arrows shot into you on a regular basis
and you have taken the responsibility of saying, I will not be hurt, then you are
justifying the behavior of the person who is shooting the arrows and you are enabling
them, you are supporting them in their destructive behavior towards you. You are
telling them it is o.k. You are telling them to keep on doing it, you don't have any
complaint, you are big and tough to not be hurt. I want to tell you, if you do that you
are opening the door wide for that person to hurt you. If you are the mother it could
be hurting the child or if you are the wife of a man who is doing this it could go to your
children. Brethren, everyone is responsible for Godly behavior and Godly reactions.
If you let somebody hurt you, not necessarily physically but with their behavior or their
mouth, and you tell them that it is o.k., not to worry about it, I can handle it at this end,
just get ready because it is just a matter of time until you see them hurting somebody
that is not as tough as you are. And of course you don't fight with these people. We
talk and communicate. We say to them, are you aware that you hurt me? If you have
a stone age man there, and he says, oh honey who are you kidding (distortion), I
couldn't hurt you, what are you talking about you shouldn't be hurt, you still have a
choice, you can tough it out and play this sick game or you can tell them, well you may
not know it but I want you to know that I believe that you are hurting me and that it is
not funny. I say that to people lots of times. They can't receive what I'm saying. I
want it on the record, I acknowledge that you don't think you hurt me, but I want you
to know that I feel that you have hurt me and we will leave it at that, but don't think that
I think that it is o.k. because it is not o.k. It is a sick game.
If somebody is hurting
you and you are justifying them and enabling them and helping them to continue
in this kind of hurtful behavior, physical or verbal or emotional you are playing
a sick game with them and it is called sadomasochism, and it comes on all levels.
When it gets to a really extreme point you are beating each other with whips, but it
doesn't have to be so extreme. It can be very mild, it could be verbal, it could be
emotional. When someone hurts you, you are not supposed to say, hit me again,
you can't hurt me. That is not a healthy response. Something is wrong. If you think
you deserve to be hurt, something is wrong with your thinking. If you think it is o.k.
for people to hurt you, if you think that's just the way life is, you are in denial and you
are trying to control the situation by saying, you can't hurt me, and you probably have
a whole series of these defenses operating in your life. You are probably repressing the
hurt, you are rationalizing their right to do it to you, you are intellectualizing, talking
to yourself and saying you shouldn't be hurt. You may or may not be acting out. If you
are involved in a relationship like this where someone is regularly and habitually
hurting you, and you have accepted this as the status quo, you think that this is the way
it is and it is o.k, you may be having some response, you may scream and yell. Maybe
you have a temper tantrum or maybe you are a man that gets drunk and breaks bottles.
People don't get drunk for no reason. They get drunk because they are in pain.
Sometimes they act out that pain and they break bottles, they break houses, who knows
what they are going to do, break furniture. So the immature defense mechanism is
acting out. You don't know what to do with that pain so you break something. A
mature response to that pain is to express it in a harmless way, and what is the most
harmless way? It is to talk about it. It is the hardest thing for people to do in our
society. People can't talk.
Passive-aggressive behavior. Being aggressive with never raising your voice and never
overtly hurting anybody so that you can always say, oh that's your imagination. I didn't
hurt you. Little digs, subtle digs, talking behind somebody's back, refusal to cooperate,
passive-aggressive. Did you ever see kids that just will not pick the things up in their
room? Passive aggression toward their parents.
We saw projection under narcissism and now we see it under the immature defenses.
Again, it is attributing one's own unacknowledged feelings to other people, and it is
used to reject intimacy. A lot of people project their thoughts onto other people, they
become suspicious, and always worrying about danger and injustice and they use it to
prevent intimacy. Every time they start to get close to somebody they become
suspicious of them, they mistrust them. We find this a lot in people that come out of
dysfunctional families where they have problems with intimacy. They will find a
reason to not let you get close to them. The whole world is dysfunctional, the church
is dysfunctional, everybody has been hurt, but you can't go through life like that. To
get the best out of life you have to open yourself, you have to open yourself to being
hurt, you have to take a chance, you have to let yourself be vulnerable so long as all of
this is under the control of Christ, of course. If you are a young woman you are not
going to go with a man who you know is someone who can really hurt you, maybe a
married man who can really hurt you, but you have a standard. If you find a man that
meets those standards and he is willing to make a commitment to you and you care
about him you have to take a chance. Open yourself to the possibility of being hurt,
and then when you get hurt and you are going to get hurt because we are all imperfect,
everybody disappoints us, you have to have a plan of action as to how to deal with that
hurt when it comes so that it doesn't destroy your marriage or your family life or your
friendship. The hurt will come, the offense must come. What are you going to do with
it when it comes? If you keep running away from people when they hurt you, you are
going to be all alone because everybody is going to hurt you sooner or later. You have
to walk the fine line between denial and needing person after person, friend, boyfriend,
saying, oh they will never hurt me, and then when they hurt you, you break the
relationship off. That's no good. Then there is the other end of the extreme where you
know sooner or later everybody is going to disappoint you. It has got to be.
Somewhere along the line they are going to disappoint you, and you have to live with
that knowing that it is going to happen without using it to block intimacy. You have
to be vulnerable. Open yourself. Love them with everything you've got to love, and
when it happens you have got to forgive them. And how do you forgive them? You
have to discharge the pain. Unforgiveness is bound to an inability to discharge the
pain.
We are now going to talk about the mature defenses. The first one on this life is called
altruism, and it is the exact opposite of selfishness.
Altruism means to
devote
yourself to other people, to give instead of getting. The church teaches this. We all
know that, get your mind off yourself think about someone else. Selfishness destroys.
Now there is a perversion of this altruism, and people who get involved in this have to
be very careful to not surrender everything of themselves to other people's needs. We
call it in the church an unGodly burden, or unGodly soul tie. Where you give up all
rights to anything so that the other person can be happy. Now that is not healthy, and
it is possible that if you get involved in that, that your satisfaction can come through
internalizing the other person's problems. You don't want to internalize the other
person's problems. When you come to someone in relationship in Christ, if the Lord
brings you into relationship with someone, you want to come with your strength. You
do not want to come to a relationship to be brought down by that person. Everybody
has strengths and everybody has weaknesses, and if two people come together in a
relationship and they both brings their strengths to the relationship it can be a great
blessing for you, but you have to be very careful. Since we are all fallen, we must
know that every time we commit to a relationship with someone, a new relationship,
I strongly ask the Lord what must I know about this person, is there anything I need to
be aware of to protect myself, to defend myself? If that person have an unGodly
weakness in them that is a particular area of vulnerability for you, you can be damaged
by this relationship, and any relationship that you enter into you want to be edified by
it or you want to bring Christ in you to that person to raise them up, but you don't want
to wind up being dragged down from this relationship. We are talking about mature or
Godly defenses to pain, how to deal with pain in a Godly manner. The first defense on
the list is called altruism which means instead of thinking about yourself, you serve and
help and minister to other people, and you get gratification from doing it, it makes you
feel good to be able to bless or help somebody else, and that will diminish or hopefully
dissolve your pain totally. Your pain will be swallowed up by the gratification of doing
something for others, but we said there is a perversion of that. Be careful that you don't
get involved in unGodly soul ties where you start to minister to this troubled person and
wind up finding their problem resident in you. We call it an unGodly soul tie in the
church, and the psychiatrist know about it. I keep saying that we are very much in
agreement with them. The only major difference is that they deny God, but we are very
much in agreement with the scientists about our world, and we are very much in
agreement with the psychiatrists about the function of the human mind.
The second defense to pain and anxiety in the mature person is
anticipation. We just
talked about that a minute ago. We can go into a state of denial every time we enter
into a relationship, and say this is the person that will never hurt me, and then when we
do get hurt we are devastated because we have denied the possibility that it could
happen, and that takes us back into our narcissism, but the godly counterpart of that is
called anticipation. We can anticipate someone going to hurt us, but we have to be
very careful not to let this knowledge that people hurt, that relationships hurt, even
when they don't mean to we are all fallen and we hurt each other and we disappoint
each other all the time so we have to know that that is a reality without letting it hinder
our intimacy. We have to make a Godly choice of a friend or a young man based on
Godly wisdom and at that point open ourselves to the fullness that God will let us open
ourselves to without fear or anxiety of being hurt because fear or anxiety about being
hurt will destroy the relationship. So you have to balance it between thinking it is
impossible, knowing it is going to happen, but walk down that middle line saying that
you have used the wisdom that Christ has given you to the best of your ability to pick
the very best possible person to be in a relationship with, and you are going to take
your chances and when the day comes that they hurt you hopefully it will just be a
minor hurt, but whether it is a minor hurt or a major hurt when it comes you will deal
with it in Christ.
The next mature defense, the psychiatrists call it
asceticism. That's talking about the
reality that all of us have urges that are totally unacceptable, totally socially
unacceptable, and frequently they come in the area of sexuality, fantasies about having
another sex partner, the whole point is not to take condemnation if these thoughts come
into your mind. The question is what do you do with them? What asceticism does is
that it works together with a moral code. Fallen man is constantly looking to be
satisfied, constantly looking to have our hurts healed. We want to feel good, that's the
bottom line, we want to feel good, so asceticism is a recognition that we have certain
base drives that if we weren't civilized, if we weren't Christians, we would be out there
doing them, and to take these base drives and more or less confront them with a moral
code and get gratification. What does that mean? We feel good because the
righteousness in us overcame the base drive. Let me say it again. There is a base drive
in us that is offering us pleasure, and we know that it is to our destruction, and the way
we deal with it is by saying, I'm a Christian. God says fornication is wrong, and I have
overcome fornication. So the pleasure principle is no longer in the base or
unacceptable sexual act. The pleasure now comes from saying, I have overcome. It
is a transference. It is a Godly, healthy, mature way of dealing with something internal
that's causing us anxiety, fear or conflict. I've got this feeling, what am I going to do
with it? It makes me fearful, makes me nervous. There is a Godly way and an
unGodly way of dealing with it. We can deny it, we can distort it, we can project it on
to someone else, we can try to control it, we can repress it, we can act out, we can do
it or we can overcome it with the righteousness of God. We can overcome restless
feelings if we are a young person, and we are not married by doing works for other
people. Don't lay around the house dreaming, giving your mind an opportunity to work
fantasy and stir you up in these areas. Get out, do something, help somebody else.
The next mature defense is
humor. If we can do it that is a wonderful defense. We
can laugh at ourselves. Now before you can laugh at yourself without condemnation
you have to be able to talk about your problem. Now if you have some religious person
sitting there they are going to try and shut you up. I declare to you that that is not
Godly, and if you find yourself in a confrontation with somebody because you are
expressing yourself and they are trying to shut you up, I want everyone here to know
that the healthy expression is speaking about the problem, and the unhealthy expression
is trying to shut you up. You have to know that so that you can stand in righteousness.
Now if the person doesn't want to hear it you don't have to force it on them, but don't
be condemned by this. It is Godly to express yourself, and if you can do it laugh at
yourself. I've done that to myself a lot, I'll make a joke out of it. Sometimes I go
through such incredible painful experiences I just laugh. It really takes the edge off.
I say, this is really ridiculous these thoughts that are in my mind, and I've prayed and
I've done everything and they won't go away, and there is nothing left to do but to laugh
at them. You have got a beginning. They are there, and I'm not going to deny that they
are there, I'm not going to distort that they are there, I'm not going to say that they are
not in my mind but that they are in someone else's mind, neither will I try to control
them, well I might try to control them in Christ, and I certainly am not going to act them
out, but I will talk about them, and if I can I laugh about it. We are not without
remedies Brethren.
The next one is
sublimation. What that means is you take that feeling, we are talking
about pain, you take that anxiety, and you channel it into something creative. If it is an
energy go out and do something physical, get involved in sports. Some people like to
be creative, find some artistic expression. If there is a restlessness in your soul go out
and do something Godly. It is called sublimation. Take that energy and channel it into
something healthy. Do something to help somebody else, use your mind, use your body
in a Godly pursuit, and you will take the victory over the feeling. Don't deny it, don't
repress it, don't blame somebody else. Don't shut up, admit that it is there and deal
with it. Deal with what? Your pain. We are talking about pain.
The last Godly defense is called
suppression. Now remember, that repression is the
denial of pain to the point that it ceases to exist for you, and that is unconscious.
Suppression is the conscious putting down of something, saying, it is there, I have an
unGodly sexual desire, and I simply won't do it. Now repression is destructive because
it goes underground, and you can have roots of bitterness, you can have all kinds of
problems built up in your soul, but suppression gives you a satisfaction because you
have taken the victory over your own life. So, what are we saying in simple terms? If
we deal with the problem we are o.k. If we don't deal with the problem we have got
trouble. Taking the victory consciously over something, a force that is trying to drive
you to do some thing that you don't want to do and consciously taking the victory gives
one gratification. If you have pain, conflict, a problem, it is important that you satisfy
it, that you bring satisfaction but that satisfaction must be in a Godly manner, and the
immature ways of dealing with these problems is to deny ones self gratification and if
you deny yourself gratification this conflict, this pain, this emotion is just going
underground and it is going to rear up its head in one of many different unGodly ways.
If you've got an emotion it must be satisfied. In the legal system they say that you have
a judgement against somebody, maybe they owe you money and you get a legal
document against them. That judgment must be satisfied. It must be discharged. It
must be dealt with. If you put it away from yourself without satisfying it you've got
trouble down the line, and if you are using any of these unGodly methods you are
hurting other people along the way. It may work temporarily for you to deny your
problems or to repress your problems, or to try to control other people. It may work
temporarily, but the day will come that it will fail. Your methods will fail. They are
not Godly, and even the psychiatrists know it. It is not even a question of God in this
area, it is a question of the basic nature of humanity. God knows what our basic nature
is, and we have an element of people in this world that have a pretty good handle on
the nature of fallen man. You cannot continue on having unsatisfied pain and emotions
and internal conflict indefinitely, you will explode, and we have thousands if not
millions of people in mental institutions. Everything is not a demon. We have in the
church what we call deliverance ministry. There are some people that have demons,
and they have to get cast out. If you have submitted yourself to that and the demons
didn't come out or they are not coming out or you only see some improvement you may
be a person that needs a re-education, you need counseling along with the power of
God, you have to learn that you can't deal with emotions in these unGodly ways
because it is just temporary and there is going to be a big explosion in your life if you
don't start transferring over to a Godly discharge of conflict and pain and emotion. It
has got to be satisfied, put away, dealt with, you can't bury it forever. It is going to
come back and haunt you, and that is a reality of our fallen condition whether you are
in God or whether you are not in God, and we have plenty of people that are not living
for God but they have this knowledge. How do they have it? Their parents taught
them. They grew up in a household where this is practiced so they do it too, but if you
grew up in a household where it is not practiced you've got to change and sometimes
the change is painful, but it is worth it and change comes through overcoming. You are
not going to have someone pray for you in a meeting and get slain in the spirit or have
one demon cast out of you and go from being a person who doesn't have these skills to
being a person who has these communication skills. It doesn't work that way. You
have to hear it, you have to believe it, you have to receive it, you have to ask God to
give it to you, and then He is going to send you opportunities to practice it, and at first
you are going to fail, but if every time you fail you go before the Lord and confess and
repent and ask Him to help you He will send you a continuous stream of opportunities
to practice these principles that you are hearing, and each time you will get stronger and
you will get wiser and Christ will increase in you and you will grow in God. Maybe
it is a demon, but Brethren don't be deceived, it is not that simple. Yes, there are plenty
of people who have had a demon cast out, they've stopped taking drugs, they've
stopped drinking, they've stopped fornicating, it is true but they are still left with the
same personality problems that got them into the problem in the first place. God has
delivered them of a problem that was destroying their life, it was an emergency, it was
a crisis and when their time comes they, too, will be brought to a place where He wants
them to start dealing with the carnal mind of fallen man. Everybody has one. We are
not going to transfer from the carnal mind into Christ by being slain in the spirit.
You
will transfer from the carnal mind into Christ by rejecting everything in our
personality and in our mind that does not line up to our standard which is the
Lord Jesus Christ and actively waging war
against it and replacing it with the
thought processes and the mind and the practices and the behavior of Christ. It
is a warfare to destroy everything in us that is not of God, and I declare to you that if
you are hearing this message you have been called to this ministry before many other
people because the day is coming that people aren't going to have choices. It will be
forced on them. I don't know exactly how it is going to happen, but you have an
opportunity to do it yourself. The day is coming and just great tribulation is going to
fall, and the pain is going to result in this change somehow. Do it now. It is painful
enough now, do it now, and if you do it now He is calling you to be among the
company that's going to minister to the other people. It is a great honor. There is no
reason to resist this. If you are resisting this or if you feel at any time that I am your
enemy, it is your carnal mind talking to you because I am not your enemy. I am here
in Christ's stead giving you His word saying that you are invited to be in the company
that is going to minister to the multitudes that are going to be in great pain, and you
better not be condemning His people. He won't tolerate it, He won't tolerate it for there
is no more condemnation in Christ Jesus, but He accepts us for what we are, human,
feeling, people who are capable of being hurt. He's going to teach us how to survive
in a Godly manner.
So by way of review, narcissism is a condition whereby one will protect ones self to the point of total denial that they have any problems at all. We see this a lot among alcoholics. Those of you who know anything about alcoholism, this concept of denial of any problem is very common. I find narcissism the hardest condition to deal with. It is very common among drug addicts and alcoholics, that they won't even admit that they are an alcoholic. They are really, really hard to deal with. You really need the power of God with someone that's narcissistic because they just look at you and laugh and tell you that you are crazy, that you are imagining this problem, and then we have neurosis. Many people have these problems that they are really hurt and they are so concerned about being hurt, they don't want anxiety, they don't want internal conflict, they don't want pain so they will employ some of these methods to deal with conflict. Methods that do not satisfy the problem, but push them aside or bury them so that sometime in the future there is a big explosion, and then we have immaturity. The problems associated with immaturity are easier to come out of , and then we have the mature defenses which will satisfy the problem, put it to sleep, put an end to it, and that's what God wants to bring us to. He wants us to come to it within ourselves, He wants to bring it to our families, and when we take the victory over ourselves and take the victory over our families and we take the victory in our congregation He is going to send us out to other people. He will send you out with the true ministry of Christ. Those of you who want to counsel, there is nothing wrong with wanting to counsel, just do it God's way. Believe me there is more than enough work for everybody that wants to work, but don't condemn His people, don't ask them to deny their pain, don't you deny their pain, He will not bless it, and the day is coming when it will knock you out of the ministry if you won't give it up, and I tell you that by word of wisdom, the word of the Lord to you. We are still under grace, He is tolerating a lot of error in the church, but the day is coming He will not let you minister and He will stop you one way or another if you condemn His little ones especially if you condemn the Joseph company who are in great pain because they are being formed in the image of Christ.
Comment: Would killing all the emotions be an answer to that, dying to our emotions? Sheila: Well, it all depends on how you do it. What you are talking about now is asceticism, that is raising up a moral standard and saying by this moral standard I am not going to yield to you. Now that is o.k. If you do it in Christ, that's what we do in Christ. When you say killing it in Christ, yes that is the answer. A lot of people in the church are not killing it in Christ. They are using all these other methods. They think they are doing it in Christ, and because it is not Christ it is bringing death instead of life. There is a difference between overcoming and killing and denying and burying. They think they've killed it, but they have buried it. What we are talking about now can only happen as Christ is being formed in you. The people that have received the Holy Spirit do not have the vehicle to do this because it is not common teaching in the church that if you have received the Holy Spirit but Christ is not being formed in you, you are not spiritually prepared to kill self or to die to self. They don't understand this. They have received the Holy Spirit, but it is not working for them because Christ is not being formed in them so they lay hold of all these other methods thinking that it is Christ. This is prevalent throughout the church, but for what ever reason God at that moment in who ever these people are, at that moment in their lives, is not fulfilling an aspect of the scripture that they would like fulfilled in their life and because they can't understand it the way I am expressing it to you they rise up and try to do it in their own strength, and then they believe that they have done it and they have it so they are involved in a great error. Some people are now going around preaching and they have an altar call at the end of the meeting just like we have seen so many times, people are saying some up for salvation, these men are saying, come up if you want to be baptized into Tabernacles and they are all coming up and I don't know what he does, I don't know if he lays hands on them or not, I've read about it but haven't seen it, and he sends them home and he reports that 33 people entered into the Most Holy Place. What are you talking about they entered into the Most Holy Place? It is the same thing as a woman telling me a couple of years ago, and said I have the most wonderful testimony. I went to see my doctor today and he received the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and I knew in my heart it wasn't true so I said to her, well what makes you think that he received the baptism with the Holy Spirit? Well, we know now it isn't the baptism, but I wasn't going to argue with her on that detail. What makes you think he received the Holy Spirit? She said that he said that he wanted it and he agreed to it. I said, was it evidenced with speaking in tongues? She said, no. I said, was there any manifestation, any sign at all? She said, no. How do you know he received it? Well, he said he received it. Brethren, this woman is a preacher that said that to me. We see it in the ultimate reconciliation camp today. They are saying that they have it all and if they just believe it they are going to be in full stature. You cannot enter into Christ through intellectualism. It is a spiritual experience, and every step that we grow closer to Christ is a spiritual experience. It cannot happen to you because you believe it. It has to HAPPEN to you. It has to happen to you, you can't dream about it, it has to happen to you. This doesn't seem to be understood in the church. It is the same as casting out a demon. It doesn't always have to be a manifestation. It is possible for a demon to come out without a manifestation, but either it came out or it didn't come out. Everybody that has a manifestation does not get delivered, and everybody that doesn't have a manifestation you can't say that they weren't delivered. If you ask for deliverance for a demon of witchcraft and I lay hands on you and rebuke witchcraft, I cannot reasonably say to you, well you can go home and sleep now because it came out. Unless I have a word of knowledge from the Lord that it came out I don't whether it came out or not. Unless I hear you speak in other tongues I won't know that you have received the Holy Spirit. I suppose it is possible. I know a woman who was asking for the Holy Spirit for months and she was greatly distressed. All of our formulas don't work, it has to be a work of the spirit. I started questioning her and it turned out that she really did receive the Holy Spirit, but it was a little different manifestation than mine. Her prayer language was just one phrase, and she would only say it once in a while, but when I questioned her it came out and the Lord told me that she had received and it was true. (End of message)