The Following Message Has Been Transcribed And Edited For
Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation By
The LEM Transcribing & Editing Team.

The name of the message tonight is "Pride." I really wish that I had put the prayer that I prayed for everybody on this recording. Whoever is listening to this message, this is going to be a hard word. I am going to be talking about pride, and I want you to know, that God loves you, and when He gives you a hard word, it is for your edification, it is for your good, and it is for your correction, so that you can be formed in the image of Christ. There is something in the Scripture called Godly criticism, and the world calls it constructive criticism. It is a reality.

I heard an excellent message by Charles Stanley on it recently, "How to Respond to Criticism in a Godly Manner," and I just want you to know that God is for you. He is not against you. I am for you. I am not against you, and when I have to deliver a hard word, very frequently, the person that I am delivering it to falls down to a very carnal realm, and thinks that I am against them and gets all kinds of ideas in their head that are totally untrue. I just want to state at the beginning, first of all, with regard to this ministry I never come against you, the Lord comes against you.

In a few weeks or a few messages, we will be coming to that Scripture in the Book of Daniel where it says, "And the little horn made war against the saints." I hope that I have already established for you that the little horn is Christ, not antichrist, and Christ makes war against His saints. Why does He make war against His saints? Because they have sin in their heart, and Jesus Christ will come against sin where ever it manifests, where ever it manifests, and for the purposes of this ministry, I am the flesh of Jesus Christ. My mouth is the mouth that He uses, and my vocal are the vocal chords that He uses, and if He is coming against you, it is Him, it is not me. Unless you can discern an ungodly spirit on me, it is Him, and it is not me, and the problem seems to be with a lot of people that when they are at the end of that rebuke, when they are at the unhappy end of that rebuke (but it is not really an unhappy end because it is for your good) they perceive an ungodly spirit on me. We are going to talk about this some more today, and I am going to try and give you some understanding of the manifestations of pride.

It is the most wicked spirit. He is the most subtle of all the beasts of the field, and he has many manifestations that we do not recognize as pride. The first thing that I want to tell you is that when Jesus Christ sees sin in you, He is coming after it, and if you do not believe this after sitting in this ministry all these months, I suggest you put it before the Lord because I do not know what to say to you, if you do not believe this. Glory to God.

That is the second time that I had an opening thought in my mind as to what I wanted to say, and it just went out of my mind. Glory to God, help me Father, I just rebuke witchcraft, and I rebuke pride, and I rebuke opposition and break every curse upon my mind that would stop me from bringing this message forth in the Name of Jesus. Thank you Lord.

I am telling you something that I know you have heard before. Whatever the ministry has been preaching, that is the work that God is doing in the ministry. If you are in a ministry that is preaching the Holy Spirit, people are getting baptized with the Holy Spirit all over the place. If you are in a ministry that is preaching deliverance, deliverance is falling all over the place. If it is a ministry that is preaching faith and miracles, people are getting faith and miracles imparted to them all over the place. Well, what are we preaching in this ministry, brethren? We are preaching perfection. We are preaching how to enter into the Kingdom, and people sit here, and they say, "I love this word, and it is glorious," but somewhere in the back of their mind, they are thinking that this thing could never touch me. When the hand of the Lord touches the area of sin in their life, they rise up in a spirit of pride to oppose the Word of the Lord.

What I am suggesting to you is that any reaction to a Godly rebuke is pride. Most people will not recognize it as pride, but it is pride. Why? Because a thought has risen up in your mind that has opposed the declared Word of the Lord. That is what has happened and that is pride, and there is no justification for it, brethren. There is no justification for it. Father, I just pray that you order this message. My mind is just all garbled. I want to tell you, that if you are present when you hear a rebuke coming forth towards somebody, and you rise up and you defend the person that is being rebuked, what you have done is call the one that is being rebuked, innocent, and you have passed judgment on the one bringing the rebuke, that they are guilty, and you have taken the spotlight off of the one being rebuked. You have put it on the one giving the rebuke and placed upon them an attitude whereby they must defend themselves for what they are doing. Pride has risen up in you, brethren, a thought that has opposed the Word of the Lord that was coming forth in that hour. We must guard against these things.

God will not accept the ways of the world from us. The ways of the world would say, "Do not fight, do not fight, do not fight." Can you dare to say, "Do not fight," when the Word of the Lord is coming forth? What do I say to you? Brethren, if you can see this in yourself, if you can recognize it, God requires you to repent because you have called evil good, and good evil, and you have tried to cast down the Word of the Lord, and you have manifested pride. You need to come before the Lord and deal with it. It is sin. Thank you Jesus. It is sin.

The second major point, that I want to come before you with is this. God will not accept the dealings of the world in His people. We cannot deal with sin like the heathen deal with sin. How do the heathen deal with sin? They will not confess it as sin, they will not repent of it, they put it under their feet, they hide it. I used to know a preacher that said, "They put a fig leaf over it." They deny it, they try to fix it up and make it okay. God will not accept this. God will not accept this, and I am in the same boat as you are, brethren. I do not care how spiritual somebody is, unless they have entered into perfection, we are all in the same boat. It does not matter, if I might have laid hold of this revelation a little better than you. I am not talking about understanding it, I am talking about living it.

It does not matter whether it is you or whether it is me when anyone of us (imperfect ones) manifest sin to the Lord, and the Lord makes a judgment that this is the time that I am going to deal with it, He wants you to confess it as sin, and He wants you to repent, and He wants you to change. If you come before Him and you say, "That is the way I am, and there is nothing I can do about it." Brethren, you are manifesting pride and a haughty spirit. I am not against you. I am not condemning you. I am telling you the truth. If you think that you are going to be in a ministry like this (I do not care how close you are to the Lord in any area of your life) if you think that you are going to sin without repentance (after it has been called to your attention) without the judgments falling upon you, you are mistaken. I say this for your edification, and I say it for your help, and I say it for your good. I condemn you not.

What you perceive coming forth from me in this hour is the agape love of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am telling you the truth, even though you might hate me as a result of it. Why? Because maybe, maybe, because you have heard it, God will bring you to repentance. Maybe He will have mercy on you and bring you to repentance. I am telling you, brethren, I do not care how close a walk you have with the Lord, I do not care if you prophesy, I do not care if you cast out demons, I do not care if you have a healing ministry, I do not care if you have a one-on-one, very super-spiritual ministry where God sends you to people to give them words of knowledge.

Brethren, I am telling you right now that if Christ is not being formed in you, what you have is a gift. What you have is a gift that is an imputed anointing. It is not going into the Kingdom. You are not getting into the Kingdom based on a gift. What is getting you into the Kingdom is the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ appearing in your fallen soul (personality). I do not care what kind of a healing or deliverance or prophetic ministry you have, brethren, it is not getting you into the Kingdom. It is passing away with everything else that is passing away in this world. The only thing that shall abide forever is the imparted anointing, Christ in you. Glory to God. Hallelujah.

Be not deceived, brethren, because God is not mocked, and I want to tell you, the deeper into God you are the faster the judgments are going to fall, I want to tell you this, if someone comes to you with a word of the Lord, and you manifest an ungodly spirit towards it, if you are not yet capable of manifesting a humble spirit, and receiving the word in humility, if your response is a haughty spirit or pride, I want you to know that this is not acceptable to God. You cannot go before the Lord and say, "Well, that is the way I am," He will not accept it. If you do not believe me, after you hear this message, I am sure He is going to witness it to you because He will not accept it.

Neither can you come to me and say, "I am weak, that is why I did it, I am weak, I know that I should not have spoken like that, but it was an automatic reaction to what you said to me. It was just an automatic reaction, and any other human being would react like that." Well, brethren, if that happens to be true (I do not believe it is true), I still think there are some people who have entered into the agape love of the Lord Jesus Christ, at least, some of the time. What did Jesus say when they were crucifying Him? He said, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do." I remind you that when someone comes to you with the word of the Lord, and your response is to attack them, you are manifesting the fallen soulish nature. I am not condemning you.

Listen to what I am saying. You are manifesting the fallen soulish nature. You are just like a little puppy dog in the street or a kitten that is wounded, and when someone touches you, you snarl at them. Christ does not do that. What am I saying? If the Lord sends a word to you, and your response is attack, you have not manifested agape love. I condemn you not for it, but know the truth.

You have no imparted anointing. Your gift is just that, it is a gift. If you want to hold on to it. Christ must be formed in you, and if you are coming to this ministry God wants to form Christ in you. If you think that you are going to sit here, and He is not going to touch your weak areas you are mistaken. He is going right for your weak areas. If you say to me, "I could not help it, I was weak," that is not an excuse. Why is it not an excuse? Because, in Christ, we can do all things through Christ which strengthens us. We can do all things.

Before Christ was with us, we were overcome by the enemy, but in this hour, brethren, if we confess it as sin and repent and cry out to God, He will join to us in this area and strengthen us to overcome. Read the first chapters of the Book of Revelation. "He that overcomes, he that overcomes, he that overcomes." You cannot say, "I am weak so that is the way it is." Do you think He has given you His spirit, do you think He has given you His word, do you think He has given you His ministers so that you could say, "That is the way I am, and it is tough." You cannot. Neither can you take the good things of His Kingdom and not take the bad. Everybody loves spiritual ministry. We love to cast out demons and heal the sick. It makes us feel good to go where He sends us. A lot of us like to listen to this deep word, but nobody likes it when He puts His finger on us. I do not like it when He puts His finger on me. I have been in pain for a very long time. I do not like it any more than you do, but you cannot have the good without the bad.

Neither can you have a ministry where He sends you to people with a hard word and not expect to be persecuted once in a while. Neither can you expect to enter into the deep things of God and not be required to have some kind of hardship in your life or be required to give up something of this fallen soul realm because that is what the Scripture teaches. You cannot go around attacking the minister because she is preaching something, that is making you uncomfortable in your fallen soul. You have to deal with it as you have been taught to deal with it over this last 6-8 months, if not longer, because if something that I preach, hurts you, and you attack, you are responding out of your carnal personality, and Christ has called us to enter into His righteous soul. He has called us to put away the things of this world and to live by His life. I know you cannot do it right away, but you have to try. You start with, confessing what you have done as sin. Then, as soon as you can, you repent and all the way along the line, you are crying out to God to strengthen you, to join Himself to you in this area so that you can do what is right. Where? In His eyes.

You cannot tell God (and, in a situation like this, if you are telling me that is what you are telling Christ), that everybody attacks back when someone comes to them with a word, it is not true, but even if it was true God does not care. You have to come into the image of Christ. But it is not true anyway. Get Charles Stanley's message. It is not true. Everybody does not attack when someone comes to them with something that hurts them, and if you are weak in this area you need to be strengthened.

Come and ask for prayer. It is wonderful to come and ask for prayer when you have an infirmity, and it is wonderful to come and ask for prayer when you have a financial problem. You also need to come and ask for prayer when you have a spiritual or an emotional problem. I want to tell you, I want to ask you to examine yourself. If the only time you come for prayer is when you have an infirmity or a financial or a family problem, and you are never up here if you have a spiritual or an emotional problem, the chances are very great you are manifesting pride. What you are doing is dealing with this problem yourself. You cannot say, "I am trying to change." No man can change. If that is your nature to attack, and that was my nature, everybody here knows that. I told you what I was like when I came to the Lord. If that is your nature, you cannot change. Only Christ can change you. You cannot do it yourself. It must be confessed as sin. It must be repented of. It must be called what it is, and you must submit yourself to your brethren for prayer. The Scripture says, "Submit yourselves one to the other." You cannot put a wall around yourself, and say you are going to handle everything yourself. That is pride, and I want to tell you something, brethren, this was the way I wanted to start the message, and I just lost it.

God is waging war against this ministry, and what He is attacking in all of us, including me, is pride. He is after all of us, every last one of us, and what He is looking for is pride, and when He finds it, He is putting His finger on it. If you feel pain, and if you are writhing like a worm, and if you are screaming and yelling, I have not done it to you because if there was no pride in your heart, you would not feel that way. In any event, it is Christ. I am His flesh. You cannot say to me that I expect too much of you because I do not expect anything of you. My Master expects something of you, and what He expects of you is that you change from glory to glory until Christ be formed in you.

If you feel pressure on you, you are right. You are right. The Lord has pressure on you. He wants you to change, and you cannot tell Him, "That is the way I am," because you are opening yourself to judgment. The Scripture reads, "Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall." Brethren, for you to be a mature saint in a ministry like this, and especially if God, sends someone to you with a word, saying that you have a problem in that area, and you will not respond to it, or if your response is ungodly, brethren, you have opened yourself to the judgments of "destruction" and "fall." Do not say, that I am cursing you because I am not. I am giving you the Bible.

As to how far God is going to let it go, that is between Him and you, but the judgments are written. They were written before the foundation of the earth. It is His law. It is the spiritual law of God, and it is working in the realm of the spirit. God is not sitting up there throwing lightening bolts at you, but He has proclaimed that the judgment for pride is destruction. If you see signs of destruction all over your life, brethren, and you decide to take an attitude that your God would not do that to you, you are manifesting pride. I do not know how far God would let it go. That is between you and Him. I am not cursing you, I am not prophesying over you, I am telling you the truth.

Everyone in this ministry is subject to the judgments as much as anyone out there, if not more so because we are supposed to know better, and He is requiring us to resist. Resist what? Resist the enemy. What enemy? Our Carnal Mind. Sin in our mind. He is not judging us if we lay hold of it, and say, "Lord there is sin in my mind, help me." I am telling you, brethren, you cannot be this deep into God and walk around saying, "That is the way I am," because your God is going to make war with you. Not me, brethren, I am not making war with you. Your God is going to make war with you, and He is going to continue to make war with you in every area until He brings you into perfection, into the image of Jesus Christ. There is going to be no end to it, there is going to be no end to it, brethren.

I had two people this week, say to me, "I did what I had to do to survive," I did what I had to do to survive. Well, what I have to say to that, brethren, is this. If what you did was to survive, the method that you chose to survive by was the method of this world. If what you did was to survive, you chose to use the methods of this world to survive, but they will never get you into the Kingdom. There is only one way to survive, brethren, and that is by the spirit and life of Jesus Christ and His law and His rules and His way, and if you think that you did that to survive, you are deceived because judgments have come upon you for what you did. We know that everything in the Kingdom is the opposite of everything in this world, so if you think that in order to survive you have to attack, you will find out when you attack, the judgments are falling upon you.

I tell you that what you have to do to survive is shut your mouth, hang your head, ask God for a humble spirit, and that is how you are going to survive. That is how you are going to enter into life. You do not survive by attacking and saying that everybody else does the same thing. You are supposed to be looking like Christ. I am supposed to be looking like Christ. We are supposed to be looking like Christ. I do not know what is coming in this ministry, but there is a big pair of pinchers on us, and God is squeezing us, every last one of us, and the pinchers have a name on them - Pride.

He is after our pride, brethren, and He is looking for our reactions to hurt, both hurt as a result of a Godly rebuke and hurt as a result of an un-godly rebuke. He is testing us, He is measuring us. He has out the line and the plummet, brethren, and He is measuring Christ in us. What have you gained if you have made excuses for yourself. "I could not help it, that is the way it is, that is the way I am, I am weak, and you want too much from me." How is that going to form Christ in you? How does that glorify God? I know you are weak, I am weak too. We are weak in different areas. I am just as weak as you are, and I am called to the same trials that you are called to and the same testings that you are called to, if not more so. I am personally going through hell. I would not tell you that my experience is worse than yours because I do not know what your experience is, but mine is pretty bad. God requires me to not attack back when I am hurt. He requires me to have a humble spirit and listen to every thing that everybody has to say to me, even if it is ungodly, and wait for Him to respond.

Brethren, He cannot defend you if you are defending yourself. He cannot defend you if you are defending yourself because He is not going to race you to the door to get in there and defend you. He is not going to race your carnal mind to your mouth. He is not going to do it. Do you want to enter into a realm where Christ is your defense? Then you have to stop defending yourself. You have to stop surviving. If that is what you had to do to survive, you have to stop surviving. You have to yield to God and let Him save you.

I had an experience a couple of months ago. The Lord is permitting me to enter into this, and I can tell you from personal experience that if you want God to defend you, you might have to wait 5-10 minutes or an hour, if not a day, for Him to defend you. You have to let the offense go. You have to hang your head, you have to shut your mouth, you have to not sin against the person that sins against you if you want to see God defend you. His defense can come anywhere from one minute to one or two or three days, if not a year later. You have to take the offense, you have to suffer the wrong if you want to enter into His defense of you.

I was in a pizza place, and I had a service that night. I went in and I wanted a hero sandwich. There was a young woman working behind the counter, and she told me that it would take 20 minutes to prepare the hero, and I said, "Well I really cannot wait that long. I think I will let it go, (I had a service to preach), and she said, "Well I can do it in 10-15 minutes." I said, "Are you sure?" She said,"Yes," so I said,"Okay, I will wait 15 minutes."

Well, she lied to me. She went into the kitchen, she the makings, she put it in the oven, and 20 minutes went by, and the woman was gone, and there was a man doing the cooking. I went up to him, it was 20 minutes, and it was not even ready. I said to him, "Could you tell me when that will be ready, the woman told me no more than 15 minutes, and I really have to go." He turned around, and he very nasty to me, insisted that no one ever told me that, and that I was a liar, and that there was no way I could have been told that. It just was not ready yet, and I just had to wait. I was really upset. I said a few words to him maybe that I should not have, but I told him that I did not need the aggravation, and I would wait for it, but I had to leave very soon. So I sat down, and the man came out a few minutes later, and he was speaking....I am not sure, whether it was Greek or Italian. It was probably Italian, but I am not sure. A lot of Greeks own pizza places.

Well, he cursed me, I knew that he cursed me, I do not understand Greek or Italian, but I knew that the man cursed me, and I saw the owner of the restaurant walking by. I said, "Lord should I complain to the owner?"Because I knew there was a wrong spirit on me, it was a spirit of revenge, and a spirit of retaliation, I said, "No, I am not going to make this guy lose his job. I am not going to do that, I am just going to have to live with it, I should not have believed the woman," and I sat there, and I started to eat, and all of a sudden the Lord rose up in me, the Spirit of God rose up in me.

Now, it was not a spirit of revenge or retaliation. It was the spirit of God, and He called out to the owner, and I said to him, "You know, your employee just cursed me." He went over to the employee, and they were having this conversation in Italian. I could not understand a word they were saying, and the man turned around to me, it must have been the custom of their country, put his hands together and bowed his head to me, and said something in a foreign language. He apologized to me. How did I know that he cursed me? God must have told me that he cursed me.

Do you hear what I am saying? I did not defend myself, but the Lord passed a judgment that I could not let this go. In the service, we prayed for that man, and I asked the Lord to have mercy on him because there was a lot of persecution coming against me in the spirit, and I felt that he was just a victim. We prayed that the Lord have mercy upon him, and the way the tongues came forth, I really felt that the Lord broke the curses and the judgements that fell upon him for cursing a Son of God. Do you hear what I am saying? I was willing to let it go, but God made a righteous judgment to tell this man's employer.

Someone came to me a few weeks ago and criticized me. I sat there and I listened to everything that they had to say. I let them pray for me, and I was perfectly open to anything, the Lord would tell me. I did not believe what they were saying, but I opened myself to God. When I came out into the service a few minutes later, and I had my answer from the Lord. What they had told me was truly criticism, and I said so in the service, but people cannot understand that. They think it is me. People in a deep ministry like this cannot discern Christ in me. If there is pressure on you, it is not me, it is God. If there is rebuke upon you, it is not me, it is God. If there is judgment upon you, it is not me, it is God.

We have to start living this thing. You are not going to sit in a ministry like this and hear this glorious revelation and think that the correction is for your next door neighbor, or the people in the other churches. It is not. It is for you. It is for me, and it is for you. You get what ever is being preached, and you have to take the hard with the soft. There is glory in this ministry, but there is also going to be hardships. Paul said, "We are to endure hardship like good soldiers." If you set your mind against the word of the Lord, if you set your mind and say, "No, I will not suffer hardship, there will not be hardship in my life, there will not be persecution in my life, there will not be denial in my life, there will not be unmet needs in my life, I refuse to accept that." Brethren, you have set your mind against the word of the Lord, because He clearly stated that if you are moving on to the 100-fold experience, you shall have persecutions.

Paul said, "Endure hardship." If you have made a judgment that you absolutely refuse hardship and persecution, that is pride. You are manifesting pride. The whole ministry is having a pride orgy. I am asking everybody here, and everybody reading this message to think back to the last time when you came up to the front of the church and asked for prayer for pride. Every last one of you is manifesting. You came up and you asked for prayer for pride, and I prayed for you that God deliver you from pride, and now you are manifesting pride. But, instead of confessing pride and repenting of it as sin, and coming up for deliverance, you are running around attacking people.

I am not against you, I am for you. I pray that you hear this word, and that you come and get your deliverance. When God wants to bring forth deliverance in your life, He causes a manifestation. You have to manifest, before you get deliverance. That is the way it works. Most people do not even recognize the manifestation of that sin in their life, whether it be pride or rebellion or whatever evil work God is dealing with in your life. The chances are that you are not recognizing it when it manifests. You cannot come up and say that you want deliverance for some abstract demon. You have to recognize the outplaying of pride in your life and say, "Yes, that is pride, and I hate it, and I want deliverance."

When you come up for prayer for pride, God presses your buttons, and He exposes pride in your life, but by the time that pride appears in your behavior, you completely forget that you came up and asked for prayer for pride. That seems to be just the way things are, that the average member of the congregation, starts doing all the wrong things when pride is manifesting.

That is what this message is about. It is to call your attention to manifestations of pride, and to remind you that you came up and asked for deliverance from pride. Everyone that is manifesting pride in this ministry, I prayed for your deliverance from pride. Some of you, more than once (I distinctly remember it, and everybody is manifesting), and they forgot all about their prayer for deliverance. I pray that this message be to your good, that it brings to your memory your request for deliverance from pride, that the Lord quicken the truth of it to you with regard to your manifestations, and God brings a mighty, mighty deliverance in your life.

Brethren, there is no sure thing. I just went through a very bad experience where I thought I
was going to really set myself up and have a sure thing. I was going to give myself security. I was going to cover this end, and I was going to cover that possibility, and I was going to do this, and I was going to do that, and I was not going to have any kind of problem that was going to cause me distress. Well, brethren, the Lord canceled everyone of my plans. Every plan I laid to protect myself, every plan I laid to provide security for myself, everything I did to protect myself, He utterly ripped it down. I was manifesting pride. He ripped it away, He shredded it. I am sitting here on a limb waiting for Him to deliver me and, what is more, that is just where He wants me.

He does not want us setting up our own defenses. Brethren, there is no sure thing. If you have it in your head that you are a very obedient person, and that because of your obedience you are avoiding judgment all the time, if there is any area in your life at all where you are not in obedience, God is going to expose it because that is a spirit of pride. If you think that you have the power to protect yourself from judgment, that is pride.

Now, if you cry out to God and say, "O God, I am a sinner, O God, I have every sin known to man, deliver me, O God, please. I do not want the judgment, have mercy on me O God." Well, then, very possibly you might avoid judgments, but not all judgments, I do not know. If you think that you are protecting yourself from judgment (like I did), you had better watch out, because judgment is falling on you to show you that you cannot protect yourself from judgment. There is only one way to protect yourself from judgment, and that is to utterly throw yourself upon the mercy of the Lord, repenting of every sin known to man because we are all capable of everything.

Pride and rebellion is reigning in this ministry. Rebellion as well as pride. I will tell you, I look at this congregation, and I look at the church world, and I do not know how Jesus is going to do this. I do not know how He is going to do this thing.

You know, how we say that the things of the spirit, are the exact opposite of the things in the natural. Well, in the ways of the world, when the world raises up an army they take the cream of the crop. They take the most intelligent, the most healthy, the most quick and sharp people into West Point and Annapolis, and raise them up as officers in our military. You have to be the very best to be a frogman. You have to be the very best to be a pilot, or a jet pilot or an astronaut, and there is all kinds of competition. You have to be the very, very best to have a high honor in this government or in this country.

In this hour, Jesus Christ is raising an army of the Sons of God, and He is taking the lame, the weak, and the halt. He is taking the rejects of this world. I look at us all, and I see that am one of them, and I just shake my head. You want to know something, He is going to do it. He is going to do it! You are weak, He is going to make you strong. You are carnal, He is going to make you spiritual. But before He does it He has to get your attitudes right, and He wants you in agreement with the changes that He is bringing in your life. Glory to God. This was a hard word.

I just want to tell you (nobody believes me), but I love you, and I bless you. I am not against you, I am for you, and I am doing my job in faithfulness towards the Lord so that Christ can be formed in you. If you have received a rebuke from God, and your face is flaming, you are manifesting pride. No one is looking down on you, no one thinks badly of you. We are for you, we are not against you. No one is shaking their finger at you and saying, "Look at that one that was rebuked by God." I get rebuked by God all the time, and part of this walk that is going to form Christ in us is humiliating. Sometimes, the humiliation comes from the pride within you. That is one thing. If you have received a Godly rebuke from someone that assures you that they love you, and you are humiliated, then it is pride. You have to confess that as sin. Sometimes, God lets you get humiliated. Sometimes, He really lets you get humiliated.

You all know that I have worked for 8-10 years for schizophrenic men that have abused me in situations where it is totally inappropriate. That is humiliation, being in an office, in a professional office, having an attorney run down the hall screaming at you, to pack up your things and get out. Believe me, that is a humiliation. I walked out of the office that day. I was mortified. I walked for my whole lunch hour, and I said, "Lord what is it that you are requiring of me. I did not even do anything. Do you know why he yelled at me like that?"

Because he had asked an employee of the firm, to do something that she was not capable of doing. He made a poor choice, and she was doing a bad job, and he knew that he could not yell at her, so he came in and started screaming at me that I was totally incompetent, and I should pack up my bags and get out. In this instance, I was totally innocent. It was a total scapegoat situation. You wouldn't want to be humiliated like that, brethren. Believe me, if someone that loves you rebukes you when you are wrong, it is not a humiliation. It is the love of God.

I am going to leave you on this note, and I bless you, and I pray for the best for you. I pray that Christ be formed in all of us. I pray for the ability for everybody, to confess their sins for what they are, sin. You have to call it what it is. It is sin. Everything that is not of faith is sin. Being weak is no excuse. Survival is no excuse. It is sin. You have to call it what it is. You have to repent, and you have to make an effort. You have to say, "Lord give me the strength to do what is right," and then you have to rise up and try to do it. If you fail, you fail, but you have to try to do it because, brethren, if you think you are going to wake up one morning, and find that you are a new person, you have a rapture mentality. You have a rapture mentality. You are not going to wake up one morning and be Christ. You have to overcome. I know you are weak, so be strong. May the feeble knees be strengthened, and if you have been strengthened, then strengthen your brother.

I bless you all. I pray strength in Christ upon you. I pray thinking with the Mind of Christ upon you. I pray for victory over pride in your life, and I pray that the Lord be glorified in you. God bless you.

There is one more point I want to put on this message, and that is about apologies. Brethren, to the best of my knowledge of the Scripture, I believe that God requires us to apologize when we wrong somebody. He requires us to say that we are sorry. It is not enough to just part from the dissension and come back the next day or the next week and act like nothing happened. People in the world do that, but it is not acceptable to God. It is not acceptable to God, brethren. You have to come to a place where you are genuinely sorry, and repentant for your part, whatever it might be, in an ungodly encounter with another believer, and you have to say that you are sorry. I believe that is the Scripture. We had a whole Christian nation here that lived like that.

You know how God teaches me through old movies. Watch these old movies, brethren. People apologized to one another. Grown men going up to each other and saying, "Sir, would you forgive me for the wrong that I have done to you." That is how people lived when this nation was under God, but an abomination has risen up in this land in this hour, of people refusing to say that they are sorry to one another. Brethren, that is a manifestation of pride, and it is not acceptable to God with anyone, but it is certainly not acceptable to God for people in His church. It is not acceptable, brethren, especially if you have hurt someone, and you really know that you have done it. God requires you to go to them and say, "I know I hurt you, I am sorry." If you cannot or you will not do it, it is another manifestation of pride. You have to stop, you have to confess this as sin and repent and ask God to help you to change because you cannot do this, brethren. I explained this in another meeting. I am going to put it in this message also.

When two people have an altercation, an ungodly encounter, something spiritual happens in the realm of the spirit. An ungodly soul tie is formed in that area. Something real happens in the realm of the spirit, and it is a negative happening. It is a negative thing that could go on for years and bring hardship in your life or bring hardship into the life of your children. It could turn into a curse upon you if it is not dealt with in a Godly manner. God requires the two people that have been involved in this ungodly encounter to come to one another and say, "I am sorry for my part in it, I repent, please forgive me, and let us go on and love each other in Christ." When you do this, brethren, that ungodly thing that was that was birthed in the realm of the spirit is destroyed, and there is no chance of it turning into a curse on your life or on the life of your children.

If you just let it go and act like it did not happen, and just put a smiling face and a cheery voice on that problem, that sin that was committed against a brother or a sister has not been dealt with in Christ, and you are heaping up judgment upon your own head. It is like a time bomb, and the judgment will be for pride. You cannot behave like that in Christ, brethren. Now, if you go to your brother or sister and you say, "I am sorry that I hurt you or I am sorry, that I sinned against you, will you forgive me," and they say, "No," well, then you have to forgive them for saying, "No." You have to bless them and withdraw, putting the matter before God, but at least the curse is off of your head.

Brethren, there is judgment for pride. I saw an excellent movie, if anybody wants to watch it. It is called the Brothers Karamazov. It is an excellent book. It is Russian literature, and it was an excellent movie. They have it on a VCR in my library. It is a story about several adult characters. This man was a very spoiled and selfish man. He wounded and hurt a lot of people, and great hardship fell upon his life. Many years later, he received the revelation that you cannot go around hurting people like that, and he went from house to house to discover the fruit of his cruelty. One family was in poverty because of something ungodly he had done to them. The man was dying on his bed, and his son or his grandson, a little boy, was there. The cruel man went into the house and said, "Will you please forgive me, I have done a terrible wrong to you, and I want to right it."

Now, here is another element. If you have said something that has hurt somebody, God requires you to confess it as sin and repent to them and say "You are sorry." If you have done something to somebody that has caused them harm, brethren, the Lord requires you to pay restitution. The Scripture says that if you have taken something that belongs to somebody else, that you have to pay back, five-fold.

This is real, brethren. The Pentecostal church is the most sin-filled church in the world. They have the Holy Spirit, and they think they can do anything they want to, but you cannot do anything that you want to. If you sin against somebody, you have to make it right. You have to say you are sorry, and if you have taken something that belongs to them, you have to restore it with an increase. Be not deceived, brethren, be not deceived. Especially after this is preached, God is going to require it of you.

Be not deceived, and do not think that you are in such a favored place with God, that judgments will not fall on you because judgments will fall on sin where ever sin manifests. You have to say you are sorry. Now, do not lay hold of my words. I am not using witchcraft. I am not telling you that right now, this minute, you have to stand up and say you are sorry. That would be witchcraft, but I am telling you that the reality of the Scripture is that you have to apologize to people that you hurt verbally, because if you do not, you have opened yourself to judgments for pride. You have opened yourself to the judgment that was written before the foundation of the earth, and the judgment for pride is destruction. The judgment for a haughty spirit is a fall. It is in the Bible. If you think you are exempt because you have His spirit, and you have a relationship with Him? You are deceived.

I will give you one more example. I watched an excellent movie called, "The Passage to India," It was about an Indian man that was railroaded by the British Government in India, and there was one British man who was a school teacher who did what was right. He was a righteous man. He stood against his own countrymen for righteousness sake, and when the man finally was proven innocent, he was very hurt that so many Englishmen who he thought were his friends, did not believe that he was innocent. He could not believe anyone would do this to him. He was so devastated at what had happened to him... He had been accused of a horrible crime. The prosecutors really wanted to destroy him. They ruined his whole life and the lives of his children, and the charge was a lie. All that he could do was hate all white people including the man that was willing to lose his job and the respect of all the British people in India to stand for righteousness. The Indian man chased away the Englishman wh ohad stood for righteousness, and rebuked him with an ungodly rebuke.

The movie ended years later, when the righteous British man (the Indian had man moved to another province, he moved to an all Indian province, where there were no British people) came seeking him. The British man traveled all the way from England to lay this issue to peace with this Indian man, who was now calmed down. Years had gone by, so the Indian man talked to the British man. They resolved the issue in love and the British man left. The Indian man said, "I will probably never see him again." This British man was not a particularly religious man, but he had a revelation of spiritual things in this area and of righteousness. He knew that this matter had to be put to rest because he had an ungodly soul tie with this Indian man, and the Indian man was wrong because of bitterness and unforgiveness. So the British man came to the Indian man in love to discharge this negative energy that was hanging over his life and his marriage and any children that he would have.

Brethren, we have to do everything that we can to be at peace with all men, and if they will not be at peace with us, then we give it to God, but we have to do what is required of us, or we have opened ourselves to destruction and a fall, whatever that means. I do not even know what that means. I really do not know whether it means a spiritual fall or something else. Does anyone know what that word means in the Scripture? At the very least, you have opened yourself to destruction. If you are gathering unto yourself all of these incidents where you sin against people, and you do not say, "I am sorry,"Negative energy, curses, whatever you want to call it, is gathering over your head. and destruction is upon you. It is up to the Lord as to how far He lets it go.

We are subject to every law of God. Jesus said, "I come not to do away with the law. I will not destroy the law, and the law will exist, until every jot and every tittle be fulfilled." That means, that we will be given the ability to keep the law. If we are manifesting pride, we are not keeping the law. We are subject to the judgment. Not only, just like everybody else, but even more so because of our relationship with Christ. We must apologize, we must offer to make restitution, we must forgive, and we must go on. If it is a situation where the person is so reprobate that you cannot even see how you can have a relationship with them, well, you have to give it to God because He is not going to tolerate us cutting people out of our life. You cannot do that. You cannot do it, and the more mature you are, the more quickly the judgments will fall.

God is very long suffering, but the day will come that you will have to change. You will have to change, and you will have to go to people and admit your wrongs. Now, do not get religious. Seek God about everything. Do not go to someone that you knew a hundred years ago, do not go traveling to California to do that. Seek God about something like that, but certainly in current relationships, you have to apologize, if you sin against them, if you attack them, if you rise up against them, and they have done nothing to deserve that or even if they have done something, to deserve it, you cannot attack people.

Brethren, that is not even acceptable in the business world. I worked in Manhattan in large law firms, and they screen people, whether you are an attorney or a paralegal or a secretary or whether you work in the mail room. When they hire you, they screen you for your ability to relate to your fellow worker. They want a peaceful, harmonious office. You cannot go around attacking people. You will have problems at work, and if you do that, you cannot deliver yourself if you have that problem. Christ has to strengthen you in that area to overcome. You need deliverance. You cannot do it in your own power, but, at the very least, you have to say, "You are sorry." You have to apologize, and if you cannot, you are manifesting pride.

God bless you.

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