Victimhood vs. Gratitude
What if I told you your worst circumstances don't have to define your life anymore? We’re talking about something today that can feel pretty heavy, but I think it is going to change your thinking and your life. We have all accidentally become victims, and it is robbing our joy. We have responsibility and authority over our lives. When we start to believe that we are victims to our lives, our circumstances, our thoughts, our feelings, our situations, that’s when we become paralyzed. We become defeated and sad.
Victimhood is absolutely rampant in our culture. To some degree, all of us have taken up this banner. It might be small - a relationship where you’ve been wounded or a circumstance that just feels unfair. We have been captive to this idea that we are so wronged, and I say no more. Why? Because it’s a miserable way to live. And it’s not true. God has given us so much authority and power over our circumstances, over our feelings, over our minds, and over our attitudes. We don’t have to live like this.
There are real victims. I want to be super clear about that. Watch one minute of the news and you can see the true atrocity against mankind. My stomach can barely handle some of the difficult circumstances people are in. Some of you have been victimized to such an incredible level, and so to those of you who have been abused, wounded, and hurt by people. I’m sorry. I’m not saying that you aren’t a victim. You are a victim to a crime and an action that was done against you. What’s interesting though is I’ve interviewed people that are victims. What I’ve found is that so many of them don’t even like that word. They don’t use it because they don’t want to give that power to their perpetrator. They like the word survivor better. They’re saying they survived that attack, and what I’ve learned and heard from survivors is that using that word puts the power back in their court. They don’t want to be defined by what happened to them. If you want to use the title of victim, that’s okay. I’m not trying to take that away from you.
What I’m speaking to is the victimhood mentality in all of us. We continue to feel like we have been wronged and life isn’t fair and the world is against us.
Nobody's going to tell you how this should go. Okay, that's not what I'm trying to do here. What I'm speaking to is the victim hood mentality of all of us. That continues to feel like we have been wronged and life isn't fair and it's us against the world. I'm talking about the fact that we are moving in and out of relationships, in and out of circumstances where we continue to just go, “woe is me.” We blame it on the world when we likely need to take some more responsibility for our own actions and how we’ve contributed to the situation. Our victimhood mentality also steals the power of God from a situation, because we begin to speak as if we’re helpless and hopeless when in reality, God has said we are more than conquerors (Romans 8:37). He has equipped us with divine weapons to destroy strongholds (2 Corinthians 10:4). We are not victims to our lives. We are not victims to our minds. We’re not talking about chemical imbalance, because that’s out of your control. I’m talking about our stubborn will. We have a “poor me” mentality.
Even if we struggle with mental illness or victimhood from real, serious hurt and abuse, we can’t live in that place of poor me. It will still all our joy. And we won’t believe God for healing. We won’t believe God for a future and a hope. We have to shift that. 1st Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” So how does God say we shift our mindset from poor me to good God? Gratitude. Worship. Seeing the good in our lives. People that are grateful are happier. That’s not mysterious science stuff, although the science does prove it. It changes our brain’s chemistry when we’re grateful. Expressing gratitude caused subjects in studies to increase dopamine hits to the reward transmitters that actually send happy thoughts to your brain. This isn’t something God says to do because it’s the right thing to do. We are hardwired to be grateful people.
We don’t choose to be grateful when things are good. We choose to be grateful when things are hard to keep ourselves breathing, to stay alive, and to keep going. My little sister who walked through intense suffering a few years ago, said she kept a gratitude journal at the end of every dark day while her world was falling apart. She would write something God had done to take care of her that day. She would give thanks because she knew in giving thanks, she would be able to get up and breathe. She would be able to get up and do the next day, because there would be something to be grateful for.
Paul is our model for this. He was in the midst of difficult circumstances often, but he had the ability to view his life in this framework of eternity with great hope, joy, and gratitude. If all Paul saw were his circumstances and imprisonment, he would have been despondent. But he saw the power of God in those circumstances. He knew whatever his circumstances were, they were God-given. He wrote such a hopeful narrative while he was in prison that even the guards saw the glory of God in him. The guards were saved because of the way he looked at his imprisonment. He saw himself as a missionary, in prison, even when he was so unjustly treated.
This whole idea of living in gratitude rather than victimhood feels daunting. How do we move into this? First, we’ve got to believe in all of this situations that we have the supernatural, divinely powerful weapons that Corinthians talks about. They’re real, and we can fight with them, although they’re invisible. Gratitude is a weapon that slays darkness. Prayer is a weapon that slays darkness. Connection with other people slays darkness. Time with God slays darkness. We can’t treat them like little disciplines. They’re weapons we’re using to fight the devil! That’s what we’re doing with prayer, fasting, community, and gratitude.
We have to believe in these things God tells us his power dwells in, because it’s supernatural fighting power. The enemy wants us to sit there and be useless and feel sorry for ourselves and be passive recipients of life until we get to Heaven. Because that is a sad state of affairs. The dangerous people are those who get up, grab the sword, and go fight.
In another episode, I mentioned my husband’s grandfather, who is in his 90’s. He fought in World War II, dropped out of an airplane, his parachute didn’t open, he crashes, he blacks out, and ends up as a prisoner of a war camp in Germany. He loses fingers. It was dark and horrible. A man that has had everything stacked against him. But he comes home and decides to be a great husband, to build a great life, and to obey God. He raised his kids to love God. He chose the good fight. He chose delight and joy and gratitude instead of cynicism and victimhood. Life may have been really unfair to you - I’ve heard some of your stories. I’m saying that there’s a God that’s bigger than your circumstance. We have a choice.
We can center our thoughts on the certainty that no matter what comes, we are upheld securely by God's righteous right hand. Not being a slave to our circumstances doesn’t mean we don’t fight for what’s right. Scripture tells us to fight. We are supposed to be crying out for justice and defending the cause of the oppressed. But we can’t fight from a place of insecurity and outrage, but from a place of reconciliation. There’s a book called The Tale of Three Kings and it’s all about how David, although through his whole life people were defaming his name and trying to kill him, he believe God to be his defender. He didn’t fight for his own name. He knew God would defend him. He believed God to be good even if the worst happens.
So how does this actually work? We’ve got to ask bold questions of our friends. Ask them if they see you being a victim to your circumstances, to your mind, or to your emotions. Ask people who know you really well, and be ready for an honest answer. Then we have to own that, and figure out what it looks like to not live as a victim. What does it look like to believe the truth about God, yourself, and your future? When you feel backed into a corner, notice the good. Notice the good from other people and from God. You will see God advocating for you, you will see good happening around you, and you will see good in yourself. It’s a different way to live. A supernatural way to live.
My friend Tasha fights injustice everyday, and she’s doing racial reconciliation every single day. She leads a ministry called Be the Bridge, and she is so joyful. She moves with such grace in a loaded situation. Rather than being a victim, she’s an overcomer. She wants to see the world change. She lives with such hope and a vision of what could be. That lets her move toward the people that have hurt her. She says the reason she does that is because Jesus has moved toward her. I mean she is so clear that the gospel is the root of reconciliation. That’s what Jesus did for us and why we can move forward as not being victims. Those who have been forgiven much can forgive much. The more we’re in touch with our gratitude of how much we’ve been forgiven, the more we’re able to forgive.
When joyful, peaceful people move toward those who have hurt them and forgive, that’s when people really notice the supernatural power of God. The Spirit is all over that and people get saved, because they don’t have a category for that kind of reconciliation. It’s beyond our understanding.
