It seems so many want to be the “victim” today. To be sure, there are wounded souls who have been victims of horrible abuse and heinous crimes and those hurts are very real. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ must be the place where people can find present help and future hope. But neither of those things are possible if people only want to live in the past.

While sin and its consequences must be dealt with thoroughly, they are not to be discussed endlessly. Of course, sin must be brought into the holy Light of our God – but are people doomed to live the rest of their lives in the shadows?

Victim mentality has become the new norm in our world…and in churches. It has become the quickest way to popularity and sympathy. Start a podcast, write an article, share a story. Here is the truth: We are ALL sinners, surrounded by other sinners, living in a sin cursed world. Jesus Christ came to make us victors through His grace.

Anything (or anyone) that keeps you living as a victim cannot be of God. Romans 8:31-39 says,

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Christ never saves a man to wallow in his past or live in bitterness and regret. He sets us free!

The “self” life is always consumed with real or perceived injustices and concentrates on personal offenses. It is only when people get their eyes off of themselves and on Christ that they begin to see themselves and others as sinners and Jesus as able to heal the wounds of sin in their lives.

We will never have revival as long as we are more concerned with nursing our wounds than we are with what hurts the heart of our God. You are not condemned to live as a victim – you are called to live as a victor. Find your identity in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will discover what it means to be “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6).