Now of course the elder brother came in from the field, and he said: what's this party going on? Now isn't it interesting that associated with people's lives being changed, heaven celebrates, heaven parties! Churches need to celebrate. We need to have laughter and fun, and perhaps move the chairs, and get rid of all the chairs and get you to run around and jump up and down and celebrate a bit more. It's very healthy to celebrate. Sitting in pews is not healthy really - about one or two hours and that's it, you're done for a week pretty well. But God wants us to celebrate, and so you notice here, he had a great celebration. Now this is what the boy did. Now notice what he did. Now he portrays a victim mentality, notice what he does. Here it is - he said: he was angry. He was angry, and notice what he did, he isolated, pulled away from relationship, pulled away from his father, pulled away from celebration, pulled away from connection.
Then it says this: his father came and he pleaded with him. He pleaded with him. In other words his pa entreated him to shift his heart attitude, and open his heart and welcome his brother back in, and of course the boy said - you're familiar with it - oh! I've been here all these years serving you. I never did anything like he did. You never gave me any of my goats, I could have fun with my friends and a party with my friends. As soon as this son of yours comes, devoured his livelihood with the prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him. What kind of father are you? What kind of justice is this? And he said: son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. How come I haven't got the fatted calf? Simply this, you've got a bad attitude. You haven't got an attitude that can receive a fatted calf. You're in the house, but you're not receiving what God wanted for you. Why is that?
He was in the house. Come on, we'll just get - let me just - he was in the church! He was among God's family, and he couldn't access what he wanted, because of the way he thought. He had a victim mentality, and it's amazing the way it showed up. Interestingly enough, he substituted works for relationship. He just worked hard for his father, but never knew his father. He had no emotional relationship with his father, and had no understanding of his father's heart. That's what his problem was. He substituted for relationship, being good and working hard. Lots of people do that to be loved. He developed a victim mentality in many areas of his life. When we substitute works for relationship, we are convinced we're right, and we can't receive the things we want to receive from God.
I very much have had to wrestle with this myself. When I grew up I was emotionally quite disconnected, a major effect on my life from quite young, so the way I dealt with it, instead of connecting I isolated ,just like this older brother did. What I did was go into a world of fantasy reading books, and here's the other thing, working hard. I got the diligence prize every school I went to. Why did I get the diligence prize? Because I worked hard. Why were you working hard? Oh, I want you to ask me that. I might have to look at what motivated me to work hard. Actually I was trying to find approval and love, that I didn't feel I had, and so I had a wrong belief inside me that went something like this: If I just work hard enough, I'll be noticed and approved and loved - and would you believe it, there was another belief in there as well: I'm unlovable. So no matter how hard I work, I'm never going to get the love I want. Isn't that amazing?