So they were the victim of someone's fault, someone's actions or whatever, but there's a huge difference between having been victimised, having an experience where you are treated that way, to being that. And so what happens is people adopt a victim mentality; the past experience, what happened to me now becomes who I am see? You are not a victim. You are a person. You have potential and you can make decisions. Now one of the terrible things about a victim mentality is it goes like this. The way of thinking is bad things happen to me, and so you know, this is my life. What happens is someone else is to blame for what happened to me; someone else has got to get me out of. So a person with a victim mentality never assumes responsibility for their life. They're always blaming someone else for why it's like it is and someone else has to come through to be the solution for them. That's a victim mentality; the identity is one of being a victim, a person unable to help themselves.
Now you understand, I just want to be sensitive here, but this thing of a victim mentality where a person's identity is taken up where I have been oppressed, therefore I am a victim. No, you may have been oppressed. You may have suffered injustice. You may have had pain - but you are not defined by that. Let God define you, who you really are. So I find in dealing sometimes with Maori people that there is a tendency to put the responsibility for why they are as they are somewhere else. We put it on a historic event. The Irish, where I come from, are very bitter about the English, see? Very bitter about the English; fought the English for years, considered themselves victims of the English, blamed the English. But you know Ireland began to change when the Irish decided to stand up and start to forge ahead and be who they're called to be.
Every culture can never - you can never define yourself by the culture or by the past painful experiences. If you do that you become a victim; well what can I do? I can't - well it's not my fault is it? Now a person who thinks that way, their identity is wrapped up in being a victim; well it's not my fault. I couldn't help it. It was someone else did it and someone else has got to get me out of this. You'll find that this mentality was the mentality that characterised Israel after hundreds of years in Egypt, so when they came out of the wilderness God saved them. They got filled with the Holy Ghost, water baptised, but they couldn't get into their destiny because they never came to accept who God called them to be. He said I have redeemed you. I got you out of that past. I have brought you to Myself into relationship and I have made you a kingdom of priests. I've made you people, and I have promises for you.
But they never ever embraced their new identity. They just remained victims and complained, so they could never enter what God had for them. Now you see here this man here, he's got a similar kind of problem. Now we've got to realise we should not let the past define who we are. If you failed in the past, had a miserable academic record at school, so what? Heaps of people did and some of the most successful people in the world did. You are not a failure because you failed at school. There could be a whole heap of reasons why you failed at school, some of them your own and some not your own. Don't worry about it. That does not define you as a failure for life, unless you accept that as your identity and many do. Many do and so they walk through the rest of their life defined by bad experiences. God wants you to stand up and become who He called you to be. There is no one quite like you.
Now listen, this is one of the things I found when looking at how God deals with us. God defines us - get this - God defines us, who we are, according to the purpose He designed us for. I'll say that one again. God defines your identity around what He called you to be, His purpose for your life. You really want to know who you are, find out what God says about you. So here's a nation that's in defeat and God comes to a man and this man's a businessman. He's trying desperately because the nation's overwhelmed by these people. They keep stealing the harvest and impoverished the whole nation, but he doesn't lie down like a victim. He's still working there, he's still producing something. He's doing it in a way that no one can see him and God comes to him and says you mighty man of valour! Now you imagine, understand he looks at the circumstances. What, man of valour? I'm here full of fear and I'm hiding behind this blimmin' barrel so no one will see me.