Recently I had a ministry session with a middle-aged man.
The story of abuse and abandonment by his mother and father would have been horrifying to me if I had heard it outside of the context of the hope that Unbound ministry brings. He certainly had every reason to see himself as a victim. When I interviewed him before the meeting, he could not hold his emotions together. The pain he was experiencing made me hesitant to do a virtual session with him. But I knew him to be a man of God who is living a very fruitful life, so I decided to go for it. After the interview, when I began leading him through the Five Keys, I let him know he did not have to feel everything he was saying deeply, he just needed to say it as an act of the will. But if emotion surfaced that would be fine.
He had an extensive list to renounce, not because he was different from anyone else, but because he had studied his situation and had many words to identify his trauma and his enemies. It was interesting to me that he did not experience any of the overwhelming emotions during the process. At the end he told me that during the time of renunciation he felt himself moving from a couched position to one of standing. I had three thoughts:
- He was facing his enemies in the name of Jesus, his Lord, so he had power unlike other times he talked about his enemies and the trauma.
- What was happening in him lined up with the scriptures: Take your stand against the devil’s schemes. (Eph 6)
- It was very important that he renounced a Victim Identity.
When I began teaching the Unbound Freedom in Christ conference almost twenty years ago, the session on forgiveness had eight reasons why people who want to forgive, fail to forgive. Over the following two years, as I ministered to more people, it grew to fifteen reasons. Number fifteen is the Victim Identity. It is one of the most hidden and powerful obstacles to forgiveness and breaking free. I would like to take a look together at what I mean by the Victim Identity.
How I learned:
Personal conviction
Like many other things, I learned from personal experience. Many years before I wrote Unbound, God in His mercy exposed self-pity in my heart. I remember being repulsed when it was exposed because it did not line up with my image of myself. Having it exposed however, helped me to understand the tentacles of self-pity better so I could take my stand against the enemy. Yet I had more to learn.
Early conference
We train local teams to minster at our conferences. At one of the early conferences, I saw a ministry team member of the church that hosted us praying with and comforting a person who was lying on the pew in deep pain and shedding many tears. I thought, “This may be very helpful in some context," but I knew this was not Unbound ministry and was not helping the person to take their stand against the enemy.
Ministry
I really learned about a victim identity after I started to help people with the Five Keys. Once, after I had led a woman through the Keys, it seemed clear to me that the Lord had helped her during the session. She expressed some relief and then she went back to her story and wanted more ministry. My time was up. I tried to encourage her to walk in what she had received. But it was not good enough; she wanted more and almost whined for more of my time. It was only later that I understood that this was an expression of self-pity. If self-pity is present it has to be exposed or the person may remain stuck, not able to recognize what the Lord has done for them. Nothing will be good enough. It was an important lesson for me.
All the lies of the enemy connect to other lies. Helplessness, powerlessness and self-pity are often an expression of a victim identity. I usually use the word identity here instead of spirit. I do that to reinforce that this is a mindset that has been embraced over time. It is not an attack from without as much and a place we have made within, in our thinking, for the enemy to rest. It is from that place that the enemy brings the spiritual binding. To stop thinking like a victim, one has to take full responsibility to cooperate with the grace of God being released.
I teach about this at every conference and I summarized it in our book Abba’s Heart:
At some point in life, most of us have been victimized—used, abused, deceived or harmed by various forms of injustice—often by people in positions of power or authority. Jesus Himself knows the pain of being victimized. Yet Jesus never adopted the identity of victim. Rather, He said, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father” (John 10:18). Jesus, while becoming a victim, yielded only to the Father’s will. He accepted becoming a victim for us, knowing the goodness of the Father’s plan. At the core of His identity, He was a Son—a victor, not a victim. People with a victim identity have embraced helplessness and powerlessness, believing there is nothing they can do to change because someone else brought this pain on them. This might indeed be true, but at some level they have bought into the false belief that now it will require someone else to get them out. God, life, somebody, owes me. They have an excuse for their powerlessness, and they will not let go of it. When victimized, we must all answer the question, “Am I going to let what someone else has done determine how I live?” When we forgive, we surrender our identity as victims—and take up our identity in Christ. You may have been a victim, but that is not who you are. By overcoming your helplessness, you receive victory over hopelessness. (Abba’s Heart page 178)
Recently, I went to a unity worship service in the city of Philadelphia. Blacks, Whites, Asians, Latinos, and folks from the city and suburbs gathered during the COVID crisis and the racial unrest in our country to worship the Lord and pray for our city and country.
The hosting pastor, Bishop C. Milton Grannum of New Covenant Church of Philadelphia, gave me his new book called Bitter Water to Fine Wine. Using the story of Jesus turning the water into wine, he tells his own story of growing up very poor in what is now Guyana (i.e., he got a glass of milk one day a year on his birthday). He was abused and homeless by the time he was fourteen. Interwoven in his writing is great lesson on following your calling, trusting the Lord, and believing for the impossible. He developed leadership in both children and adults as he built a large, mostly black church marked by love, creativity, vision, and welcome. How did this poor child from Guyana develop a church that purchased a college campus to carry out the many ministries the Lord had placed in his heart?
He never embraced bitterness, resentment, or self-pity. He fought it from the very beginning.
He wrote:
I have been on a stimulating journey seeking to accurately identify and properly interpret the many pieces and stages of my life and use them for God’s Glory. I have sought to create meaning out of pain, perspective out of rejection, and fine wine out of very bitter waters...What is remembered, properly interpreted, reconstructed and effectively used, becomes of great significance. (Introduction p. XI)
The Lord is with you to transform your heart, turning the negative experiences in your past and present situations into fine wine, giving you a positive energy to advance the mission he has entrusted to you.
You can overcome negative thinking and the negative emotions that have gripped your life and held you in a distorted reality. In Christ you are an overcomer, not a victim. Use the Five Keys of Unbound to help take hold of your freedom and live as child of the Father. Face whatever has gripped you, turn from it and turn to the savior. Confess it, choose Jesus as Lord and in His name shut down the entryways through forgiveness and renunciation, then stand in your authority and surrender to the Father’s Love.
There is hope for all of us through the power of the Gospel to live as the overcomers we are intended to be in Christ!
"Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them” Mark 11:23
Neal Lozano
Heart of the Father Ministries
