Emotional Healing Week 7 (feat. Mike Plunket)

Hey there.

Thanks for joining us at risen King Church for our weekly podcast.

We hope you experienced God's today.

Make sure you visit [email protected] to take all your next steps and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and youtube.

Enjoy the message.

Yeah.

Yeah, California.

The weather was nicer.

It's good to be back.

What a great week you guys had.

What an awesome time with doctor Riemer.

Our team did an awesome job.

Wonderful, wonderful testimonies have come.

Well, our plan was to have the conference in the middle, somewhat of our emotional healing series, and so we've got two more weeks of looking at things together.

This week we're going to look at the, the relationship between your pain and your pride.

So I want to, I want to share how God began to break through the pride issues in my life.

In 1997 I knew the Lord was inviting me into a whole new level of spirit filled ministry, but in order for that annointing to actually be able to take hold, I had to go through some significant healing processes in my life.

And one of the things that was happening is that a, I carried around a lot of pain.

At one point, Lisa said to me, your pain is like a mistress.

I could compete with a woman, but I can't compete with your pain.

And, uh, so I was trying to understand, Lord, how do I deal with this?

Because I'd forgiven the people that hurt me.

I'd experienced love for them, but, but something was still keeping me back.

And so I just want it to, a time of, of just devotional.

I wanted to time of just seeking his face.

And, and I was in a sanctuary where, where I was the pastor and I was in the sanctuary and I just kept, I just kept calling on the Lord Jesus.

And I kept saying, I don't know what to do with this pain.

And, uh, I had this very unique experience and it was that he came and, uh, in an open vision to me.

And it was, it was a brightness of light came.

And his voice spoke to me and he said it this way.

He said, if you will give me your pain, I will receive it, but I will not take it away from you.

And what I began to realize, cause sometimes when the Lord speaks, it unpacks a whole lot of things.

And what I began to realize is I had asked him to take away my pain before, but I was clutching it.

I was clinging to it.

I, I saw it as my personality.

I saw it as what made me special.

I saw it as kind of my uniqueness in a way.

And so I would say take it away, but don't take it away.

And I would cling to it and he would not wrestle it out of my hands.

And uh, I had done the hard work of forgiving the people who heard of abused or betrayed me, but I had not let go of the pain.

The pain was protecting me and the pain was defining in many ways.

And so that day is, I trusted that vision of the Lord Jesus.

I felt like all the 37 years of pain that I experienced, I could bundle up into like a, a laundry bag.

And I handed it to him.

And as I handed it to him at dissipated, it disappeared.

And it was one of the most, uh, the lightening thing.

I felt, uh, 37 years later and I felt, uh, just tremendously different.

And what I had realized in the midst of that is every slight anyone ever did to me, I felt all 37 years pain with one slight.

Every argument was an argument of the lifetime.

You know, I've got to win this argument.

I've got to put everything I have in this argument.

And, and when I was hurt, I was hurt.

Not with the hurt of the moment, but I was hurt with the herd of 37 years.

And so most people thought me crazy.

I just thought it was normal because I had lived that way for so long.

And so when he received that pain from me, I still get hurt.

I mean, it still hurts when someone lies to you.

It still hurts when things don't work out.

But I don't bring 60 years of hurt to bear on one slight.

And what you begin to realize is that you can really be a committed Christian.

You can really be a committed follower of Christ, but you have allowed subtly the pain in your life to integrate with the pride in your life and then for the pride and the pain to integrate into your personality.

So much so that you begin to believe that your personality is your pain and your personality is protected by your pride.

So if I touch your pride, I'm touching your pain.

If I touch your pain, your pride rises up.

And either way it becomes kind of a three cord rope that no one can untangle except the Holy Spirit.

So I want to, I want to look at those things together.

What is spiritual pride?

How do you undo the emotional stronghold of pride?

Now, the reason for this is going to become a parent.

But let me just, let me just hit you with the right from the beginning.

Your pride will always limit you till always dehumanize you and it will never allow you to get to the fullness of the destiny that Christ has designed for you.

So can we do some stuff together?

Can we bind pride before we even start in this?

All right.

So I want you to close your eyes for second.

Whenever the spirit of the Lord is doing in your life, bringing here you here, I can tell you this with great certainty, he is inviting you into a new level of annointing, of leadership, of intimacy with him.

You can't take the old suitcase into the new journey.

You've got to empty it.

You've got to let the pain go.

And so that means you have to really say that pride is not going to be your protector.

So would you say this with me?

I renounce my pride.

You're not my source.

You're not my protector.

Jesus is my source.

Jesus is my protector.

I bind the spirit of pride from my mind, my will and my emotions.

You may not be present in my body.

Go to the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ and never return.

Here's the issue in the scriptures that teaches that pride is a stronghold.

So it's not just emotional and it's not just psychological.

So you can't just counsel yourself out of pride.

It's a spiritual dimension.

So therefore you have to be delivered.

You have to have something that's stronger than your pride so that your pride begins to be dismissed.

Now I think it's really important that you begin to understand the complexity of how God made you in order to be able to, to dismiss pride.

So first you have to realize you have it.

You have an ego, and your ego can be a very good thing.

It can be a very consistent thing.

It can be a very strong thing.

But, but because we live in a fallen world and because we are fallen people, every one of us not only has a bruised ego, we have a broken ego.

So ego is basically this.

It's your sense of self, the sense of who you are.

And all of us from the time we're little kids, we're trying to develop a consistent self, something that we present to the world that says this is who I am and this is what I can do.

And whether you know it or not, and I really masking you think with me on this because you can really understand yourself better is from the time you're a little child yourself, your ego is asking questions.

Am I lovable?

Do I matter and am I safe?

Okay?

You ask it in different ways like am I level?

Do you accept me?

You know, do you think I'm pretty?

Do you think I'm smart?

Do you think I'm this because you're really asking, is there something about me that is lovable?

It is a question that we ask.

See if self doesn't find a way to decide to, to anchor in and say, I'm lovable than self is unsettled.

Same with matter.

Do I matter?

Am I important?

Is what I do significant?

Is there some way that I am special that I am worthy of love and my worthy of attention?

And then the third question is, am I safe?

Basically what this is is we live in a dangerous world.

And so fear is real to all of us from a very early age.

And so the idea of most of us really are dealing with this.

The negative side.

Am I rejected?

Do I not count?

I'm afraid.

And so self and ego or really more geared towards the negative than they are the positive.

How do I avoid rejection?

How when I'm rejected, do I handle it?

What happens when I get afraid?

What am I going to do?

What if what I do really doesn't matter and I really don't count?

And so ego is always accompanied by pride.

And Pride is, is like a force that protects ego, that portrays or presents ego or that gets what ego wants kind of a thing.

So in a sense, when you start to look at pride, it's, it's, this is what I deserve.

And so when you began to say, I deserve this, I earned this, this is mine, then pride rises up to defend it.

And that could be anger.

It could be anxiety coming forward or pride comes up and says, I'm going to get to the front of the line.

This is going to be mine.

I'm going to take my rightful place.

So you've got ego, which is the sense of self and then pride, which is the power to protect or to procure for self.

Now the Bible says there's an issue for all of us and that's that we have spiritual pride and spiritual pride is really an illusion.

It's the illusion from the time we're little kids that were actually competent to run our own lives, to believe that I can achieve a consistent sense of self and I can have an esteem that agnostic carrying me through the challenges of life.

As a matter of fact, uh, spiritual pride says I can find a purpose big enough for my life that'll fill the hole of the meaning of life without God.

Now the normal human ego believes that it can exist without God.

It actually starts really early.

I don't know if you've been around two year olds, but two-year-olds manifest spiritual pride right from the beginning.

Ever seen a two year old slap mommy's hand and said, don't help me.

I can do it in the south.

And you're like, you can't even talk to yourself.

You can't even use the proper pronouns.

And yet that pride, and I understand, I'm not saying simplistically, of course there's a developmental part that we have to become independent in order to survive.

But what happens is seductively spiritual pride comes in in the development that says, I don't need anybody but me.

Yeah.

Now I've ever noticed that there are certain parts of your body that you don't know are there til you hurt them.

I've been running for a little while.

I'm realizing there are muscles I didn't know were there and they scream for attention.

Advil, they cra, guess what your eat, your sense of self is screaming for attention.

But here's what we do.

We don't say this.

This is about south.

We say, you hurt my feelings.

See, I want to make it about you.

I want to make it that you're the weak one.

You're the bad one.

You're the one responding or you hurt my feelings.

You know what?

Feelings cannot be hurt.

That's not their nature.

In other words, what you're really saying is you hurt my ego.

You hurt my sense of who I am.

You treated me with disrespect and I believe I'm should deserve respect so you will hurt my ego.

You attacked my sense of self, but nobody ever says it that way because guess what?

Then I then it wouldn't be them to blame.

Then I'd have to look and say, why did that hurt my ego?

What is it that is so unsettled about my ego that I'm so easily offended and and interpret this as rejection, as fear, as somehow I don't matter.

I mean you wouldn't believe, well maybe if you're married, you would believe, but how many marriages end because they hurt each other's feelings.

One, in reality, what they were doing was revealing a broken bankrupt ego that was unsettled in the issues of am I accepted?

Am I significant?

Am I safe?

And so since I was looking for you to make me feel accepted, you're not making me feel that way.

I was looking for you to see how significant and make me feel significant.

Instead, you nagged me, you criticize me, you neglect to me, so I must not matter.

Or maybe we fight, have conflict or we don't agree, and so now I don't feel safe, but almost feels weak to say to someone, doesn't it?

I don't feel safe with you.

Instead we'd say, you hurt my feelings.

You make me angry.

You're driving me crazy.

We do all these things that throw off the fact that we are hurting and instead of using the hurt and our life to say, Lord, take me deeper into how do I settle the issue of my pride?

How do I settle the issue of a soul that is longing to be settled in acceptance, significance and security.

We just keep nursing are bruised.

Ego.

See, the Bible says pride is a root issue.

It's it's why you're not going farther.

It's why you're not fuller.

That's why you're not satisfied as some people say to me, I don't have a pride issue.

Let me just explain to you.

To believe you did not have a pride issue is the first symptom of fried you are telling on yourself.

I mean, you've ever heard people say with all humility, you better watch out what they say after that.

With all due respect, they are not going to respect you in the next thing they say to you.

I mean that we are masters at deceiving ourselves about our pride.

Here's what the Bible has to say and I want you to hear it, not because I'm scolding you this morning, but because I believe God wants to throw off the limitations in your life.

So would you read?

I like it when we read together, read out loud with me.

This is James Chapter four but he gives us more grace.

That is why scripture says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Submit yourselves then to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Come near to God and he will come near to you.

Wash your hands, you sinners and purify your hearts.

You double minded.

Grieve, mourn, and wail.

Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.

Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.

Now, those verses are full of truth, but I want to focus on a couple together with you.

The first is this.

Notice what it says.

Humble yourselves.

I've heard Christians go, Oh God, please give me humility.

Or they have said, Oh God, humble me.

You understand?

Neither of those prayers are correct.

Now he could do this.

He could give you very humiliating circumstances.

He could bring into your life, arrogant, irritating, prideful people who will bristle your pride so much that either you will decide to kill them are you will decide to kill your pride.

But the truth is that the only one that Ho can humble you is you cause any other humility is not humility.

And basically because it's a commandment, it is saying here that God says, this is an act or a choice of your will.

It's not a matter of feeling humble.

It is not a matter of in some way of putting on a facade of humility.

This is you saying, the Bible says, I will not be exalted till I humble myself.

I will not go where I want to go, where I envisioned my life going unless I learned to humble myself.

So it's a choice you make.

The feelings will follow friends, but in order to make that choice, you have to know what it is you're choosing into.

And in some ways what the Holy Spirit does is he takes all the pain of your life because the brain is an amazing thing.

It accumulates pain.

All of the pain that you have left, unprocessed, all the pain that you have, not grieved low.

This is what it says here.

Grieve, mourn, Wail.

It's telling you, you got to get in touch with what is causing the limitations in your life.

You cannot just say, you know, I've got some pride.

I renounced my pride.

You have to get at what has caused you grief.

You have to get at what has caused you to mourn.

You have to get it.

The things that would make you whale if you would get in touch with them because the brain accumulates pain.

It never lets it go til you let it go until you grieve it.

It's still there.

And the lies about that pain or still governing the way you look at life.

You will not be fully settled in your ego and therefore not fully redeemed in your ego until you are fully settled that all the acceptance you ever need is in Christ until you are settled.

That the thing that really matters to me is Jesus and nothing else matters like he matters to me and I am truly safe because even to die is to gain, but see, as long as people can get to you, as long as you can be easily offended, as long as you're sensitive to even people's looks and their tones of voice than what it's saying is that you're still looking for something else to settle.

You.

One preacher who preached amazing sermon on love had a teenager come up afterwards and said, okay, I get, I get it.

God loves me, but I want a boyfriend.

How does that help me get any dates?

She said, ah, what an awesome thing to say to a preacher.

I love that most of you are too sophisticated to say something that raw.

I mean, here's what she's saying.

My Ego will be settled when somebody loves me.

My Ego will be settled when somebody wants me.

My Ego will be settled when I belonged to somebody and they belong to me.

You're in my life, God, but you're not my life, my boyfriends, my life.

You see that it's at least she was honest.

Most of us, we are that way.

My job is my acceptance, my money is my security, my retirement is my future in my home.

All of these different things that we've put in the center, and guess what happens?

None of them settle you.

I cannot tell you the number of people who had seemingly good marriages, but in fact they had invested in their marriage like it was ultimate and they lost it and they lost what was ultimate to them and then they wonder, Oh god, why can I not get happiness back?

Why can I not get security back?

Because you put your security not in him in something else and you made him your assistant.

He's not your matchmaker.

He's not your assistant.

He's not the one who is the means to your end.

He is the end or be will not be the means.

And if he's, if he's not the ultimate, you're the ultimate.

And if you're the ultimate, your soul is in bad shape.

Notice what it says God opposes.

It doesn't say he tolerates.

He says he opposes so many of you.

I mean if you're being honest and you look at your life, you go, why is this not working?

It's not working because God opposes the proud that that needs to be one of the questions.

Why is this not working?

And if God is speaking in that area, usually saying this because I'm trying to show you that your ego is centered on this and I oppose it even if it's a good thing.

Wow.

Boy, you guys got quiet.

So here are the, here are the symptoms that I've seen in the church.

These are literal people who have come to me and have said these statements, pastor, I have a right to be the center of my universe.

You don't know how much pain I've ad.

Basically they'd say it about it.

I have a right to this.

I have a right to that.

You don't know how much I'd been through.

Nobody knows how painful my life has been.

So I get to be a schmuck because of that.

You understand a lot of us, excuse a lot of behavior, a lot of crankiness, a lot of you don't know what kind of day I have.

You know, there's this really irritating statement in the love chapter.

Love is not cranky.

I'm pretty sure it's their love is not irritable.

It says many of us, that's what we bring to each other.

Oh, I was had a bad day.

Oh, I've had a lot of stress.

So instead of saying, man, I need to deal with my stress, I take it out on the people I love because I have a right, you see to be the center of my universe and you all are just here because I need you when I need you and I want you to go away when I want you to go away.

Can you imagine that really being a Christian attitude, being a Christ like attitude and yet it is pervasive in the church?

Yeah.

I've had numerous people come up to me.

I've had so much pain in my life and everything.

I can't trust anybody and I don't trust anything.

I had so many people say that to me in the 15 years that I've been here and they think it's a statement of wisdom.

It's a statement of pride.

Do you know who I realize?

I can't trust

me.

I'm the one who's letting me down more than anybody else.

And if I boldly say, none of you are trustworthy and nothing is trustworthy, and I'm listening to myself, I'm a four.

Everything is huge in my life.

I mean, I have seen people cannot get through a week without a crisis.

They need the crisis or they don't feel alive if they don't have crisis.

They create crisis so that they have reason for attention.

They have a reason, you know, to say, my life is so difficult, I must matter because a man, my life is so difficult.

You understand?

That's a, that's a manifestation of pride, of a wounded, broken ego.

I, I understand this myself.

I struggle with this one because let's think it through it over the years and my house, my mother would never listen to any of us.

She just wanted us out of the house.

She wanted school to be Saturday, Sunday, all week, all summer, you know, just get the kids out.

So I would come and it's not running down my nose.

I mean, it'd be a be horrible offices.

You're fine.

Go to school.

So I kind of learned, I got to get even bigger, you know, it's like, it's not, wasn't enough.

I'm dying, mom, I'm dying.

So I married a woman who's really an under seller.

I'm an oversell or she's an under seller.

So I go up to her and I go, I'm dying.

Lease.

I don't need to go to work, go to work.

Finally I had a heart attack and she started believing, yeah, want one.

That's a good, I like that.

See, to me that was normal.

It's because nobody listens to me.

Nobody cares if I'm sick, I don't matter.

And so I brought that into my adult life or brought it into my marriage.

I thought, oh, Lisa doesn't really care for me.

She's treated me just like my mother did.

Instead of realizing what was going on in his, in my ego, not her, what's going on in the fact that I had to make pain bigger than it was because nobody listens.

Come on, I'm saving you some counseling money, right?

No.

So there's that kind of person in the, and then there's, there's this childishness that goes into adulthood with people.

They're all or nothing.

Do you understand?

Uh, a believer is never an all or nothing because you begin to discern from the spirit of God, not from self protection.

See, if your self protective, the first sign of pain you run, the first sign of rejection.

You run.

You don't listen, you run.

But you see, Christ's was surrounded by 12 disciples, one who would betray him and he knew it.

11 who would desert him.

And yet he went all the way to the cross for people like you and me.

He says, God commanded his love toward us.

In that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

You see his all or nothing.

He was all in.

He was never all out.

He's the kind of friend that always lets you in and never let you down, but you and I were so self protective, nobody fully gets in because if you're not, if I can't trust you 100% I'm not going to trust you at all.

So we stay like little children.

But there's a flip side of this, and this is often people who have been neglected as they begin to say stuff like, well, I'm nothing.

I'm nobody.

I don't count.

I don't matter.

And they think somehow that's a humble statement.

Now you know, anytime you began to call yourself nothing, it's a game.

It's like a, it's like a, sometimes my wife will say, this dress makes me look fat.

Doesn't dad is a no win.

That's a no one dress question.

All right.

Because if I say yes, she says, then you think I'm fat, don't you?

And I was trying to say, no, the dress just didn't look good on you or whatever.

It's a no win kind of thing.

Sometimes people say, Oh, I'm just not very smart.

So everybody go, Oh, you're so smart.

We're all such games player you.

You know where that comes from.

It doesn't come from health.

It comes from unhealth.

It doesn't come from a place of a person who's satisfied in Christ.

It comes from the places insecure in their ego.

We play games because we're afraid your answer's going to hurt us.

So we try to do it indirectly passive aggressively instead of realizing, wow, I desperately need to know that I'm loved.

I desperately need to know that I matter.

Do you know what all your friends, you ask all those questions that they need, the same thing you do, so you're siphoning gas from an empty tank and wondering why you're not filled.

Let's see.

How can you, if you're a follower of Christ, how can you ever think you're nothing?

Let me think with me for that.

I grew up with him.

One of my favorite hymns is Ferris Lord Jesus.

I love that hymn.

There's this part where it talks about beautiful savior and it just always gets me.

I know that's who he is.

He's the fairest of 10,000 and you have what he thinks you're the fairest.

Got.

You know what?

He thinks you're beautiful.

You know what he thinks you're lovely.

You see, I never have to ask, am I lovable?

Because the Ferris Lord Jesus says, I'm lovable.

I don't care what the rest of you jerks.

Thanks.

Yeah,

you're not the fairest of 10,000

I'm done.

I'm just trying to get at you a little better.

Okay, look, this is the pet.

It's serious, but at the same time, you've got to get to the place where you were laughing about yourself.

Yeah, because he just, he loves you so much and he's the darling of heaven.

So when you say I'm nothing, you're saying he's nothing.

In another song I used to sing, I think that applies as we used to say, saying crown him with many crowns, the lamb upon the throne, the whole of heaven sounds with the anthem of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he thought his crown worthy to be laid aside so that he could spend eternity with you.

He laid aside his crown for you.

And if you're still saying you're nothing than he's nothing, and if you're saying you're nothing, you're saying his sacrifice was nothing.

Do you see from me?

I mean, I'd still see places where my ego can be tweaked, tweaked, but I know at the core of my core I'm accepted in the beloved, I am significant because he's significant.

Yeah, and I am safe because even though I die, I will be with him forever.

So not only does that, nothing is say you know, pride, but also there some of us that like to say everybody else matters, not me.

You understand?

When you come to Christ, you begin to realize it has been settled, that you matter.

You are a person.

You're not a thing.

You're not in it.

You're not a machine.

You are a person and and Jesus has restored your person hood.

You have a will.

You have choices, you have emotions.

You get to feel deeply.

You have the mind of Christ.

You have thoughts like never before.

Therefore do not waste it on false modesty when you can operate from true humility.

Now, some of that shows up.

I've seen people do this in the church.

They offer themselves as servants.

They offer themselves as slaves to other people.

Their thought is underneath is if I become indispensable to you, then I'll be special.

I'll be important.

I'll have a place.

But the problem is when you offer yourself as a slave, people take you up on the offer and they treat you like a slave.

They just begin to demand of you.

They just began to expect from you.

But here's the thing, you offered it.

Then why are you mad that they take you up on it?

Except that again, it's pride.

It's not servant hood.

It's a game.

It's manipulation.

It's a way somehow for a broken ego person to feel like they have importance.

The problem is it never provides, if you or any or all of these people today is a day to repent because these are not who Christ is leading you and guiding you into being.

These are not his destiny for you.

These are indicators that you have not dealt with redeeming your ego and repenting of your pride.

So one of the scriptural pictures that tells what the end result of pride is, is a story of Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century BC and African as they're lived in a time of Daniel and never can, has there was the king or the ruler over the known world as he knew it.

He was the master political strategists of all time and he was able to do something.

No one's ever been able to do sense that I know of.

He built a green city, his floating water gardens made the air in Babylon pure.

They were the wonder of the world in those times.

And he designed and built them and had them build, I mean everything he touched, he had turned into success in such a way.

And, and something began to happen at the pinnacle of his power.

And the way he describes it after.

The fact is he's thankful for the thing that disrupted his life.

He's thankful for it because it was a spiritual cancer that prided itself, had corrupted his soul in such a way that it had to be cut out radically.

And so what happened is this, in the book of Daniel, uh, Nebuchadnezzar is unable to sleep.

He's tormented in his sleep.

And what we see is that that pride unsettles the soul so that even sleep is impossible.

It's a torment that comes.

And so for 12 months he has the same dream and he calls all of his wise men and he calls all of his sourcers.

And it caused all of his people and to interpret the dream.

And I don't know if they didn't interpret the dream because they weren't able to, or because the interpretation was so negative, they were afraid.

You know, kings don't like bad messages.

So the, hey, they might've killed the Messenger for the message.

And even as Daniel is called into interpret the dream, Daniel does so with trepidation, he does it so very cautiously.

So the dream is that there's a tree, a giant tree that shelters the nation's in a sense.

And this tree is cut down and then it talks about a seven years of being kind of in this wilderness sort of thing.

And Daniel and purpose at this way that the tree is Nebuchadnezzar, that God is going to cut Nambucca Nez are down and the for seven years he's gonna lose his humanity and he's going to live like an animal.

But in the end of the seven years, he will repent of his pride and he will be restored to his place when he acknowledges the true King.

So Daniel tells this and then he says this to Nebuchadnezzar, you could keep this from happening if you will just listen.

Well, of course he doesn't.

So his pride, his eye, and he actually is standing above his gardens on his mighty city and he says, look what I've accomplished.

No one could cut me down.

Look what I've done.

I'm content, I've accomplished every goal I set out to accomplish.

I'm prosperous.

There's no one like me in the whole world.

He said, and at that moment he was struck.

Now, now listen.

I believe that what this is is a pattern of what pride does.

Pride takes away your humanity.

What God had done with with Nebuchadnezzar is he had restrained his pride, but when he stopped restraining it, nab can, as their lost all sense of being human.

You see, what God is trying to say through the life of Nebuchadnezzar is you might think your price is not such a big deal, but he's trying to show you in Nebuchadnezzar what the end result of unchecked pride is.

But the other thing is this.

The story of Napa condenser speaks to us in New York like nowhere else, that the human soul has a hole so big that even if you were to become the emperor of the known world, it would still not fill the in your soul.

It's not big enough, and so he was troubled though he had everything.

Now.

Now, one of the things that's really clear to see is that the more pride you have in the more difficult sleepers, because you have to with your conscious mind and your subconscious mind, you have to protect what you think is yours.

You have to replay conversations.

You have to go over future conversations.

You have to begin to figure out what people's reactions and actions are going to be, because you've got to defend, protect, and even procure what is rightfully yours.

Are you hearing me on this?

Are you quiet because it's coming in, cause I don't want to waste my breath here.

No.

So this is, this is what this story teaches as well.

Our God has been merciful to us.

He is always restrained.

The effects of our pride.

He has never allowed our pride to destroy us as it should, but also he is so merciful.

He's someone who sends the dreams.

Do you know what every irritating person that you've ever come across was?

A messenger of God.

Yeah.

Every idiot boss you've ever worked for was an angel of God's mercy.

I know.

It's hard to think that way.

I've wanted to kill them all.

Yeah.

All right.

At least cuss him out in Spanish, you know, and uh,

look,

the reality is we don't see our ego until it hurts.

We don't see how protective something is until somebody threatens it.

So what God has been doing is he's been restraining the effects of your pride, but he's been bringing people into your life so you can see how damaged and bankrupt your ego is, how much you're still counting on people to be what only God can be, how you're counting on your job and your status and other things to make you safe when only he can make you safe.

So the heart of pride is he didn't listen.

I mean, here's the heart of pride.

He had a word from the Lord and it all came true, but he said, I don't need to listen to that.

So the heart of pride is you only listened to yourself.

You don't listen to the voice of the wisdom of God.

Now, if I can contrast this, a redeemed ego has a healthy pride.

It has a healthy sense of self that has a boundary that says, this is who I am.

You don't get to cross into this.

You don't get to abuse this, but it only can happen if your faith is in the idea that God had when he made you.

If your faith is in the fact that you're not an accident, but you're actually a careful design of God.

Listen, listen for a minute to Ephesians two 10 where it says you are God's workmanship.

Notice what it says.

It doesn't say you are your workmanship.

You are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.

So in other words, healthy pride says, I really am God's workmanship.

I'm not nothing.

I'm not a slave.

I'm not nobody.

I am God's masterpiece he sees me in is creating in me a masterpiece.

But it's created by Jesus, not by me.

It's me responding to the invitation of Jesus.

It's me responding to his work.

I'm saying he's created me as a masterpiece.

I never have to stand in any circle and say I'm nobody and nothing.

I'm God's masterpiece.

He I'm created in Christ Jesus for good works, not by my good works creative

four.

In other words, my words don't prove that I'm loved by God.

My works present and show forth that I am loved by God.

There.

There are a demonstration of the masterpiece that has made me, to me, it's a completely different thing because what has to be humbled as you saying, I did it myself.

What has to be humbled is when you start thinking, well, I'm smarter than this person.

I work harder than this person.

I'm owed these good things.

Some people will say, I have what I have because I work harder than anybody else.

Other people say, I don't have because life is harder for me than anybody else.

Either way, it's pride blocking you from being a masterpiece.

Here's, here's what I really like.

Lewis says it this way.

Pride claims to be the author of what completely is a gift.

Pride is a spiritual plagiarism, claiming to be the author of something you never created.

Humility is the acknowledgement that everything I am and everything I have is a gift being to receive life as a gift.

It's not that kind of false humility that says I'm poor, but I'm proud I don't.

Uh, I'm not going to take charity.

I'm not gonna let anybody help me.

All of that's just pride.

Keeping you from the greatness of living in the gift that God has for you.

Humility.

It's this recognition.

Everything I am, even the work I do is a gift from God.

Even the ability to do the work is a gift from God.

Is this so important to me?

Because I've, I've found that repentance is really sweet.

I've found that brokenness and humility and vulnerability before God lead you forward like nothing else.

Right after I had that experience of giving him my pain, he went after my pride.

I didn't realize how he was going to do it, but he took me to Columbia and I had the most amazing spiritual ministry I ever had.

That night, I prayed for 350 people.

Every one of them got healed.

Every one of them got filled with the Holy Spirit.

The pain they would have in their body, I would have in my body before they even told me.

And then when I would leave my body, it would leave their bottles.

And it was the most amazing hours of my life.

And as I began to tell the story, I was the only, uh, I was the only one from my team there.

I was the only gringo there.

And, uh, uh, as I began to tell the story, at first it was Jesus, the healer.

Little by little it became Mike the Healer.

And I went into this terrible depression for six months and I just couldn't get out of it.

I went to a good counselor, a counselor that I love, and I said, something's wrong.

I can't get out of this depression.

So, so let me pray.

And he prayed.

He laid hands on me.

He said, the spirit of the Lord says, you stole my glory.

And I, I can tell you what happened to me.

Cause I knew what that meant all the life went out of, I felt drained of blood, of energy, of everything.

So I limped back, we were in Tacoma, Georgia to call false college.

And I went to the days inn and I knew they had a Gideon Bible.

And I was going to, I said to the Lord, I gotta, I gotta have a word from you.

So I did Christian Roulette with Gideon, Gideon Bible.

Now I'm a professional, so don't do this at home.

I don't know if you've ever done it before, but when you do that you just usually, it just opens right up to the song for some reason and when all the way to John 15 and in my eyes fell on the verse, you are already healed by the word I've spoken to and the ink from the page came into me and just filled me all the way through and I, something happened that day where this thing that we're talking about became so real to me.

Everything is a gift.

What do I have that I have not been given?

I've never healed anybody.

I've never delivered anybody.

I've never saved anybody, but I have.

I will give him all the glory.

Then I become the instrument through which he does all those things.

In that one six month period, he showed me all that he could do with me, but he also showed me all that was wrong with me to where I couldn't see it happening.

I had capacity, I had capability, but I didn't have capacity.

And he broke that pride in me.

He just destroyed it in a way like never before.

He restored my soul in a way, like never before.

So that anything and everything he does, I know it's a gift and anything I get to see, I'm just along for the ride.

And it was an awesome ride.

When you no longer are creating your own masterpiece and you're doing your own work on yourself and instead you are God's masterpiece created in Christ Jesus and they really are good works, which he has ordained for you beforehand.

We stand with me.

Are you hearing me?

I'm, I'm really wanting you to get this today because I believe, I see visions of incredible things ahead for you.

But this is the, this is the cord that limits.

So I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna ask, we've got some prayer ministers.

Would you come up with the, those of you who are designated to pray, would you come up?

Would you do something for him?

Would you just step up on the stage for now?

Just for now.

I'm going to drive the children's ministry crazy right now.

I'm asking, we're going to have folks to pray with you afterwards,

but

I could not get rid of my pride, which was protecting my ego and my ego was broken until I could see it.

And then when I saw it and I saw how Jesus showed it to me, that I was stealing his glory, that I was a spiritual plagiarist.

I was taking credit for that which only he could do.

It broke me and it broke the power of pride in my life.

I think he's here in the same way today.

So if you're sensing, again, you don't, you don't have to do this, but sometimes it's important to take steps.

I had to go find, I had to go find someone I trusted and I had to tell the story to them, and then they spoke to me and had broken me.

This is a safe place.

The spirit is here for healing.

I can feel it.

If you're sensing today, this has been one of the, this is one of those root issues that your pride, your ego, that they're screaming in pain or they're so quiet or so frozen or withered, whatever, today is your day to get here.

You're not nothing.

You're a workmanship.

You know you're not the center of the universe.

He is, and that needs to get an alignment for you to go forward.

Humble yourself before God and he will exalt you.

If that is the call on your heart today, would you, would you come and join me up here?

I mean even before we separate into people praying for you, would you just come up here with me, make a step in a statement?

I'm feeling him breaking more pride in me through this.

These messages.

Now I have to say I'm four times so I can't really get away from them.

But if you're sensing this is speaking to you today, you're sensing the Lord wanting to settle your ego, redeem your ego, wanting to take away that unhealthy pride, but replace it with healthy, knowing who you are in Christ.

Then you really are his masterpiece.

Would you just right here?

I mean, you don't have standing as good.

Getting on your knees is good.

Whatever you want to do, but would you lay your pride at the alternative?

And if you're seeing pain, like I saw pain, I had to give him my pain first before I could give him my pride.

I had to trust him with my pain before I could give him my pride.

Whatever it is, this platform can take it.

Your soul can't.

So whether it's like just to put your hands, uh, with palms down saying, I'm going to leave it here.

Leave it at the altar.

I'm going to believe that everything I am as a gift, that the god, that God is the author of my life and he doesn't write trash.

He doesn't.

He doesn't design trash.

He has made me a masterpiece.

If you're believing that, leave it.

Leave the old here.

Settle your ego.

Fix Your Ego on Christ.

I ask that you would say these words with me.

I am fully accepted in the Lord Jesus Christ.

I really do matter.

The King of glory left Heaven for me.

He valued my life to be equal to his life and I am safe.

I am hidden in Christ.

He will never leave me or forsake me.

I center myself, my ego in who he is and who I am in him.

Hi, reject rejection.

I reject unworthiness.

I reject fear.

Everything I have is a gift.

Everything I am is a gift.

I returned to the author to be his workmanship, his masterpiece.

Pride.

You are broken.

We send you now in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the feet of Jesus.

You are broken over.

Each of these people have humbled themselves even in their posture, in their steps towards the altar.

We leave pride here and the spirit of pride we send to the field of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Never return in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Man.