Ever felt overwhelmed by that boss who micromanages every little task? Or the parent who doesn't hesitate to voice their critique? How about the spouse who seems to find fault in everything? You're not alone; dealing with overly critical people is a common struggle. Today, we're dissecting this prickly subject, offering you insights and strategies to handle these situations in a healthy, appropriate way. Drawing from biblical wisdom, we'll be exploring how criticism is inevitable, especially if you're aiming to make a difference or walking the path of Jesus.
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Ever felt overwhelmed by that boss who micromanages every little task? Or the parent who doesn't hesitate to voice their critique? How about the spouse who seems to find fault in everything? You're not alone; dealing with overly critical people is a common struggle. Today, we're dissecting this prickly subject, offering you insights and strategies to handle these situations in a healthy, appropriate way. Drawing from biblical wisdom, we'll be exploring how criticism is inevitable, especially if you're aiming to make a difference or walking the path of Jesus.
Made a decision to follow Jesus? We want to know about it! Fill out our connect card here: https://local.churchcenter.com/people/forms/115766
Thank you for your generosity. For information on how to give, visit https://localvineyard.church/give.
We are in a series called Relational Vampires. And what do vampires do? They want to suck your blood. What do some people do in our lives? They suck the life out of us. Does anyone have any difficult people in your life? No, ok, a couple people. That's what they do. So today I want to deal with something that all of us will face at one point or another in our lives. All of us will face critical people, overly critical people, in fact.
Speaker 1:You may say that you know someone in your life that has the spiritual gift of fault finding. They can find a fault with anything. They can always find it. They can point out the negative for anything whatsoever. They criticize everything. Here you go, if you've leaned over to the person next to you and you already criticized five things about your church experience today. This message is for you today. But here you go.
Speaker 1:But for real, how do we deal with those who are overly critical? Maybe for you, you work for a boss. That's like that. They kind of stay out of your business, but then when they jump in, they micromanage you. They're checking everything you do. They're very critical. It's not a life-giving environment to work at. They're all up in your business. Maybe you're an adult and your parents, your mom and dad, still criticize everything you do. They criticize the way you raise your kids, the way you spend your money, whatever it is they criticize it. Maybe it's your spouse. Maybe your spouse is a little critical. Maybe they say why are you dressed like that, why you walk like that, why are you breathing like that? For there's a spirit that's a little overly critical at your household. So how do we deal with appropriately Because there's other ways to deal with critical people that aren't appropriate but how do we deal with appropriately and how do we love those who are very critical?
Speaker 1:No matter what you do, wherever you are, if you're making any kind of difference with your life, if you're in any kind of relationship, people are going to be incredibly critical. In fact, there's this cruel attribute to Aristotle. He may have said it, maybe not. It goes like this it says to avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. Now, I don't want to be overly critical of that quote, but if you said nothing, did nothing, be nothing, people will criticize you for being a lazy bum. There's no when. So here's the truth If you are alive, people are going to criticize you. People are going to find something wrong with what you're doing. People will criticize you. So here you go. If you're going to make a difference with your life, especially if you're a Jesus follower, people are always going to find something bad about you Because your values are going to be different. Your values are going to be different. You'll be criticized. You can even loosely use that word, persecute it.
Speaker 1:If you're following Jesus, we need to learn how to deal with criticism and for some of you, this is wrecking your relationships. It's wrecking your relationship with your parents, who are critical. It's wrecking your relationship with your grandma. We talked about how to handle grandma last week. Get behind me, satan, I'm joking. Don't say that to your grandma and your merits. You're critical. And your boss? How do we love us?
Speaker 1:Everyday, people are learning how to become Jesus followers. How do we respond to people with a critical spirit? I want to give us four thoughts today, and here's the kicker. Here are the four thoughts I'm going to give us today. It's going to help you with the people in your life that are critical, and it will also help you identify some areas in your life that you might be a little overly critical to. So here we go, we're going to jump into it.
Speaker 1:The first one is this how do we respond to critical people? Number one oftentimes you don't respond. Often just don't respond to them, don't say anything. Don't respond to a critical person. Oftentimes you don't need to respond Just because someone criticized you. That doesn't make you obligated to respond to them, and this is incredibly freeing. In fact, this is one of Jesus's kind of line of offense. When this happened, peter tells us this who walked with Jesus? His whole ministry. This is what Peter says how Jesus handled criticism. Check this out First.
Speaker 1:Peter 2 says this when they hurled insults at him Dang, that sounds intense, just throwing insults at him. I got some people like that in my life who throw insults at me. When they hurled insults at Jesus and what kind of insults did Jesus have to say about him? People said that he was a friend of sinners. That wasn't a compliment back then. Now is a compliment, but back then it was like what's wrong with this guy? Why is he hanging out with the bad people? For they said he was a drunk. They said he ate too much pizza. Wait, they said he ate too much. They said he partied really hard. They said he was a lunatic, that he was a false god, that he was a heretic, and on and on and on and on. And I just got to say if people found fault with Jesus, they're going to find faults with you. It's going to happen, it's a part of life. Peter says when they hurled insults at him, what did Jesus do? Peter said he did not retaliate when he suffered. He made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him, who judges justly Notice. He did not retaliate, he did not need to defend himself, he did not complain. He simply entrusted himself to his father in heaven. He entrusted himself to God.
Speaker 1:So how do you respond to critical people? Sometimes you just don't, sometimes you don't Be free. And just because I got to say something, just because people have access to you, doesn't mean that you are obligated to respond to them. We live in a world today, because of social media and our smartphones, people can jump in your business at any time. People can just hop up in your life, call you, text you, whatever, and they feel like, because they text you, because they call you, you are automatically obligated to respond back to them. And I just want you to know something today you are not. You do not have to. And here's the thing, though. This is kind of the tricky part of it, because oftentimes we'll post pictures about things that we're doing or places that we're going, and it gives people access to judges. Well, how do they save up money to go on that vacation? Oh, they ain't never doing nothing good with their time, are they always talking about they're busy? They don't look that busy according to their Facebook, and we give people access to us where it can create some not good things. So just because someone has access to you doesn't mean you have to respond to them.
Speaker 1:In fact, I love what it says in the Proverbs. Proverbs 19 says this a person's wisdom yields patience. It is to one's glory to overlook and offense. Wow, what does that mean? Overlooking and offense? It is not the same as pretending it didn't happen. That is not what I'm saying here. We don't need to pretend like someone didn't hurt us. It's not the same thing. What it means is, in fact, the word. The word overlook comes from a couple Hebrew words. That means to rise above or to get over. It means to rise above or to get over.
Speaker 1:To overlook and offense is a form of forgiveness, but it's not forgiveness as something in the past tense. It's forgiveness in real time. It's forgiveness in real time, in the moment and in the heat of it. It's choosing to forgive in real times. In other words, I know I know that's, I know that's not. You may say too, so I know that's not fair. I know I could get angry. I know I have the right words to put that person in their place. I know how to fight back. I know I could retaliate, I know I could be defensive, I know I could do that. But instead of doing that, I'm gonna choose a different way. I'm gonna choose a different way. I'm choosing in the moment to get above that, to overlook it in real time, to forgive in real time. Here you go. I'm not gonna wait three months and let bitterness store all up in me and then I'm gonna handle it.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna forgive right now, because oftentimes we give our, we give places, we give, we get spots in our hearts, we give memories, we give, we give moments in our lives to people who don't deserve it. Just because someone says something about you, you gotta ask yourself do they deserve me worrying about them? Do they deserve my energy to be stewing over how I'm gonna respond back to them, or is there better things right in front of me? I gotta get over it. I gotta move. I gotta choose to move over it. I'm choosing right now because I'm called by God, because I got a higher purpose.
Speaker 1:This is something that Aaron and I recently just had to how to deal with. We had someone who just offended us like just greatly, horribly, horribly, very bad, kind of out of nowhere. It was a very significant hurt in our lives and there is this big part of me that I wanted to get down with it. I start hearing stuff, and if you know me, I do. I am not afraid of confrontation. Confrontation does not make me feel easy. I can even thrive in confrontational environments, you know, and so I was ready to confront. I was ready to let people know. I was ready to let this person know I was gonna. I was ready to let the other people involved know what really went down and how this thing really happened. I had all my ammunition ready to strike back.
Speaker 1:But then God, hear me in this. God and his gentle wisdom, his Holy Spirit, it said to me what are you gonna do? How are you gonna fix that by doing that? How are you gonna fix that by doing that thing. How is that gonna help anything in there? Because you got greater things around you right now. See, he nudged me in real time and you can choose in real time. I can let that thing go, I can move beyond that issue because I got something. I got a higher calling and I'm not gonna let something take me lower. Okay, I want you to hear this Don't let a negative person take you lower. Where God is trying to take you higher, instead, where that overly critical, negative person is trying to cut you down, use that as your opportunity. As the scripture says, I will let the devil be my footstool. I'll use that to step up to what God's calling me to be Okay.
Speaker 1:So so how do you respond to critical people? Sometimes you just don't respond to them and that actually will make them more frustrated. To be honest, you don't respond to them. The second thing is second way respond carefully, respond carefully. You respond carefully. Notice, I didn't say react, you don't want to react. I said respond. Responding is very different than reacting. Reaction is an emotion. Responding can be spirit led. Reaction is an emotion. Responding can be spirit led.
Speaker 1:In fact, there's this very powerful example and the Old Testament by a guy named Gideon. I'm gonna preach a whole message series on Gideon pretty soon, probably in the next year. It's such a fascinating story. But here you go. He's taking some heat from some leadership decisions that he made. He's taking some heat from it and some people didn't like what he was doing.
Speaker 1:Check out what it says in Judges 8. It says there, remembering them nights, ask Gideon, why have you treated us like this? Why did you call us when we went to fight Midian and they challenged him vigorously? Another translation said they criticized him sharply. I can feel that I've been criticized sharply before. What did he do? He didn't defend himself, he didn't justify himself, he didn't fight back. He didn't say well, that's not fair. You don't got the whole picture of it. You don't understand all the details. You don't understand my childhood trauma that made me do this. No, no, no.
Speaker 1:He simply responded and scripture says he answered them. He answered them. He gave them a very clear, very rational, very spirit-led response. He says you guys don't understand that the work we put into the harvest and that God brought us the different things that God did, it was very intentional. And check this out After he carefully responded to them. This is what it says. When the men of interim heard getting us answered, their anger subsided. I like this. I like this because what we learned, especially what we learned in 2020, was this that everyone had a response to everything. Everyone had a reaction to everything. People ended friendships on Facebook because they knew we were right. People just knew they were right about whatever they were right about. And we see that a reaction a lot of times is born out of an emotion, and it could be an intense emotion, it could be a high emotion. But just because you have an emotion doesn't mean it's right, doesn't mean it's the right way to respond getting and responding.
Speaker 1:In other words, at some point you're going to have to do something and someone's going to criticize you and they're going to say things to you like why in the world are you going back to school? They're going to say things to you Well, you're going to go serve in full-time ministry. That's stupid. You got to be in the business world. They're going to say why do you give all that time to that church? Why do you serve there? You could be doing other things with that. They're going to say and this is for my ladies, for my women in the house. They're going to say this to you. They're going to say you're going to stay at home and raise your kids. You got so much talent. But then, if you do the other thing, if you go back to the workforce, they're going to say to you you're going to leave your kid at home. What kind of mom are you? You can't win, can you? Here you go With negative people. You will never win. They will always find something.
Speaker 1:So this is what I want to say to you, because sometimes people are going to blow up, sometimes people are going to say something, and what you got to do out of a place of confidence, not retaliation, out of a place of confidence who God has called you to be, out of a place of confidence, you doing what God has set up for you. Out of that place of confidence, you respond, you offer context, you explain, you give an explanation, and that will make some people angry. You're not subside, but for other people it won't, and you want to know what you do with those other people. You leave them aside, you move on. You move on Because you'll wait forever to get their approval. When emotions are high, you're not being led by the spirit and you're being driven by emotions. That's the way for you to say things that later on you got to backtrack.
Speaker 1:Anyone ever wrote up a text message and you are ready to send that text message? You had that thing lined up. You said, man, it's going to get them right in the heart. And then you said maybe I should have sent that text message. Now they got a delete app on your iPhone. I got a text message the other day. Someone said message deleted. I was like what did they say to me? I was wondering See, the reason why you wait before you respond, the reason why you can wait. This is the reason why you can wait Because you are confident in what God is calling you to do. You're confident in it. You don't need to justify. We don't react in a way that causes more problems. In other words, we wait for the Holy Spirit to lead us.
Speaker 1:And when someone is incredibly critical, I want to encourage you to remember that oftentimes their criticism isn't even about you. Hear me on this. Hear me about it. Hear me on this. Oftentimes, when people are critical of you, are there being negative about something that you're doing? Oftentimes, it has nothing to even do with you. Oftentimes, the criticism is born out of a hurt in their own lives.
Speaker 1:In fact, what I found is that most angry people are actually hurting people, that there's some wound, and sometimes it's something that they don't like about themselves and it manifests themselves in a critical spirit. I know I've been there before, I know there's been wounds in me and I see someone doing something, I say something negative Because really it's about me, it's not even about them. If we're being honest today and in fact, I found that those who are very critical of me are actually often dealing with some inconsistencies in their own life, and the same would be true for you I just need to say this. I need to say this I never met a well-adjusted, happy, productive and positive person who constantly bangs out hateful comments on Facebook. Can't find them, can't find it.
Speaker 1:That type of ongoing anger is not born out of mean spirited person, but is born out of a wound that has never been addressed and they're taking it out on someone else. So I want you to try to remember that. I know that's hard, but I want you to try to remember that was someone's hypercritical of you. When someone's putting you down or kind of judging what you're doing. Remember, they're probably not even really that upset at me. They got their own thing and know what. As an everyday person who's learning how to become a Jesus follower, I'm going to pray for their wound. I'm going to pray for their hurt. Hey guys, let me say something to that. That's what makes us different than the world.
Speaker 1:Anyone can respond when you're angry, and especially if you're right. But can we rise above that? Can you rise above it? Can you begin to do that? So how do we respond to incredibly critical people? Well, sometimes you don't respond. Sometimes we respond carefully.
Speaker 1:And number three occasionally you listen and you make a change. Occasionally, you listen and you make a change. You recognize that there's actually something you can learn from a harsh credit. There's something you can learn from a harsh credit who points out truth are better. You can better learn from a person, a loving person, what constructive criticism that has your best attention at heart, at their heart. Let me do this. I want to get up in your business for a second. I want to get all up in it. I'm about to get up in your business.
Speaker 1:Sometimes the people who are being hard on you, sometimes the people who are being hard on us. They're right. Their approach may not be the best, but they're right about what they're saying. They're right about what they're pointing out. Listen. If everyone tells you you have a problem, chances are you have a problem. If your wife, who loves you, keeps yelling at you, keeps telling you you got to stop yelling at the kids and riding them, you should probably listen to that. Or if your spouse tells you that you're kind of letting people take advantage of you, you should probably listen to that. Here you go, if everyone you know your mama and daddy, your brother, your sister, your sorority sister, so you don't even talk to no more. Keep pointing out things. Maybe, just maybe, you should listen. You should listen to it. You should listen to it. If everyone's telling you something, and maybe you should have something like.
Speaker 1:Proverbs 15 says this if you listen to constructive criticism, you will be at home among the wise. I like that. But if you reject discipline, you only harm. You only harm yourself, you only harm yourself. So what I've learned from a lot of critics who don't like me is that they actually can point out good stuff that needs me to change. For example, there's this one guy at our church in Virginia Beach and this guy was a full-blown, full-throttle, complete in and out, absolutely from head to toe. This person was a jerk, all caps and exclamation marks. I mean, you ever meet these people that they walk into a room and jerkness follows them Like they just say everything about them, the way they talk, the way they act Maybe I'm being judgmental. This guy every time he walked in oh, this dude In Virginia Beach, before we moved up here, I was in charge.
Speaker 1:I was the pastor over the weekend service experience. I was in charge of everything that happened on a Sunday. A part of my job is I would wait by the auditorium doors, our senior pastors, andy and Sharon, and we would greet people as they walk in. So this guy comes in. I see him walking down the hall. I'm like, oh my gosh, she's going to say something negative. I just knew it was coming.
Speaker 1:He walks into the auditorium doors. He shakes Pastor Andy's hand. He shakes Pastor Sharon's hand. He walks to me and I extend my hand to shake his hand. He looks at me and says you need to trim up that neck hair. He walks off.
Speaker 1:I said I want to punch this dude right in the face. I was ready. I was like I know we in church right now. I'll lay him out. It won't be the spirit that lays him out, it'll be a little lightening and a little thunder. Come on somebody. I was ready.
Speaker 1:I went back. I'm grabbing my neck hair and he's the part that made me the most angry. He was right. My neck hair looked nasty. I was like man, why'd I come to the public like this? You want to know what I did after that. Every week I make sure I'm trimmed up. Here you go.
Speaker 1:Why was I able to receive that? I know it's kind of funny. Why was I able to receive that? Because my value in life isn't based on that jerk, not based on his critical opinion. My value is based on who God has called me to be. It says I want to live my life honoring God. I can even listen to the people who don't have good intentions for me and take the good and give it the glory to God. So I want to say this to you. I want to say this to you In this year in this year, if there haven't been two or three or four things that you have changed about yourself because you've listened to constructive criticism, I want to say something to you.
Speaker 1:You are missing opportunity for growth, because if you have nothing to change, then you're perfect and you should just be up here telling us all how to be perfect like you. But there should be things that people are noticing your blind spots. If you've got good people around you, they're noticing the blind spots. They're noticing those negative things you're doing, all those unproductive things that you're doing, all those self-destructive things that you are doing. And I'm going to tell you this God puts people around that in our lives. If we're mature enough to listen to it, to grab it and make the change. And make the change that God's calling me. Yeah, could. He said. Hey, man, that's why I let you know, I know you're a young pastor. Hey, you should make sure you trim it up, dude. Hey, I'm glad to see you. Yeah, he could have said that, but I'm not going to let his jerkness take away my potential to grow. So I want you to not let anyone with a negative spirit take away from your potential to grow. So here you go, you want to listen, you, you, occasionally you listen and you make a change.
Speaker 1:And number four I'm going to close it with this you always, always when dealing with critical people. You always work to guard your heart and you want to know why. Why you need to work to guard your heart, because if you're not careful, you will become the one with the critical spirit. You will become the one that sucks the life out of a room. You will be the one that will always notice his defaults and other people and constantly call them out and not ever calling people up to who they're supposed to be. You will be the one that lives in a critical spirit and who has a critical spirit. Who is the chief of the critical spirit? Satan is the chief. He is called the accuser of the brother. He is the father of lies. He is the critical one who keeps shame and guilt and will not allow this, and we will not allow that spirit to drive us to have a critical spirit. Proverbs 12 says this Some people make cutting remarks with the words of the wise bring healing.
Speaker 1:And I just got to ask you today are you cutting people down? Are you providing healing for people? Do the words you say to people? Are you cutting your spouse down? Are you cutting your kids down? Are you cutting your teenagers down? Are you bringing healing to them? Here you go Teenage, parents with teenagers, parents with young adults. Are your words? Are your words cutting them down? Are you using your wisdom and using what the spirit of God is putting you to bring healing to their lives? Where are you doing it? What are we doing with it? Now, here you go.
Speaker 1:I don't want my words, I don't want my heart, I don't want my spirit to be cutting people down, to be distracting people, to be life-taking. I want my words, I want my heart, I want my spirit to be life-giving, to build others up, to encourage them into godliness. The problem is because of our sinful nature. Guess what? We can be the critical ones. When we talk about the critical people out there, it's so easy to talk about them and us to neglect ourselves. I'm not going to say something real fast, like the Holy Spirit just dropped this one on me.
Speaker 1:Some of you, you're being too critical to yourself, you are cutting yourself down and God says stop talking to my child like that, stop talking to yourself like that, stop putting yourself down. What are you? I think the Lord just said the fruit that you want is in the root, and the root for some of you is a constant, net, constant, constant, constant negative way you keep approaching yourself. You keep constantly negatively talking about yourself. Hmm, I feel the Holy Spirit saying you keep taking the negative words. Yep, you keep taking the negative words that your father told you your earthly father and using them to build your life upon. You're cutting yourself down. I don't know if that was for someone specific. I saw the Holy Spirit is saying stop it. I feel like a good father. A God is saying he's a good father and he's saying stop it. I didn't say that about you.
Speaker 1:God's reminded me of a story Adam and Eve. They're in the garden and they just, they just make a mistake. They eat from the forbidden tree and they're not supposed to. And they and they run and they hide. And the scripture says that God is walking, god is walking and eating with them. God is walking in the garden with them and God's not mad and God's not upset, but he's walking with them, but he's walking with them. And then, and then he says and he says did you eat from the fruit? And they said, yes, we ate from the fruit. And now we know that we are naked. We know we are naked and exposed.
Speaker 1:And God's response to Adam and Eve was this who told you that? Who told you that thing? Who told you this Because it's not what I said about you, and there's some of you in here today. You have been listening to the wrong voice for way too long. Who told you that you're worthless? Who told you that you can't add value? Who told you that you can't be a good parent? Who told you these things Because it didn't come from the mouth of God? Who told you this thing? And this is what I want to say to you today friends, listen to the one who calls you up. Listen to the Holy Spirit in you that brings healing to your life, not cutting remarks If you're trying to figure out how to hear.
Speaker 1:How do I hear God's voice? How do I hear God? How do I know God's speaking to me and it's not my own, my own thought and my own, my own thing. God's words, god's voice, never comes with condemnation. Man, ok, I feel there's a lot of people here. You are living by words of condemnation. God is saying freedom, jesus' name, and I feel like the Holy Spirit is saying break that condemnation generational pattern right now. Don't speak to your kids for condemnation, man, OK, ok, let me get back to my notes. Ok, no, I'm not going to get back to my notes.
Speaker 1:Stop cutting yourself down because you, the reason why you're cutting other people down is because you don't see yourself as valuable. So it's easy to try to discredit the value in other people when you don't see that you're valuable. And I just want you to know that you have value. You have value. And why do I know you have value? Why do I know I have value? Because God sent His one and only Son to live a life we couldn't to die a death we deserve. Rose from the grave three days later, intercedes on our behalf, bridging the gap from us to God, so that we can boldly go before the throne of God with prayer and petition, asking God for anything we need. I know we have value because there's a God that fought for us, a God that loves us, a God that reaches to us and walks beside us.
Speaker 1:And, friends, stop listening to the words of condemnation John 3, 17 says, for he did not come to condemn the world but to save the world. There is salvation, scripture tells us. Scripture tells us that our words, our words, they bring life, our death, futures. I'm going to say this, friends, I'm going to say this, lbc when we walk into a room, we walk into our households. When we walk up to our kids, to our families and our coworkers, we should be light bringers. We should be the one bringing joy to people. If there's a room where there's some darkness in it, I'm going to walk into that place and bring light, because I'm a child of the most high God. My value comes from Him. I'm not going to overly criticize people. There's enough negativity in the world. Let it be said of the church that we will step into rooms and we will bring life to the next generation. We'll bring life to our households. We'll bring life to where there is broken things that we can't do. We'll bring life to where there is broken things and dead things. We'll walk in there with the spirit of God in us saying I will bring life to this dead thing.
Speaker 1:Friends, friends, I'll say this last time we finished on time. Today I'll say this I won't let compliments go to my head and I won't let criticism go to my heart. I'm going to keep focusing on what God has called me to be, because here's the truth, friends, here's the truth. If we're living to please and gain the approval of people, you will never win that battle, you will never be satisfied, because people's opinions always change. So if I'm living just to receive their praise, one day they're not going to like what I do and I won't get that praise. And if I'm driven by their criticism, one day I will discover that trying to do something to prove them wrong didn't really bring me joy. So how do we, friends, how do we learn to hear God's voice? Insert spiritual disciplines? That's when we got to talk about how I joined the 5 am club.
Speaker 1:I wake up early just because I know that's my one time that I can spend significant time with God. I'm not saying you gotta wake up early, but what I want you to do going into this upcoming week, I want you to find time, make the time as you say, prioritize the time. I start spending daily time with God in your prayer, your prayer, god. Let me hear your voice, god, let me hear what you have to say about me, and I promise you, friends, I promise you there will be words of life, and anything that is not life-bringing is not from God. You want to know the one thing that Jesus in Scripture, the one thing that Jesus spoke to, that died. It was a fruitless tree and I want to say to you Jesus wants to speak to the fruitless trees in your life. I say don't eat from that tree anymore.
Speaker 1:So, god, jesus, holy Spirit, we thank you for your goodness, we thank you for your favor, we thank you for your power, or what a powerful name you do have. Come Holy Spirit, come, holy Spirit. We're going to sit in God's presence just for a second here, and that's what the Holy Spirit is saying. You are not that lie. You are not that lie. You don't believe it anymore. Don't cut yourself down. If you're in here today and that you kind of can relate to that, it's right where you are. I'm not going to call you out, nothing like that. It's right where you are.
Speaker 1:If you feel like man, I have spoken a negative narrative over my life for way too long. That has become truth in my life. I just want you to kind of say, god, I hand you that over right now. It's right where you are. I've got to hand you that narrative over right now. I especially felt the narrative of failure, man, I feel the narrative of I'm not loved, I'm left second best, and that's for the spirit of the Lord saying his words. I hear the Lord is saying, not Jacob's words. His words bring healing. That's why he wants you to spend daily time with him. It's his words bring healing, freedom for the captain, peace to your household. So many of us, our households, are not full of peace right now. Peace, jesus, god. We love you in this place. We want more of you In Jesus' name. Amen, amen. Let's give God some praise in here today.