#3/5 - Self Centeredness, The Root Of All Grief - Andrew Wommack - 2008/09

welcome to gospel truth with Andrew Wommack a teaching ministry emphasizing God's unconditional love and grace and now here's Andrew welcome to our Wednesday's broadcast of the gospel truth again today I'm continuing to teach on the subject of self-centeredness and how it's the source of all of our problems it's the source of all of our grief now I'm not preaching that we aren't supposed to have a good self-esteem but actually as we'll continue in this series what I'm talking about is we need to esteem what God has done on the inside of us our new born again person but you know what you don't need to exalt yourself above what you're supposed to be and in my own life and in the life of so many people I think that this is the root of how Satan gets to us I've already used as an example that Satan was lifted up with pride and said I will exalt myself above the stars above the throne of God etc this is how he came at Adam and Eve was to get them into thinking that they had missed something you know if they had been dead to themselves and loving God more than they love themself the whole temptation of Satan would have been powerless the only reason it was powerful was because they all of a sudden begin to start thinking well what about me I'm missing out on something all of our problems originate from the fact that we just love ourselves so much if you could imagine right now if I took a corpse and if I had a corpse laying in front of me you know I could spit on the corpse I could insult the corpse I could kick the corpse or I could ignore the corpse and if it's a corpse it wouldn't respond the reason that you respond so much when somebody says something and it hurts you and that you respond the way you do is because you are so alive to yourself because it is so important to you what everybody else thinks you're getting your validation from other people instead of from God alone and this has to change if you're really going to be successful and have God move in your life you've got to get out of this self-centered self-loving self-promoting mode into a mode to where you value God more than anything else and you find your worth in your relationship with God not in your own self and in your own self accomplishments I want to turn over to proverbs chapter 13 and verse 10 and share a scripture with you and I'd encourage you if you can of course if you're listening by radio I wouldn't encourage you to open up your Bible and read this but if you're watching at home or someplace and if you can read this in your Bible you need to read it because you wouldn't believe this is in the Bible if you don't see it for yourself proverbs chapter 13 verse 10 says only by pride cometh contention but with the well-advised is wisdom notice it says in verse 10 it says only by pride it didn't say that pride is one of the leading factors and for type A personality types this is what causes contention etc it says only and if you look that up in the Hebrew the word only the Hebrew word only means only that means that this is the only way it comes now I know that as I'm saying this there are many of you that if you've been raised thinking well no it's a family trait we just are kind of an angry type people it's just my type of personality it's run in my family for generations see there are many of you that don't agree with what the scripture says you say oh no this is just a characteristic of wallops or whatever your name is are many of you think well it's because of this circumstance if you knew what this person did to me then you would be angry also that's not what it's saying Jesus of course suffered more than anybody else and he suffered unjustly which made the offence that came against Jesus even worse and yet Jesus was able to turn around to the very people who crucified him mocked him had blindfolded him and spit in his face and slapped him and said prophesy who is it that hits you I mean the things that happened to Jesus were unbelievable infinitely worse than anything that's happened to you or me and yet Jesus was able to turn around to those people and say Father forgive them totally selfless and if Jesus could do that well then you cannot say that it's what other people do to you that make you angry that is not so now they may provide you with an opportunity they may present you with something that is an offense but you have the choice of how you'll respond to any situation and Jesus showed us that he chose to turn the other cheek he chose to bless the very people who were cursing us and he told us to do the exact same thing he said bless and curse not see if you're thinking well the reason I'm angry is because of what this person did to me that's wrong again they may be a factor but they are not the determining factor while other people do too you cannot dictate your responses so if I had time if I could just sit down and talk to everyone I can guarantee you that you have some way of interpreting this passage of Scripture so that you really have dodged the full impact of it you're saying well it's the way I was raised it's my circumstances it's what this person did to me it's my personality it's in my genes it's in my hormones I've heard people say before it's my time of the month and you know two days out of the month I act like the devil I just don't believe that I'm really known I'm not going to go there but I'm just saying we got a million one excuses for being able to say why the Word of God isn't true and why this doesn't apply to me but this is so strong it says only by pride cometh contention the only thing that makes you angry is your self-centeredness you may disagree with that but you're wrong I don't know how to make that any more clear than that look over here in proverbs chapter 17 and in verse 14 it says the beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water therefore leave off contention before it be meddled with at verse is saying that the beginning of strife is contention in proverbs 13 10 says only by pride cometh contention are another way of putting all this together is to say that the root of all strife all anger all bitterness all hurt all of these things in your life is your pride now I had a man one time hear me teach on this exact same thing and after the service he came up to me and he said look brother he says I really received from your ministry I'm not trying to be contentious but you cannot tell me that pride is my problem he says if anything I have such low self esteem that I just I think I am the scum of the earth I don't feel good about myself and he says I don't have pride you can't tell me that and yet I'm a very bitter angry person and what he was missing here is see that I think most of us don't really have a clear definition of pride we've misdiagnosed it it's like you know if you had a stick right here if I was holding a stick there's two ends to this stick and they're pointing in opposite directions all we've identified is one end of the stick we look at arrogance and thinking that man I'm better than you are and we say that's pride well that is pride but that's one end of the stick you know the exact same stick still the same thing pride is over here where a person says you know I'm a failure I've never done anything good nothing ever works for me I am the scum of the earth you know what that is that's pride because in my definition if I had more time I could share this with you in greater depth but in my understanding pride is not just exalting yourself and thinking you're better than everybody else pride in its simplest terms is just self-centeredness self focus it really is in a person who's proud and arrogant is a person who's thinking they are better than everybody else they look down their noses at everybody else that's pride but you know what a person who is thinking I'm nothing I'm nobody nothing ever works for me I'm just no good that's pride they are absolutely self-centered and I can tell you that with conviction because I used to be a super introvert I couldn't look at a person in the face and talk to him and I used to have what the world calls low self-worth to such a degree that I was consumed with it and I can tell you what was going on in my heart when I'm in a person they had to introduced themselves and I mean two seconds after they told me their name I couldn't remember it you know why it's not because I don't have a decent brain and I can't remember things it was because I wasn't listening to them I didn't care about them I was thinking about myself what was I going to say next I was worried about me making them astir I was just so focused on myself I couldn't acknowledge that anybody else existed I tell you timidness somehow maybe choke on this but it's true timidness is an extreme form of pride it really is you are an absolutely self-centered person you are constantly thinking about yourself when a person walks in the room the first thing you think about is I don't know what are they going to think about me I wonder if I'm going to come across and you get into insecurity people who won't open up and talk you know what it is it's a fear what people think about you there are some of you watching this program or listening by radio that right now you've got Miracles God has done you've been healed you've had your marriage say you've got things that could bless people and yet if I had a crowd here of a thousand people and if I were to invite you to come up front and share what God has done in your life you've got things that could bless people you've had a miracle and yet many of you would freeze and you would just write it off as saying well that's not my gift I'm a shy person you know if you want to just peel back a few layers you know what the problem really is you're so self-conscious thinking about yourself and afraid that you will make a mistake that you would literally let a person's marriage fall apart let a person die and go to hell not minister to them because you are thinking so much about yourself that's wrong when I first got started in ministry like I told you I was an introvert and because of it I struggled I mean it was pitiful the first two years I ministered I apologized to God and everybody I could think of because it was pitiful and I finally had a man come listening to me one day and after listening to me Minister he came up afterwards and he says you know you've got some good things to share and if you ever got to where you were more concerned about the people you were ministering to than you were about yourself and what everybody thought about you you could be a blessing and it was just like a dagger in my heart but you know what it was true and it showed me why I was paralyzed it wasn't because I couldn't do it it was because I was so self-centered self-centeredness will kill you it's the root of all of these things and I'm trying to get across that self-centeredness is not just thinking you're better than everybody else it can be thinking you're worse than everybody else and in some ways that low self-esteem and stuff is a worse form of self-centeredness because it's so subtle you don't recognize it you actually think that it's a godly trait so you've embraced it and you encouraged it it's pride and this scripture says only by pride comes contingent you know there's a lot more to share on this I'm going to be talking and sharing some things with you that will help you to manage your emotions your anger and I think this will help you but we're going to take a brief break I've got this tape entitled self-centeredness the source of all grief and our announcer will give you some information on it and then I'll be right back to listen to today's teaching you can go to our website and click on free audio teachings online and search for the title self centeredness the source of grief this mp3 download is made available on our website at no charge as Andrew mentioned on today's program you can also get the teaching on CD or DVD for a gift of any amount simply request teaching TSK 7 when you contact us be sure to specify either the CD or dvd teaching the ministry is celebrating the new year's holiday and our helpline is closed today but you can always go to our website where you can order ministry materials online 24 hours a day 7 days a week at aw mi dotnet or if you prefer you can write us our address is P o box 3333 Colorado Springs 8 0 9 3 4 we hope to hear from you today and now gospel truth continues I've been sharing about how that self centeredness is the inroad of Satan into our life and specifically we were talking out of proverbs 13 10 where it says only by pride cometh contention some people struggle with that because they only see pride as arrogance but there's many other manifestations of it and I was talking about how that low self-esteem condemning yourself is actually pride you know in the church that I grew up in I heard this often people would get up and he was like a standard line and they'd get up and they'd say well I don't have a very good voice but God said make a joyful noise and so I'm just going to sing and y'all pray for me as I sing and then they'd open up their mouths and they had had ten years of operatic training and they were you know this awesome voice and yet they got up and they thought that was you millet II to sit there and say well I don't have such a good voice you know it wasn't true that's a religious Condit some of the religious games we get into but they didn't mean it what they were doing is putting themself down hoping that you would rush up to them afterwards and say oh you shouldn't have said that you got a beautiful voice it's a backhanded way of trying to get a compliment put yourself down so other people come back and make you feel good and they don't mean it and to prove it you can go up to those people in the supermarket during the week and say you know what I think you are right you do have the worst voice I've ever heard in my life and then just see if they'll say yes brother that's what I was telling you just pray for they didn't mean it that take offense over it but see these are some of the religious games that we get into to where we try and and do this and I'm telling you that's pride that's self-centeredness you know what true humility is it's just saying about yourself what God says about you don't go above it and promote yourself and make yourself something that you aren't that's lying that's arrogance that's hypocrisy but also don't go below it for you to sit here and say well I could never be righteous I just could never say that about myself you know what that is that's arrogance that's pride you it God says you are the righteousness of God and you say oh but I just don't feel I could never say that that's pride that's stupidity just excuse my bluntness but it is so you need to redefine pride let me use this verse over here in numbers chapter 12 this is another one of those passages of scripture that it would do you good to read in your own Bible because some of you'll struggle with this but in numbers chapter 12 in verse 1 it says Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because a ezo peon woman whom he had married for he had married an Ethiopian woman what this is talking about Moses of course was a Jew we had that kind of olive you know Middle East complexion and he married an Ethiopian who is a black and so it was an interracial marriage and because of this it says in verse two that they said hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses hath he not spoken also by us and the Lord heard it in other words Moses sister and brother got offended because he had an interracial marriage you know this isn't my point that I'm trying to make but some people have asked me before so what do you think about interracial marriages well I think that you're going to have problems because it's going to cause all kinds of things and you could debate that but am I going to say it's sin or that God won't alive well no because of this right here God got peeved God got upset and he actually struck Miriam with leprosy right here so that kind of settles the issue for me but in verse three is what I wanted to show you it says in parentheses after it's talking about this it says now the man Moses was very meek above all the men which were upon the face of the earth man what an awesome statement Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth now we don't know how many people were on the earth but we know that there was approximately three and a half million Jews that came out of the land of Egypt and they were the minority so that means that there had to be over three and a half million Egyptians let's just say that there was six million of them that's nearly ten million right there and then there's the people in the land of Canaan and there was millions of them and if so if you take the whole earth in there had to be tens of millions maybe hundreds of millions of people on the earth during Moses time and it says Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth that's an awesome statement and you know what makes this an even more awesome statement Moses is the guy who wrote this Moses said about himself I am the meekest man out of a hundred million people nobody is purer than I am do you know if you use a traditional definition of pride you couldn't ever say that I heard a story one time about a church that took a vote to find out who the most humble person in their church was and so every I agreed it was dear old brother so-and-so on Sunday morning they got him up there and they gave him this huge hump button that said Humble on it a humble button and they presented it to him in front of the whole church and because he accepted it they took it away believing that if you're really humble you'd never know it that's not true humility true humility is saying about yourself what God says God told Moses he was riding down the scripture and he says Moses you are the meekest man on the face of the earth and Moses was humble enough to write it you know if I had you right here in my studio with me and if I could somehow to get a hundred people or so together and I said somebody in here has to be more Meek more humble than anybody else somebody's obtained closer to this than anybody else so right now I want everybody to bow their heads close your eyes and pray and let's ask God to reveal who's the meekest person in here and if God was to speak to you and say it's you you were the meekest person would you be able to stand up say it's me the most big person in this place could you do that or would you sit there and say no what would everybody think about me well see if that's the way you are then you aren't the weakest person you know what that is that's pride you were exalting your opinion and what would people think about me a truly humble person is a person who just doesn't have an opinion about themselves they don't exalt themselves nor do they debase themselves because they're worried about other people's opinion a truly humble person is just like Moses who if the Lord was to speak to you and if it was true you would just say you know what I'm the meekest person in my whole church and I have something see again we have criticized arrogance and exalting yourself but basically the churches said you can't knock yourself low enough you can't think bad enough about yourself you can't put yourself down too low and we've encouraged that and there's a lot of people who through religious indoctrination are down on them and hating themselves and you know what that is that's pride so my point in all of this comes from that scripture in proverbs chapter 13 verse 10 where it says only by pride comes contingent and there's a lot of you that probably think well no that's not my problem well it is if you define pride the way the Bible does if you define it as self-centeredness not only arrogance but criticism of yourself and thinking down on yourself self-centeredness is the root of pride and that is what makes you angry yeah again I've used this example but if you had a corpse here and if the corpse was dead you couldn't make the corpse mad you know why because it's dead to itself it no longer has this self-consciousness and if you weren't so self conscious if you weren't thinking all the time about look what they said about me you could reach a place to where you wouldn't be angry Moses again you know it says he was a meekest man on the face of the earth and I can give you a number of examples where people came out and criticized Moses and spoke against him we just read one where Miriam and Aaron his sister and brother came and spoke against him but there's a number of them and it happened so many times that when people came out against Moses and his authority that God judged them and punished them Miriam was struck with leprosy this happened so often that you can find examples when people came out and criticized Moses that he literally hit his knees boom just like that when people started criticizing him why because he was saying Oh God look what they said about me see that's most of our reactions but you know what he was doing he knew that these people were in trouble for criticizing him because he knew where he stood with God he knew his covenant he knew how God felt about him and rather than being self-centered thinking look what they've said about me instead he immediately saw this person has put themselves in harm's way boy if they don't repent if something doesn't happen they could come under the punishment of God and he immediately began to start interceding for other people and you know what he was the meekest man on the face of the earth the least self-centered on the face of the earth he reached a place that when people criticized him instead of taking it personally and being offended he immediately thought about the people what's wrong with them you know I had a woman that came to me it's a very long story hadn't got time to go into it but she was in a second marriage and the man had tried to kill her he had poured hot grease over her once he had broken her neck he had tried to kill her children by the previous marriage and the first night I ever met him the police had him separated on the lawn and they he had tried to kill her and so long story but she started to work for me and I started coaching her how to deal with this terrible marriage and how to deal with this thing this man would leave his body at night and bark and howl at the moon and scratch on the walls and he had levitate tables anyway this woman I started telling her the reason you were so angry at him is because of your self-centeredness now I'm not saying he didn't have problems but again just like this scripture it is not what he did that caused her problem it was her reaction and I said I guarantee I wouldn't react to him the way you do you're the one who's empowered him to have this control in your life this woman received this truth and as a result got to a place to where in front of a marriage counselor he maligned her said she had tried to break his neck she had poured hot grease over him he lied about her and instead of her fighting back and justifying herself she just said in front of the marriage counselor she says well I used to think it was his fault but I found out that it's me I'm as much of a problem as he is and she just humbled herself and she says yeah I'm working on it God's dealing with me the marriage counselor told him to divorce her but you know what when they left there that man looked at her and he says what happened why didn't you defend yourself and she says I've got my security in the Lord if running me down is going to help you it's fine doesn't matter you know what that is that's humility that man got born again baptized in the Holy Ghost and the next problem they had was because he wanted to go to Bible School and become a preacher and she didn't want to be a preacher you know what turned all that around was a self lesson and that's what God has in store for us and I probably if you can learn this it'll change your life listen is our announcer gives you some information and then join me again tomorrow for the gospel truth broadcast to listen to today's teaching you can go to our website and click on free audio teachings online and search for the title self centeredness the source of grief this mp3 download is made available on our website at no charge as Andrew mentioned on today's program you can also get the teaching on CD or DVD for a gift of any amount simply request teaching TSK 7 when you contact us be sure to specify either the CD or DVD teaching the ministry is celebrating the new year's holiday and our helpline is closed today but you can always go to our website where you can order ministry materials online 24 hours a day 7 days a week at a WM Annette or if you prefer you can write us our address is P o box 3333 Colorado Springs 8 0 9 3 4 we hope to hear from you today I want to give you a special invitation to join me on January the 1st 2nd and 3rd in Phoenix Arizona we have struck a deal with the Arizona Biltmore Resort it's a 4 diamond resort that starts the normal room rates start from $300 and go up from there and we've negotiated a price of 139 dollars for this special New Year's celebration they're going to give that price for 3 days before and three days after so you can come and enjoy a vacation in a first-class resort plus get the Word of God remember it's our Phoenix Arizona gospel truth seminar january 1st 2nd and 3rd in Phoenix Arizona we'd like to point out Andrews upcoming speaking schedule mark your calendars to come meet Andrew at one of these events and let the word of God transform your life he'll be in Colorado Springs for the annual Kara's fybel College men's advance February 5th through the 7th Houston Texas February 12th through the 14th and in Atlanta Georgia March 5th through the 7th he'll also be in Colorado Springs for the Karis Bible College weekend March 12th through the 14th and in Merritt Island Florida April 19th through the 22nd for more details on Andrews next meeting in your area call our helpline or visit our website at aw mi dotnet I want to thank those of you who are partners with our ministry and for the way that you've helped us to reach out and you know we are literally impacting about one-third of the world's population can get this program and that's because of our partners but you know what there's more there's other people that have never heard these problems we need to increase and I'd like to ask you to consider giving in a time of famine other people may be drawing back but man I'm stretching out I believe it's our opportunity and I'm going to receive a hundredfold for the effort that I'm putting into this and I'd like you to be a part of it so we have our web address also our phone number there I encourage you to call and become a partner today yeah yeah join us next week as we present this special report on Andrews second trip to Uganda this is Ivana this is Donna you

Channel: MendingFamily

Views: 10,747

Rating: 4.7922077 out of 5

Keywords: Self Centeredness, Andrew Wommack

Id: Tnoz5L4C_C8

Length: 28min 31sec (1711 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 07 2015