Are You a Victim or a Victor?

I had just turned thirty. I was traumatized. And I was standing at a crossroads in life—a life radically different from a short six weeks earlier when I was married and had a thriving journalism career. I was not only practically penniless, but now I was suddenly homeless. The vindication celebration that saw me dance my way out of jail after forty days of fighting for my freedom quickly turned into mourning.

When my parents picked me up from jail, they didn’t take me back to my apartment. They took me to their house. I wondered what was going on until my father told me he had broken the lease on my apartment. He was convinced I was going to prison for ten years. If that weren’t disappointing enough, he also gave away my loyal companion, a Dalmatian that had been with me through all the trauma and drama of the past six life-altering months.

I was forced to live with my parents. Soon, I felt like I was in a different kind of prison. My parents were not serving the Lord at the time, and the atmosphere in the house was tense. Within a few months, I spent what little money I had to move to a small town in another state and start my life over. That decision didn’t solve my problems. In fact, I found myself on food stamps, living on Barely Getting By Street for the next thirteen months.

In that season, I had a decision to make. I could focus on all the bad things people did to me—my husband’s choice to abandon me and our daughter, the piles of debt he left behind, the police encounter that bruised my body and scarred my soul—or I could choose to trust a God I barely knew to make a way out of no way. Put another way, I could choose to be a victim or a victor. I chose to break the victim mentality and walk in victory. And it wasn’t a once-and-for-all choice. The voice of victimhood revisited me from time to time—and still does. Like you, I’ve had to learn to resist it and cast it down.

You’ve probably faced devastating circumstances that set you up for a fall or set you back for years. Maybe you were cheated on, betrayed, lied to, or stolen from. In that moment of turmoil when the enemy is working to victimize you, you too are at a crossroads in life. You have to choose: Will you forgive and come up higher, or will you adopt a victim mentality, wallow in self-pity, and allow the enemy to continue robbing you of God’s plans for a future and hope—and vindication? (See Jeremiah 29:11.)

The good news is no matter what has happened to you, God doesn’t see you as a victim. He sees you as more than a conqueror in Christ (Rom. 8:37). And He offers divine and practical wisdom on conquering the victim mentality that often manifests while you wait for vindication.

To learn more about Jennifer LeClaire’s latest book, Vindicated, visit MyCharismaShop.com