Creflo Dollar - How To Overcome Inferiority - Part 2
Before Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, before they sinned in the garden they were masters over life, and they were masters over the earth, masters over their life, masters over the earth. This all occurred before there was sin in the garden. They were ruled by their spirits, and they were ruled by the Word of God. But after they sinned, they were ruled by their feelings. After they sinned, they were ruled by their emotions. After they sinned, they began to be ruled by a sense of inferiority and insecurity. Say those two words: inferiority and insecurity. That happened after they sinned. After they sinned, being ruled by inferiority and insecurity, they found themselves and they found that they were powerless.
Now, there's no worse feeling in the world as a man and you feel powerless. So every negative emotion... anybody ever had a negative emotion? We'll cast the devil out of the rest of you who... every negative emotion and every negative reaction that we have is rooted in this sense of powerlessness. So when you feel powerless, when you feel powerless to change a situation in your life, when you feel powerless to change your circumstances, I don't know if you've ever been there. Feel powerless. "I don't feel like I have the power to change my situation. I don't feel like I have the power to change my circumstances. I don't feel like I have the power to get out of the circle that I'm standing in".
There's no worse feeling in the world for a man to feel powerless about something. Lights been turned off in the house, and you feel powerless. You ain't got it. You don't know what to do; and what will happen is you'll begin to feel depressed, you'll begin to feel afraid, you'll begin to feel angry. And listen, when that anger comes up, it's based in fear. You don't just get angry to be angry. I'm afraid. Now, you'll never open your mouth up and say that as a man 'cause, you know, your manhood won't let you, but you are afraid. "I feel powerless. In this inferiority, this insecurity I feel powerless. I feel powerless in this situation. I'm depressed. I'm afraid. I'm angry. I'm discouraged".
And for some men, they end it. You'd be shocked the number of people who've committed suicide over the past 5 days. One young lady who ended her life left this statement. She said, "Living is overrated". You know, that's a demonic influence, isn't it? Somehow you think being dead has a better rating than you living your life. All of that comes from a curse passed down from one generation to another generation. It is the curse of inferiority. That's what it is. So we kind of put our finger on this, and now let's kind of develop it and see what this looks like. Let's unpack it and see what it looks like. Inferiority is defined as a persistent, something is persistent. A persistent sense of inadequacy.
I've talked to men who have that persistent sense of inadequacy. Have you ever experienced that feeling before? Maybe it didn't last long. Maybe you were able to deal with it. You were able to overcome it that, a sense of, "I feel inadequate. I feel inadequate as a husband. I feel inadequate as a provider. I feel inadequate as a father". And it's persistent to feel powerless, to feel small, to feel unimportant, to feel as if you fall short in a lot of areas. Romans chapter 3 and 23 has been telling us for a while, but I don't know. In my brain it just didn't communicate as inferiority, but here's what he said in Romans 3:23. He said all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. He just gave us the definition of inferiority. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
The word glory here in Romans 3:23, it means to become all that God intended you to be. I want to be all that God intended for me to be. I want to be everything that God put in me, and I want to be able to at the end of my life say, "I successfully fulfilled all that God intended for me to be". And he calls this glory. So the word glory in this verse in context, here it means to become all that God intended you to be. But the term come short of, it means to be inferior. Come short of, it means to be inferior. And he says we all have sinned, and after Adam and Eve sinned in the garden they came short of. They came short of everything that God, I mean, imagine they came short of everything that God intended for them to be. They fell short of it. That's what it means to be inferior, to fall short.
That's so interesting to me, because if we put these definitions together properly, the Scripture would read like this. Because of sin we have become inferior to what God originally intended for us to be. Because of sin we are falling short. We've become inferior to what God originally intended for us to be. And God intended for you to be, and here's what he intended you to be. I don't know specifically for each one of you what he intended you to be, but it was supposed to be glorious, and it's not too late to pick up with that. You as a man are supposed to be glorious without having to compare yourself amongst yourself putting pressure on yourself to be something that he didn't anoint you to be, but whatever it is he anointed you to be was supposed to be glorious. All right?
So this is the source of just about every weakness and problem in a man's life. Man is constantly feeling as if he has come short or he's inferior to God's intention for his life. I remember feeling like that. I remember feeling like no matter what I decided to do or be, just something in me just felt like I couldn't quite measure up; even when I got called to the ministry and coming in the pulpit just scared, just nervous that I wouldn't measure up, that I would fall short. In this sermon I would fall short. In this job I was doing I would fall short. In my practice as a therapist I would fall short, and I never really thought about it then. I thought it was just nerves, but it was inferiority. And God does not want us to remain under this curse.
With that feeling of inferiority comes a sense of powerlessness. This powerlessness leads us to feel small, and as a result we try to build ourselves up so we don't feel so bad. We jealously compete with others either outwardly, or watch this, or inwardly, that I might be competing with you. You might not see me in competition, but right up here I'm competing with you. "I ain't saying nothing, but I'm in competition with you. I can't look at your new house 'cause I'm competing with you with houses and now you done got something better than mine and I'm not going to let you make me feel short so I'm competing with you". Wow. And we constantly feel we must look better or be better than someone else to make those feelings go away. Let me, I like lists. I like to give lists. Sometimes those lists kind of help me to look at it a lot better.
So let me give you a pattern, if you will, and I think it'll help out. Number one... let's give numbers to this. Number one, sin causes us to fall short of God's intentions and God's approval. Sin causes us to fall short of God's intention and approval. We know that.
Number two, falling short produces a real sense of inferiority, falling short produces a real sense of inferiority.
Number three, inferiority sets in, and it opens wide the floodgates of its offsprings. Inferiority has offsprings. And when inferiority sets in, these offsprings show up like insecurity. Insecurity is an offspring of inferiority. Jealousy, jealousy is an offspring of inferiority. Pride, pride is an offspring of inferiority. False sense of superiority, a false sense of superiority... I don't know if you've met somebody that's got this false sense of superiority. That's an offspring of inferiority. Racism is an offspring of inferiority. It doesn't just show up somewhere, it's an offspring of inferiority. So here's what we know.
Let's look at number four. Number four, we feel small, watch this, so we try to act big. We feel small so we try to act big. We don't feel as important as someone else so we exaggerate our sense of importance. We don't feel as important as this person so we have to exaggerate that sense of importance.
Number five, here's the pattern, man. We feel powerless so we get depressed, which then leads to anger. Anger is an expression of fear. You're really afraid. But what happens here, when you feel powerless... see if you can think of some time in your life as a man when I felt powerless, I got depressed, and then I got angry, and then that anger is often a manifestation of depression which comes from a sense of inferiority. Inferiority is at the bottom of all of this. And when we feel inferior, we use anger, watch this, as a manipulative force. We start using our anger to manipulate people, manipulate your wife, manipulate your friends, manipulate even your children; a manipulative force over others to give us a false sense of superiority.
So sin seems to be the big deal here. Seems like everything happened when Adam did what he did in the garden. So now I got some good news here. I know it seems like, "Dang, the whole session is going to be like this? I feel bad, I'm depressed now". No, it gets better. I just needed to draw this picture out real good so you can just kind of unpack it so you can see it, and that's what I've been doing with a lot of things in my teaching. Take my time, unpack it. Unpack it so we can find the areas where we just kind of missed it and stuff like that. Now, since sin is the cause of inferiority, then until sin is dealt with there'll be no freedom from inferiority. So if somehow we can deal with the sin issue, we can deal with the inferiority issue, we can deal with the powerlessness. And this is a pattern and in one way or another it'll continue in our life if we don't deal with it.
Let me tell you something. If you don't deal with it, it stays there. Inferiority becomes the driving force behind who you are and everything that you do. So how do we deal with it? So now here's the good news. Thank God. The good news is the sin problem has been dealt with. I don't think y'all heard me. The sin problem has been dealt with. So if the sin problem has been dealt with, the inferiority issue has been dealt with. All right, so how do we go with it? How do we go with this? How do we go with this now? How do we do this now? John 1:29. I need to give you some biblical evidence. John 1:29. Here's the good news, and you can see why it's important to understand the gospel of grace. Without it we're stuck in the stuff that sin produces. All right.
"The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and he saith, 'Behold the Lamb of God,'" watch this, "'which taketh away the sin of the world.'" Behold, oh, Jesus. Behold the lamb of God, which has taken away the sins of the world. 1 John says that he is the peace offering, he is the sin offering, he is the ransom that has been paid for your sin. The thing you've got to understand as a man is that Jesus Christ has taken your sin and my sin on his body. Glory to God. And so somebody says, "Well, wait a minute now. Am I going to be judged like everybody else"? That's your judgment. He's taken your sin on his body, and all of our sins have been judged on the cross. Your sins have been dealt with. You have to, by faith, receive the forgiveness of sin.
Say this out loud: "I receive the forgiveness of sin, the free gift of forgiveness. I am forgiven of all of my sins: all of my past sins, all of my present sins, all of my future sins. He died once and for all times. My sin has been dealt with". In fact, Hebrews says that when he comes back he's not coming back to deal with your sin. He's already dealt with your sin. Let me show you this. I believe it's Hebrews 9:28. Look at it in the NLT, Hebrews 9:28 in the NLT. He says, "So also Christ was offered once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people". Somebody shout, "I'm one of them".
All right. "He will come again, not to deal with our sins". Well, why is he not coming back to deal with our sins? He's already dealt with them. How many of you believe that he's already dealt with your sin? He's not coming back to deal with your sin. He's already dealt with them. He says, "Not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for him". The sin meter has been turned off. Now, that's not to say you go out and just start sinning like crazy. See, you got to understand that when he came back, glory to God. When he dealt with all of our sins, and he went to the cross, and he died, and he went to heaven, he sent a Comforter, the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost now is ministering to you.
The Holy Ghost is taking away your old want-to and giving you a new want-to, and the stuff you used to want to do, you ain't going to want to do it no more. He's taking away the old desire and giving you a new desire, and that desire is to please him. And so God is not judging you where you are right now. He's already judged you, because he knows that new fruit is about to come out of you. You might not be able to see the new fruit right now, but he's on the inside of you working in you right now to change your desire. The sin has been dealt with, and you've got to receive it. If you don't receive that your sins have been dealt with, you will remain inferior.
This is vital that you receive that your sins have been dealt with. And every time the enemy say, "Look at you. Look at what you did," you'll say, "Well, Jesus saw it, too, and he's already taken care of it. I'm the righteousness of God". And you do something else stupid. "I'm the righteousness of God," and you do something, and before you know it, all of a sudden one day you'll wake up and you'll think, "You know, I don't want to do that no more". That's the Holy Ghost working in you, changing you from the inside out. You've got to receive that.
Now you see how the devil's been able to keep men in this position of inferiority. Not preaching the gospel means constantly preaching sin. So what happens if a person is constantly hearing sin preached? You're also hearing inferiority. "You know you ain't no good. You know God don't like early". Or you get up and you pray, "God don't like ugly". You get up and you pray... God likes early. You get up and pray, and the first thing you pray about is, "Lord, forgive me for the sins I hadn't committed yet". You just got out of bed. That's sin consciousness. And you know the underlining issue of being sin conscious? Inferior conscious, inferior conscious.
The root of that sin consciousness is to keep you inferior, to keep you feeling like you fall short. That's what the law is all about. See what the enemy is doing? The law is all about showing you, you can't keep it. It's forcing you to see yourself as inadequate, powerless. You just can't figure out how to not do this no more. You can't figure out how to change. You don't know why you keep doing these same stupid things. Because you haven't received the gift of forgiveness of sin, which means you still are inferior, you still see yourself falling short. And you even tell yourself, "Well, I ain't perfect". Ain't nobody talking about you being perfect, but you are being developed towards that every day if you'll yield to the Holy Spirit.