Victim or Victor?

Are you a victim or a victor?  How do you see yourself?

Your perspective determines your answer and your ability to successfully navigate life and positively impact others along the way.  Victims always focus on what others are doing to them or not doing for them.  Life’s circumstances are usually seen through a negative lens and victims always come up short – in their minds drawing the short stick.

Victims love the “Blame Game.”  To pass along the blame allows them to never take personal responsibility for their own attitudes and actions.  In so doing, they never break out of their cycle of criticism and negativity.  Nobody who has anything on the ball likes to hang around victims – except other victims!  Misery  breeds company.

Victims garnish the truth, often undermine others, jeopardize reputations and secretly gloat when others fail, because those things allow them a temporary reprieve from their own victim mentality.  Victims move through their world never impacting in a good way, only soliciting others who share their negativity.  They practice self-hate!

Victims never find fulfillment and tend to demean others so that in some sick way they elevate themselves to a temporary high.  When not affirmed or given attention, they seek lesser goals and attack those who strive to walk in victory.

Victors, on the other hand, never glory in their circumstances and refuse to play the “Blame Game.”  They take personal responsibility for their actions and attitudes, and understand that while life may be unfair and tough at times, they remain victorious.  They see themselves as overcomers.  They become not circumstance-driven, but Christ-driven.  They live in the expectation that Christ in them is a Victor and nothing can separate them from their intended victory. 

They choose high living over low living.  They realize that it’s not about them; it’s about Christ in them.  They determine to live above the potential defeat of circumstances and never feel sorry for themselves or compare themselves to others.  They are the masters of their destiny because they daily place themselves in the hands of the Master, the One who has purchased them with His blood and whose indwelling presence drives them toward continued and sustained victory.

Like the Apostle Paul, “The love of Christ compels (constrains) them.”  It captures them and won’t let go (2 Corinthians 5:14)!

Are you a victim or a victor?  Are you Christ-driven or others-driven?  Do you feel sorry for yourself or is the devil sorry when you wake up in the morning to begin another day of victorious, overcoming life in the Spirit?

Victims incessantly talk about their problems or other people.  Victors glory in the cross and the Christ whose power brings overcoming results.  They never run short of true friends, unlike victims who live with loneliness, dissatisfaction and like Henry David Thoreau said, “Who lead lives of quiet desperation.” 

True friends are rare because no one in his right mind likes to hang out with a loser mentality.  No one except victims wallows in the shortcomings of others, and chooses to spew their toxic waste on to unsuspecting bystanders. 

Are you a victim or a victor?

Remember, we are “more than a conqueror through Him who loved us and gave Himself for us…” (Romans 8:37).  Determine today to be a victor!