Live Strong, GODSTRONG!

Going the Distance- (Preparation)

Intro LANCE ARMSTRONG STORY

It is important to understand that we were made and created to overcome everything that does not please God. Everything that comes against the divine and perfect plan for our lives. God desires to teach us every day that there is nothing that we are not capable of accomplishing that deals with overcoming temptations, trials, conflict, and ultimately the presence of sin in or around our lives.

The Fight of Your Life

Blazing the trail of a pioneer is always going to be the most difficult, so if you have never seen it chances are there is a whole entire nation that is waiting for you at the finish line of this place. It is quite ok to look at the path you are going and say to yourself that,” I don’t see how this is going to happen, but somehow, someway God you are going to show me how to You’re going to get the glory over this place in my life.

Paul writes this letter as a general appeal to avoid the apostacy. This is dealing with the great falling away of those that were once running well for the Gospel and somehow got entangled in false doctrines and faulty preaching.

Many times we are not living strong because we are attached to the wrong source. Our sources involve nouns of no substance. People places and things that can take you away from living a Godly strong and centered life.

Romans 8 (M:BCL)

1 With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. 2 A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

3 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. 4 And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

5 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! 6 Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. 7 Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. 8 And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.

9 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. 10 But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. 11 It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!

12 So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. 13 There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. 14 God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!

15 This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” 16 God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. 17 And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!

18 That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. 19 The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. 20 Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in 21 until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.

22 All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. 23 These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. 24 That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. 25 But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

Your ability To LiveSTRONG is ONLY FOUND IN THIS PLACE!

26 Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. 27 He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. 28 That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

We have to literally understand in its most simplest form that every area of conflict or place of impasse it is for you to acknowledge the GOD within you. Tell that place that regardless if I overcome it or not one thing I know for sure it will work out in my favor because I was given the inheritance of Jesus Christ strength and if Jesus overcame all temptations that were common to man, then we have that same power so much so that we have GREATER THAN HIM.

Never lose sight of His ability to LIVESTRONG in US, as we LIVESTRONG in HIM!

29 God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. 30 After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.

31 So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? 32 If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? 33 And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? 34 Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. 35 Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:

36 They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.

We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.

37 None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. 38 I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, 39 high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

How do we live a GOD-STRONG life?

Embrace the adversity and the growing pains.

These are the moments in which God desires to grow our faith and our ability to draw close to Him and tap into HIM FROM WITHIN. What we don’t realize is that the inner ability to overcome is in there within us, but we have to let it rise up within us, so that it becomes an outward showing. (Heb 12:10) There is a grace on us in the midst of this very place to live God’s Holy Best. Isn’t that something? As we are embracing the pain and adversity God is actually seeing your effort as a HOLY BEST! WOW! I thought the best was you know, the best? Nah HOLY BEST IS THE NEW BEST!!!

Hebrews 12:10 M:BCL

10 While we were children, our parents did what seemed best to them. But God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God’s holy best.

2. Help Each Other Out!

Once again we are not allowed to do this life alone. It is imperative that we connect with other believers that will help us during times that we are not capable to go further than where we currently are because we have not tapped into Him concerning this place of adversity. 2 Cor 13:1 also Matt 18:20 It is important that we find ourselves engulfed in understanding transparently with where we are. It is no need trying to fake it for the sake of looking like you have it all together when there are others that have come before you that battled the same thing. We are here to serve one another and to help each other along the way.

Matthew 18:20 M:BCL

20 And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.”

2 Corinthians 13:1 M:BCL

1 Well, this is my third visit coming up. Remember the Scripture that says, “A matter becomes clear after two or three witnesses give evidence”?

3. Life is an Adventure, not a Life of Waiting to Die

Romans 8:15 M:BCL

15 This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?”

A God-Strong Life is an ADVENTUROUS one, it is far from boring. It is time that we take out the ability to look at suffering and persecution as a bad thing, when it is the principle thing in Christ. When we accept Christ we are accepting the adventure that comes with this life.

Adventure movies have a lot of suspense, action, drama, thrills, emotional rollercoasters, in fact those that have the most with the greatest production normally receive multiple rewards.

I don’t know about you but I am not trying to live a life that bares little to no reward, but has me as the main star of it.

Prepare for the Greatest Finale of the GODSTRONG Life, The Reward!!!

Hebrews 10:35–39 M:BCL

35 So don’t throw it all away now. You were sure of yourselves then. It’s still a sure thing! 36 But you need to stick it out, staying with God’s plan so you’ll be there for the promised completion. 37 It won’t be long now, he’s on the way; he’ll show up most any minute. 38 But anyone who is right with me thrives on loyal trust; if he cuts and runs, I won’t be very happy. 39 But we’re not quitters who lose out. Oh, no! We’ll stay with it and survive, trusting all the way.

WE MUST TRUST GOD TO BE STRONG IN US EVERYDAY, ALL DAY!!!!! NOW AND FOREVER!!!! HE IS A VERY PRESENT HELP IN THE TIME OF TROUBLE PSA 46:1

Psalm 46:1 M:BCL

1 God is a safe place to hide, ready to help when we need him.

Finally we must understand that nothing that we do in this life will go without a reward therefore we must remember the word of God in 1 Pet 5:10 you may get knocked down but Understand that you are built to LIOVE STRONG, GODSTRONG and HE WILL ALWAYS GET YOU ON YOUR FEET FOR GOOD in EVERY AREA OF YOUR LIFE!!!!!

1 Peter 5:10 M:BCL

10 The suffering won’t last forever. It won’t be long before this generous God who has great plans for us in Christ—eternal and glorious plans they are!—will have you put together and on your feet for good.