Victor or Victim!
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Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,
nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Word of Hod guarantees us that through all the circumstances of life that we are more than conquerors through Christ
The caveat to that is that we must then walk and live in the truth of His Word and not the distration of the current situation!
In Matt 9:29 Jesus told the two bind men the following:
Then He touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith let it be to you.”
In Mark 5:34
And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.”
To the men carrying the paralytic on a mat:
Now it happened on a certain day, as He was teaching, that there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come out of every town of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was present to heal them.
Then behold, men brought on a bed a man who was paralyzed, whom they sought to bring in and lay before Him.
And when they could not find how they might bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the housetop and let him down with his bed through the tiling into the midst before Jesus.
When He saw their faith, He said to him, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”
To Simon
And the Lord said, “Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat.
But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren.”
In the books of Acts we read about Paul’s determination:
Then Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there; and having persuaded the multitudes, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead.
However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and went into the city. And the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe.
And when they had preached the gospel to that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch,
strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying, “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.”
There are many other examples of the men and women of God that were put into very difficult situations but encouraged to keep the faith as the source of deliverance!
When in the middle of a violent storm and facing certain death, the Apostle Paul encourages the men of God’s promise and his unwavering belief of its truth!
But after long abstinence from food, then Paul stood in the midst of them and said, “Men, you should have listened to me, and not have sailed from Crete and incurred this disaster and loss.
And now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship.
For there stood by me this night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve,
saying, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must be brought before Caesar; and indeed God has granted you all those who sail with you.’
Therefore take heart, men, for I believe God that it will be just as it was told me.
It is important to remember at times like these that our obedience and stability of life comes from the depth of our faith in God’s ability to deliver…not ours
Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name,
among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ;
Paul told the church at Roman that he desired to visit them:
I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong—
that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.
Results in victory, what happens when we fall in to doubt?
Look at the Israelites in the desert
God promised to take them into the land but they chose to believe the circumstances not the Word of God
Therefore they said, “If we have found favor in your sight, let this land be given to your servants as a possession. Do not take us over the Jordan.”
And Moses said to the children of Gad and to the children of Reuben: “Shall your brethren go to war while you sit here?
Now why will you discourage the heart of the children of Israel from going over into the land which the Lord has given them?
Thus your fathers did when I sent them away from Kadesh Barnea to see the land.
For when they went up to the Valley of Eshcol and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel, so that they did not go into the land which the Lord had given them.
So the Lord’s anger was aroused on that day, and He swore an oath, saying,
‘Surely none of the men who came up from Egypt, from twenty years old and above, shall see the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because they have not wholly followed Me,
except Caleb the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, and Joshua the son of Nun, for they have wholly followed the Lord.’
The result of their lack of faith in God’s promise was a failure to receive that which god had ultimately purposed for them!
Joshua, one of those who chose to believe God at the end of his life made the following statement:
“Behold, this day I am going the way of all the earth. And you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one thing has failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spoke concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one word of them has failed.
Therefore it shall come to pass, that as all the good things have come upon you which the Lord your God promised you, so the Lord will bring upon you all harmful things, until He has destroyed you from this good land which the Lord your God has given you.
When you have transgressed the covenant of the Lord your God, which He commanded you, and have gone and served other gods, and bowed down to them, then the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and you shall perish quickly from the good land which He has given you.”
We have been discussing for months now that you can know about faith, learn about faith, hear about faith but only you can walk in faith!
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
And what is the strength of our faith? The word of our testamony
And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.
My friends I want to tell you today that God has ordained you to be an overcomer!
In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will,
What has He predestined us to be? More than conquers in Christ! the rest is up to you receive and be victorious, reject and be a victim!