Overcoming in the Face of Adversity
Pick up a newspaper or turn on the news channel and it won’t take you five minutes to realize that we are facing difficult times in our nation and across the world. For many people you don’t even need to read or hear about how tough things are because you are personally living it. Maybe you have lost your job or your insurance or the rising cost of everything has you in a tight situation. Whatever the case may be, there are not many people who are not feeling the crunch of the world’s economy. But we must realize that money is just the beginning of the problem. The lack of jobs or the rising cost that eats away at our bank accounts creates financial strain. Financial strain creates stress and personal stress usually carries over into all areas of life. So today, it isn’t just the wallet suffering, it is our marriages, families, children, retirements, our churches (because many are withholding money instead of giving tithes and offerings), our future plans, and for many, our dreams.
Suicide has been on the rise, depression is on the rise and it seems that we are simply losing the battle; the battle to live, the battle to succeed, the battle to simply survive. But I want to share with the world the secret to Overcoming and Succeeding in the face of adversity. You can be successful if you do what is laid out for us in God’s Word. Its time to take back our lives, our marriages, our families and our futures.
Revelations 3:21 gives us one of God’s amazing promises that is for all of us. It says, “Those who overcome will sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat with my Father on his throne.” There is victory for us and it is available to all who overcome. Can you be an overcomer? Can you be one who endures to the end to receive that salvation for which we all so desperately wait? Yes you can! Sounds simple in thought and it is. Let me explain how you can overcome adversity.
1. We Overcome Adversity through the Spirit of God (Zechariah 4:6; 1 John 4:4)
- Step one to overcoming is realizing that you don’t have what it takes in your own strength to overcome adversity
- It is not by our own strength or power but by the Spirit of God that we will overcome.
- 1 John 4:4 says “greater is He that lives in us than he who is in the world”. You already have the Spirit of the Overcomer in you if you have Jesus Christ as your Lord.
- Face the truth and admit that you can’t do it on your own.
2. We Overcome by Allowing God to Go Before Us (2 Samuel 5:24)
- God is the fighter of your battles. He never expects you to fight the battles alone because he knows that you need the power of his Spirit. You will never be your own Savior.
- 2 Samuel 5:24, “When you hear a sound like marching feet in the tops of the poplar trees, be on alert! That will be the signal that the Lord is moving ahead of you to strike down the Philistine army.”
- The Old Testament is riddle with hundreds of passages that describe our God going before us to fight our battles and to prepare victory for us in advance.
- Don’t get ahead of God. It is so easy to get caught up in your own short-sightedness and lose sight of the big picture.
- Trust God and allow him to work his timing because God has a plan. But God will always go before you and prepare the victory so that you may overcome all things at all times for the glory of His name.
3. We Overcome by the Blood of Jesus and the Word of our Testimony (Revelation 12:11)
- The Blood of Jesus was shed for all mankind for our sin, our sickness, our adversity. The cross was for real but also represented the adversity of mankind.
- Jesus defeated death and the cross; Jesus defeated adversity before you and I ever had to face it. Our victory has already been won. The battle has been fought.
- Our response of Faith in Jesus Christ is what takes us through adversity to the other side.
- I know the way I’ve described God going before us paints a picture that life should be easy and we can just walk through and have no problems. But we obviously face problems and adversity. But that is why we need Faith.
- Our Testimony is the second weapon we have to defeat the enemy. We build a Testimony by responding to Jesus Christ in Faith. Every action of Faith is an action to Testify of God’s love and Power to Overcome which leads to our last point for now.
4. We Overcome Adversity through Faith (Hebrews 11:1)
- Did you physically see Jesus go before you and overcome the adversity in your life? Probably not. But does that mean that he didn’t.
- Christianity at its core if about Faith; Faith that what God said is true is true regardless of what our five senses tell us. This fact is “foolishness to those perishing, but to those being saved it is the power of God unto salvation.” Its the only thing George Micheal ever got right; “You gotta have faith.”
- Hebrews 11:1, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not yet seen.”
- Some say, but I need proof, I need evidence. With God, Faith is the evidence and our Faith response to God is what brings His results to the surface for all to see.
- That Faith response is what builds our testimony; it builds the real physical stories of what God has done in our life and our Testimony is what gives hope and life to those who are being overcome by their adversity because if God can deliver you, then maybe God can deliver them too.
So yes, God has already gone before you to overcome your adversity but what determines you receiving that victory is your Faith response to God to believe that the victory is yours. Yes, the victory is yours in the Name of Jesus. With this hope, you can look adversity in the face and speak the truth in faith that it will not overcome you but through God’s power you will Overcome!
Awesome, you need to think about writing a devotional or something. (Well, I guess you did at youth camp…) But any way, I miss you! Keep on writing…. I love it.
‘Sup! This is good stuff. I think I (unwittingly) piggybacked on what you said over at my blog last night…er…this morning!
I miss your face.
Chris