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Archive for the ‘Overcoming’ Category

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Scripture reading: Romans 4:5

I wonder how many of you realize that in order for you to overcome the spirits in your life, you have to take two steps. First, you have to believe for faith is the substance of everything you hope for (Hebrews 11:6). Then, you have to speak the word. Do you realize that many of us have problems because we speak the wrong things? You are in trouble, somebody is bothering you, you have a distress, you let certain words come out of your mouth, and the devils crowd around. The moment the words come out, the devils take them as a command, and they can do things in your name that you never intended to do. You must learn to speak the positive word! It is looking dark, it is looking hopeless, but you speak the word, and say, “I shall live and not die. I shall overcome this thing.” Keep speaking it every day. “I shall overcome this thing.” You fall down flat on your face, “I am going to overcome this thing! By the grace of God, by the Blood of Jesus Christ.” The moment you speak the words, God sends His angels to be with you. The next time you will have a better chance, you will find the strength to do it. Amen.

I am talking about 50 years of learning. Fifty-odd years of learning from God. I am giving it to you free. One day, I put my finger on the welding iron. I smelled the flesh burning even before I realized that my finger was on the iron. I grabbed the finger and said, “In the name of Jesus, it shall not hurt me!” I don’t know where the words came from. I didn’t contemplate it before, but I just said it. And no pain! I got happy, and bold, and wanted to show my wife, Mavis, the finger burnt. I didn’t want the finger to be healed right away, I wanted to show her! So I ran inside with the burnt finger, and said, “Look here!” I was ashamed. No burnt finger at all! I am talking about the power of creation that God has put in every little one of you. Don’t go around thinking, “Lord, how sinful I am, how poor I am.” Don’t think about that! God knows that! Begin to speak the Word of life and life will come forth. Amen.

When you have an infirmity, get before the mirror in the mornings and say, “By the grace of God, this infirmity shall be healed. I shall overcome.” You must overcome it. Do you know why? Because you are speaking what God wants. God doesn’t want you to be sick. God doesn’t want you to have infirmities. God wants you to be well, God wants you to be happy. Amen! Don’t you understand? Because you believe God, He said, He will count it for righteousness (Romans 4:5). You try your best, but you are not righteous. But God says, if you believe Him, He will count you just like a righteous person. He will do everything for you like He would do for a righteous person. Can you understand? Look at all these men – Abraham, David… God said David was a man after His own heart (Acts 13:22). A man after God’s own heart going out and committing adultery and murder? But he was a man after God’s own heart. His heart was belonging to God. The devil took hold of his flesh. He didn’t have Jesus, so don’t believe I am telling you that you can do that. He didn’t have Jesus. But then, even those of us who have Jesus and fail, God is still saying to us, “All power is given unto me, in heaven and on earth. Now, you go preach the gospel” (Matthew 28:18-19).

Do you understand what that means? It means that if you turn your mind to believing God, the things that you believe will come to pass and it will make you righteous. Oh, yes! We believe God that we are going to be perfected while we are alive in this flesh. That’s what I believe in God. I believe God that I can stay ten minutes without sin. Do you think that you could do that? Stay ten minutes without sin? If I can stay ten minutes without sin, then I can stay twenty. And if I can stay twenty, I can stay an hour. And if I can stay an hour, then I can stay a day without sin. He will keep them in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Him (Isaiah 26:3). So then, it means that we sin with our minds. The body only manifests what is in the mind. We sin, therefore, with our minds. So, God is saying that if you keep God in your heart, in your mind, you will be free from sin.

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, September 8, 2002, pg. 11-13)

Thought for today: You must learn to speak the positive word! It is looking dark, it is looking hopeless, but you speak the word, and say, “I shall live and not die. I shall overcome this thing.”

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By Mavis duCille

Scripture reading: Galatians 2:20

We learned in school that living things breathe, living things grow, living things feed. So, if you are not feeding, if you are not breathing, if you are not growing, you are not alive. We are supposed to be further along this year from where we were last year. It is good, as we move on, to take an inventory every once in a while of where you are in the LORD.

There are just a couple of words that I would like to share with you. I have been thinking about Paul’s life, and some things that he said. He was one of the law, he came up under the law. It always amuses me how he uses the law to bring us into Christ. A few verses that have been speaking to me much are in Romans 7:19-20. From verse 18, he says, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing…” He explains verse 18 in verse 19, “For when I do good, evil is present with me.” He explains what that means in verse 20, “Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.” He was making a separation there, between the things that he would do and where they originate, and the things that he would not do and how he would attain to them.

He says, in verse 22, “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23 But I see another law in my members,” WORKING IN MY MEMBERS, “warring against the law of my mind…” Are you familiar with that war? So, we understand that when we are to do good and we can’t do it, when we do the wrong thing, the question that I want to ask you is, why? In his mind, Paul wants to do one thing, but there is another law bringing him into captivity to the law of sin which is in his members. So, in the Word we find that what the Lord has laid down for us is “here a little, there a little…” (Isaiah 28:10), and right through the Word, we can put the “here a little” together with the “there a little” and come up fully with what the Lord intends for us.

So, Paul came to the conclusion that with his mind he serves the Lord – the law of God, but in his flesh, the law of sin and death. So, because we have that war going on in our being, we have to have the Word riveted in us and we have to have an abundance of the spirit of grace working in us.

But in Galatians 2:20 he said something very interesting. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” It is a conclusion to which he came. He said, nevertheless. He made no more excuses for the things that he would do and he did not, and the things that he did and he should not. So many times we hear people make excuses, “I am human,” or, “It is in my family.” He realized that from the earlier scripture, but he knew he was in trouble if he did not get rid of the flesh and the carnal life and rise to the life to which we are called in Jesus.

You see, overcoming is the greatest part of our walk in the Lord. If we are not overcoming, we are dying. And the experiences that we have through overcoming, and the victories, come through testing. “When we are tried, we shall come forth as pure gold” (Job 23:10).

So, as we look back at the things that used to bother us, cast us down, make us feel as losers – as we give way to the Spirit of Christ rising in us, day after day, we can say, “We are crucified… Nevertheless, the life I now live, I live by the grace of God.” Amen.

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, October 2007, pg. 3-4)

Thought for today: Overcoming is the greatest part of our walk in the Lord. If we are not overcoming, we are dying.

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Scripture reading: Hebrews 10:20

The four pillars at the entrance of the Holy of Holies is a type of the four cherubims of Ezekiel 1 and 10, Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4. These represent a picture of man’s soul, which in Revelation 4 is mentioned as “four beasts,” and in Revelation 7:1 as four angels of death and destruction standing on the four corners of the earth (soul).

To re-enter Eden, we must go through fire. The flaming sword is the Word of God, and the baptism of fire through which man must go to come into perfection. Note that the angel with the sword was at the east of the garden, and the angel of Revelation 7:2, the fifth angel, was rising from the east to seal the saints. The east represents the mind of Christ.

The picture of man’s soul is as follows. Man's SoulWe could re-enter into this Eden realm, and eventually partake of the tree of life which is Christ, which would re-cycle our nature to the nature of Christ, BUT for these four beasts which occupy our soul realm. Man has the nature of the eagle in his mind, which makes him soar in his thoughts away from God. In his emotions, he is like a lion, a wild savage beast that thrives upon the death of others. In his will, he is stubborn as an ox. In his desires, he is a man. No other creature desires as much as man. He will desire heaven and hell at the same time. He is a creature of desire.

The breaking through the veil, therefore, speaks of man breaking through his own flesh nature. Paul writing to the Hebrew Christians spoke of the veil being the flesh of Jesus Christ in Hebrews 10:20,

“By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.”

Jesus prepared the way for us by breaking through His own flesh, thus He established the “how” of it, so that we too might break through and be OVERCOMERS.

(Excerpt from The Pattern, 2nd edition, 1995, pg. 145-146)

Thought for today: Jesus prepared the way for us by breaking through His own flesh, thus He established the “how” of it, so that we too might break through and be OVERCOMERS.

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Scripture reading: John 9:1-7

One night the Lord came to me and began to teach me a lesson, which went through the whole night. He was talking about our ability to see, about our vision. He showed me that something is wrong with our vision. The Holy Spirit gives us vision and lets us see, but different things in our lives interrupt the sight and the vision so that we see half-way or wrong in some way. God is saying to us that we need to repair our vision.

The Lord began to show me certain things. When Jesus met the blind man, He spat on the ground, mixed it and put it on the blind man’s eyes. Very unusual. It was as if God used the way He had created Adam to recreate eyes in the man. You know we have a little song that we sing – Create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right spirit within me. Somehow or the other, I can see God saying to us that some of us have such damage to our eyes that we are totally blind and need a new creation. We need to allow God to create new eyes in us. Hallelujah. Jesus said yet to another blind man, “Receive thy sight,” and he received his sight.

Then there was Samson who got himself involved with the harlot. He was so blind to the fact that she wanted to kill him and was kind of assisting her. It went on and on until she finally got him to tell her the secret that if his hair was cut he would lose his strength. Now, you would ask the question, “Why would he tell her that?” Let us look at the story. Samson had a problem with women and it disturbed his ability to see God. Judges 16:4, “And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.”

I want you to understand, your Bible is a very peculiar book. When you see that it mentions that the woman lived in a valley, immediately something should rise in you as you read your Bible. “He went to a woman in the valley of Sorek.” The moment you see that it said that it was in a valley, you know that the man was going down, stepping down from the standard of righteousness which God had given him, which God has created that man should live in. In other words, every man must have a certain amount of control over his own body.

Now, what made Samson always go after harlots? Did you notice it? This was not the first one. Every one he went after was a harlot. He had a problem. I am saying that this problem exists in the church, in the Body.

We know that the Outer Court will soon be trampled under foot. This means everything carnal, everything natural will be under judgment. Now, if I am a spiritual man but am carnal, I am under judgment. I might believe I am in the Holy Place because the Holy Spirit is in me. NO! The Holy Spirit can be in me and I am not in the Spirit. You can have the Holy Spirit and not be in the Holy Spirit.

The five foolish virgins had everything as far as equipment was concerned that the five wise had, and one little detail that was major. The detail is to have the God that is in the universe, the God that built the universe, the God that you have in your spirit, to have Him in your soul. This is the same God that speaks in tongues, that delivers His Word, and that manifests Himself to us as we sing.

The man Samson had a problem and the problem was one that would make a person be in the Outer Court, though your place is in the Holiest of All. God gives us the ability to be in the Holiest of All with Christ Jesus Himself and we choose to be in the Outer Court because of our carnal appetite! Brethren, do you know why God leaves your carnal appetite with you? God could take it away and kill it and just leave you happy and free. But He left your carnal appetite with you to give you an opportunity to kill it, to control it, to exercise the power of life over the power of death, the power of the love of God over the power of the love of the world. Do you hear me? He leaves you free to exercise the power that God has given you over the carnal realm. We know He said to Adam, “Take charge of the carnal realm. This is your duty, this is your power, and this is your privilege. You take charge of the carnal realm.” Did you hear the word that He used? Dominion! God didn’t say that we should have dominion one over another. You must not dominate another human being. God said to Adam, “Dominate nature! Dominate the world.” Glory to God. “Dominate the circumstances!”

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, May 2009, pg. 24-25)

Thought for today: God left your carnal appetite with you to give you an opportunity to kill it, to control it, to exercise the power of life over the power of death, the power of the love of God over the power of the love of the world.

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Scripture reading: Ephesians 5:21-33

Brethren, this is the time when the devil is breaking up homes. I have never seen so many Christian homes being bombarded and broken. It is being broken up for nothing at all. Do you know what I mean? Somebody might say, “Well, we had a big problem.” But very often it is little nothing. She moved a chair and the brother didn’t want the chair moved. He talked about it, it brought something else and piled up and piled up and the devil piled up a long thing against you.

One night my wife, Mavis, and I were lying down in bed and the devil jumped right in between us. She got right up and rebuked him. She said. “Get out of here; we don’t want you!”

Why? Because everybody must be tested. I hope you don’t believe that there is one man or one woman that is not going to go through that test. You are going to have to go through the test and you are going to have to pass the test. I believe that the association between brother and sister is the nearest thing to Jesus Christ and His church. Anytime you overcome, you are going to win. Anytime you overcome that feeling of animosity against your partner – you are able to rise up and win.

“I am not going to have any feelings against him.”
“I am not going to have any feelings against her.”

Sometimes men are involved in the world doing their business and they forget their wives. They are just working so hard that they forget their wives. Or, they think, “She is put up aside there and when I am ready I am just going to turn on to her, but for now I am turned off and I am doing this and that and the other.”

You see, when I am working outside and I feel that I have been out there so long and my mind is cut off from my wife, when I don’t know what she is doing inside, sometimes I just rush right in. Maybe the devil is in there tempting her in some way. So I rush right in there, hug her, kiss her and say, “I’m going back to work.” Oh, yes! Over the years you learn how to beat the devil and if a wrong thought comes to you, brother, it comes to your wife too. Don’t believe it is going to come to you and not to your wife.

I remember one time I had a congregation and I could know exactly what the devil was saying, because he would come to me with it first. When I would go to church and preach the message on what the devil was saying, the brethren were shocked.

“How did you know that that is what happened to me?”

Oh, you had better believe it that the same thing that happens to the shepherd, happens to the sheep.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, December 2011, pg. 19-20)

Thought for today: You are going to have to go through the test and you are going to have to pass the test. Anytime you overcome that feeling of animosity against your partner – you are able to rise up and win.

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