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Becoming an Overcomer

 

THE POINT: God doesn’t want you to give up.  The Bible teaches us to endure and overcome.

 

Life is a series of internal and external challenges for us to overcome.
(Physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual) Each challenge gives us an opportunity to seek God, change and overcome OR to retreat and become a victim.  

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WINNERS AND OVERCOMERS

Jacob “overcame” God’s endurance test.

Joshua and Caleb had a “can do” attitude toward the Promised Land.

Job continued to praise God even in sickness and loss, to be prospered in the end.

Jesus overcame Satan at His temptation and again at the cross.

 

Genesis 32:22-25 (NIV)
That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.
After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions.
So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.
When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.

 

Genesis 32:28 (NIV)
Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."     

Most of the nation of Israel died in the wilderness rather than fight their way into the promised land.  This is a picture of the eternal kingdom of God.

 

Numbers 13:30-32 (NIV)
Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, "We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it."
But the men who had gone up with him said, "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are."
And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored.

  

Numbers 14:20-24 (NIV)
The LORD replied, "I have forgiven them, as you asked.
Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the LORD fills the whole earth, not one of the men who saw my glory and the miraculous signs I performed in Egypt and in the desert but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times-not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their forefathers. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it.
But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.

 

Revelation 21:6-8 (NIV)
He said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.
He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

 

Hebrews 10:35-39 (NIV)
So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very little while,
"He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him."
But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.

 

WHAT THEN SHALL WE DO?

·          Remind yourself of the many large and small challenges you have overcome.

·          Encourage yourself with stories of overcomers.

·          Surround yourself with “can-do” people.

·          What’s your current challenge?

• Seek God and be willing to adapt.