“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” Revelation 12:11
Naomi and Ruth Guteng overcame the challenges of reaching out to their family and were able to see their father baptized into Christ this week!
Christianity not only provides a full life, but challenge and adventure. I’ve just returned from the inaugural service of our Denver church planting, which we all worked so hard to support. The missionaries on the team are working diligently, yet the are completely in touch with the challenges in leaving their homes, jobs, families to move to a new city. As they left they saw the members of the DC church cheer for every departing missionary. They see they DC church is doing well and disciples rising to maturity. They see our homes as fortresses of strength. The ministry and house church meetings are filled with faces who are supportive and obedient in working side by side seeking and saving the lost. The challenge comes for each missionary must leave these surroundings. The cheering of the church will not be heard. The support of brothers and sisters will not be felt their faith has been and will continue to be tested and each of them fully understands just how much strength they are or are not getting from their relationship with God. They left behind challenges of ministry, family, finances and leadership. Yet ahead are unseen pressures of spending an indefinite amount of time in this now unfamiliar city, which they must all navigate.
Someone might ask, “What do we do with these overwhelming challenges?” “How can we defeat Satan?” The answer: Inhale and let out a few heartfelt resonant tones of our popular song “We Shall Overcome.” The Bible teaches in Revelation 12:11 though Satan hovered near our brothers in the first century, they overcame him. The hope of Martin Luther King’s words might be recaptured: “Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet behind it in the dim unknown standeth God keeping watch above his own!” We need to keep our eyes on God and His plan for confidence, conversions and commitment .
Ruth and Dao, along with their friends and family celebrate their baptisms!
Confidently Overcoming: We must all develop a relationship with God which goes beyond our morning quiet times. Revelation 12:11 states that the blood of the lamb will help us to overcome. This is the conviction that God is forever with us! He washes us clean of our sins through the blood in the hope we will be able to know His intense love and desire for us through the sacrifice of His own Son. We must live in confidence that God will fight and win this great war!
Fruitfully Overcoming: The second lesson from Revelation 12:11 is that we can overcome through the Word. When we resist Satan through the preaching of the Word, he will flee. There was a day when the Disciples of Jesus were known as “walking Bibles”. They knew the Word and preached it. If we would stop observing the condition of society with unbelieving eyes and preach the solution God provides, we would convert the world! You do not have to overcome a converted world!
Jeremiah preached the sermon of his life as God blessed the Denver team with an attendance of 171 and 3 baptisms at their inaugural service!
Sacrificially Overcoming: We are called to sacrifice money, Time and personal desires for the sake of the Kingdom. At times, this becomes our greatest struggle. Overcoming myself is one of the greatest obstacles I face in gaining spiritual victory. That is why the final instruction from Revelation 12:11 is that at we be willing to give up our lives, go anywhere, do anything and give up everything for the cause. The longer you live the greater the suffering God allows in our lives to make us His vessels. We shall overcome!
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