The Victorious Life Of Believer

SF.8.17.2012 The victorious life of a believer. We say we have faith in Jesus. We trust God and in our groom Jesus. We obey Jesus and we accept Him as our Savior. But how are we to live our lives in faith? How victorious are we in our daily lives? Am I truly living in obedience to God as a Christian? We must think deeply about these things? We are in a time of fasting and repentance. Even in the eyes of people, unless you are sincere in your repentance you will not be forgiven. God looks at our hearts. He does not look at your outward appearance. Just as God knows your heart, you also know if you are living sincerely for Him. It is possible that we can fool others and make it seem that we have allegiance, that we are diligent. We can also truly desire to be diligent and want to have allegiance, but if it is without Jesus, then God is not pleased. There are also those who do not desire to work, to be diligent or serve others, but because others are watching, because of our pride, or because of our position we act as if we serve God and love others but it is a lie and we know this and so do others. Are we fooling God? We think we are fooling God because we can fool people. The Bible is clear. You cannot fool Him. There are some of us here who cannot remove this false outward shell and think that we can continue to fool others. God is not fooled. You will not enter into the eternal kingdom unless you live in truth. God is seeking those who are true. The Bible tells us that lying is a sin. Unless my life of faith is in truth, I will not enter into heaven, and I will end up in hell and that is the reality of our lives. No matter how many times we are told this, we think “Surely I still have time” , “Surely if I confess with my mouth then I will enter into heaven,” “I still confess, I still sing, I pray, I read the Bible, and I go to church and volunteer, there is no one else who does as much as I do, so surely there is a place in heaven for me.” There are still many who live under this false pretense. All this is useless. The responsibility for living the life of faith belongs to me and not God. God has taken me to many churches where He as shown me that there are only a few people who at those churches will enter into heaven. There were maybe 7 or 8 out of a thousand. I have read of another pastor’s experience where he was shown by God that only 7 of two thousand would be chosen. I am not the only one to be shown this. Many others are being shown this also. But we think that everyone in our church will go. If only a few out of thousands are being chosen, then how do you think that everyone here will go? You are fooling yourself. All will not go. You will not enter into heaven unless you truly believe in Jesus, are redeemed, and live in obedience to God. Only a small number of people proclaim this message. There are those who teach that when you come to church you will be blessed, that many of your troubles will go away, and if you confess with your mouth then you will go to heaven. You go after these teachings because it is what you desire to hear. Then you blame the pastor and say he should be held accountable for teaching these things. Where does it say so in the Bible? It does not. You dislike hearing what I have to say because it is bitter. It is to difficult for you to do. That is why you do not want to hear it. You think, “Surely, she speaks things that are too difficult, and too hard.” You ask God if what I say is too difficult. What if I speak of soft things, and good things and you end up in hell? I too will end up in hell with you and I refuse to accept that. I must first save myself then I can help others. God has bought the lives of His children with the blood of Christ and His anointed have been entrusted to care for them and in the end they will be judged for their work. I do not have the ability to ransom their souls. The word of God is truth. You cannot be victorious in your life with me teaching you soft and easy things. Let us say that when you stand before God in judgement and you say that your pastor is the one who taught you these things will God accept this excuse? What will you do when He replies back to you and asks “What have you done with the Word I have given to you?” What will you reply back to Him? The Word of God has been given to us. We are to read it and understand. You cannot read only what you like, the easy things, the things that you want for yourself. The Bible teaches us the right way to live. If you truly desire to be victorious in your life of faith then you must do so in truth. You must truly repent. Without repentance you cannot correctly understand the Word of God. If you do not correctly understand the Word of God in truth, then you cannot understand what it means to be a child of God, a citizen of His kingdom, or to be the bride of Christ and therefore you cannot live the life the way that God desires. Even if you understood it correctly the life is difficult to live, but if you refuse to understand and you fail to do the things to live this life, then the truth of the gospel becomes twisted in your life and you cannot go the right way. Then you can never life the true life of a believer. Our Lord teaches us that one soul is more precious than a thousand. We do not believe this to be true. We think that there must be many members in a church for the pastor to be successful. How can you damn one soul and save two? How can you damn two souls and save three? How can you think to save many souls in this manner? One soul is very precious. There is no recognition in small numbers. Other pastors do not acknowledge pastors of small churches therefore they desire big churches. Large numbers do not mean that all go to hell and small churches do not mean that all go to heaven. Even in small churches, if you do not live by faith then you will not go to heaven. If in a large church if everyone lived truly by faith then they all will go to heaven. We are all mistaken to believe that all those who go to large churches do not go to heaven. Why did God create large churches? We are mistaken and don’t understand. There is no reason for a small church to persecute and judge a large church. If those in large churches could not go to heaven then God will never have allowed a large church to be. It does not matter if you attend a large church or small church, what matters is that I am standing firmly in the word of God and living the true life of faith. We must stop trying to divide the church. The church of God is one. All the believers in the world cannot worship in one time. There are different locations with different anointed leaders to lead those that are right for their ministry in order to do God’s will. We see different places with different churches, but to God His church is one. We should not persecute and judge others but rather we should be praying for them. If everyone here goes to heaven I would be overjoyed. But all will not go unless you live the life of faith. You are mistaken to think that you will go to heaven because you come to this church. Do not be deceived. You cannot think that because the pastor teaches a certain way, all you have to do is attend the church and then you will enter into heaven. No. It is not so. Even in churches where the pastor is teaching incorrectly, there are still those who will go to heaven. How? By living the life of faith. None of us have the right to speak poorly of any pastor, church or believer. It is about how much faith I have and how obedient I am to the word and living according to it. We should not be speaking judgement on other people and their churches. This is how we are to be living in faith, but rather we point fingers. When we point a finger at someone three fingers are pointing back at us. Do not persecute and judge others. You must concern yourself with repenting of your sins, and living according to the Bible. This is your first concern. Stop looking at what others are doing. You dislike one person, you despise another, you judge them on their work according to your standards. You say that another is not a true servant of God. Never pass judgement, good or bad, on a servant of God, for that is God’s work not yours. Members of the church are not given the authority to pass judgement on an anointed servant of God. King David was a great example of this. David was given the opportunity to kill Saul but he would not touch Saul because Saul was an anointed king chosen by God. We fail to do this. Even in our own churches, if we dislike our own pastor we go home and speak things of them that we should not. How much more would we speak of those who are not our pastors whom we consider someone else’s leader? Yet, we say we believe in Jesus. We ask God for His blessings. Do not persecute God’s chosen servants. There is a difference to go and speak to them if there is a disagreement or issue, but to judge them and to speak behind there backs is not what we should do. I have told you many times, if I say something that is wrong to then come and speak to me. I tell you to come and let me know what I say that is wrong, what I need to correct. I am telling you to not go home and complain and pass judgement about me. Even more so if it is a pastor at another church. Unless we correct these things in our lives how can we expect to receive God’s blessings? We are hindering ourselves from receiving our own blessings. We do not realize that we are blocking our own blessings. We fail to see that we are unable to receive blessings because of the things that we say. I have at times have though to myself that I disliked someone, or someone’s behavior was something I disliked. It may not come out of my mouth but from my inside it is already being spoken. What does God say about those who say “racca” to their brother? We refuse to accept this teaching. We think that things happen naturally and are acceptable. We think to ourselves that it normal to have those thoughts as long as I did not say it out loud. But what does God look at? He looks at our heart. He looks inside me. This is a sin that we commit many times myself included. I try not to do this, but in a brief passing moment when I see something it comes up from inside of me. Why? It is because I think I know Jesus and because I think I know the difference between right and wrong. We do too much of this and Jesus tells us to bring all these things down before Him and no longer judge others. He does not ask us to do this for the sake of others but it is for my sake. If we do these things we cannot grow in faith, live in faith, we cannot commune with Him or be one with Him. God has no sin and therefore cannot be with one who has sin. Unless we truly love others and forgive them we will always find something that will cause us to pass judgement on them. It is because there is something which I dislike and it has nothing to do with whether God dislikes it or likes it. I always tell you that I am not satisfied with my children. It is not because they are doing anything wrong, it is because I wish they were doing a little better. It is the parents greed that the child does a little bit better. I keep raising the bar and keep expecting them to exceed that expectation. But God always tells me to leave them alone. That is why I have left them alone and watched them with patience. I have told my children that God has been so much better to them than I have. I have told my children that I always want to say something to push them but God has told me to leave you alone. This does not mean that you do not say anything when the children sin. As a parent you must guide and discipline your child, but when you overstep your authority and try to manipulate the child to your desires, this is what you must let go of. You cannot sit in the throne of God and try to change the child to your liking. God desires to raise the child for His pleasure, and guide the child to be used for His kingdom. His way is different. As I was raising my children this was always a point of conflict between God and I. I would see something my children did, and tell God that it displeased me. God would also agree, but then He would ask me, “Will you lay down your children so that I can raise them up, or will you keep dragging them the way you want?” I told Him I would give them to Him. But then I would catch myself trying to hold onto to them and drag them the way I wanted. It is because of what I wanted. But God says let go of them. The more I have let go of them, the more I realize that they have grown up better than I have thought. But even to this day, I will tell you that I am unsatisfied for them. I see that there is no end to greed. My desire and prayer has been that my children be better than me, and in many ways they are. But ironically, when our children do become better than us, then we hold on to them even tighter and try to make them less than us. We should let them become greater than us, but if they do then suddenly we feel small and insignificant and we cannot let that happen to ourselves. Even to our children we have an attitude of competition. We say openly that our children must be better than us, have more status, be a great person of God, do more work for the Lord, and then when I speak openly with you, you desire that your children do not succeed you. You cannot stand to see your children rise above you. God desires that we grow in union with Him. This is not easy. Therefore we must let go of everything so that our children can be used for the God and His purpose for them. We do not do this. This hinders our walk with God and also hinders our children’s walk with God. If I say that I have faith, then I must first obey God so that I will be well and then my children can also be well. We want our children to be well, but when they are we get upset and are unhappy. Why? It is greed. It is pride. When my child does better than me it kills my pride. We say it does not. How much do we pray for our children and bless them? But we have a hard time allowing those blessings to come upon them. It is because I get in the way of the blessings. We are also this way before God. We pray many times to God. Every believer prays. Five minutes, ten minutes you are always praying and asking God. But even though we pray that God would guide us into His path, it is easier for us to disobey Him. We think that obedience to Him is too hard. Why? It is because I must let go of myself and surrender to Him. I have to be humble. I have to let go of my pride and without doing so I will never be able to grow in God. In order to obey God and follow His commands we must first let down our pride so that we can say “yes” to Him and follow Him. We say we believe, but unless we start off correctly by letting go of our pride, we can never have true faith. Faith is obeying God completely. Faith is not doing what I want but doing everything that He commands. The faith can be mine and I can go in union with God. This is not easy because we do not understand God. The God of the Bible and the God we imagine Him to be is different. I must believe in the God of the Bible. I must not believe the Jesus or God who I want Him to be but I must believe the Jesus and God that is written in the Bible. If this is Whom you want to believe, then you must read the Bible and understand it clearly.You must read the Bible and then pray. If you do not know the Word then try to pray, you will not pray the way you should and many of your prayers will not be answered. We are taught to read the Bible and then to pray. You cannot listen to a sermon once a week and think that you can pray with just the message. The sermon you hear is the revelation that the pastor has received that they are sharing with you. In today’s time, people complain when those sermons go longer than twenty or thirty minutes. You cannot learn enough from a short sermon. You can study a lifetime and it will not be enough. You can read the Bible until you die and may never understand all of it. You must feed the body to live, so to must you feed the spirit so that you may live. If you do not feed your spirit how then can your spirit be healthy? It cannot. We watch television for two or three hours but we do not read the Bible for that much time. We say that we have a had a long day at work and need to relax so it is alright to watch TV for a couple hours. But if I tell you to read the Bible you say you are too tired to read the Bible. Some of you actually read the Bible to help you go to sleep. Is this how you show God your love? Or do you love TV more? I do not tell you to not watch TV. I tell you to watch it in moderation. There are times when you need to watch it and there are many things that you can learn. But if your focus is on the TV then you are killing your spirit. You kill your spirit because you are not feeding your spirit the word of life. Praying is not enough. Praying does not feed the spirit. The food for the spirit is the Word. The Word and prayer must be done together. You cannot only read the Bible and not pray. Prayer is time interacting with God and time spent with the Spirit. If we do not pray then we cannot understand His Word. How great it would be if we could understand the Bible easily. But the more I read it, there are so many things that are difficult to understand. When I first read the Bible, I though that I knew much of it. But the more I have read it the more I do not understand. Unless the Spirit of God is with me, I cannot understand what the Word is saying. There are things that we can understand in the flesh, but there are many things that can only be known in the spirit. That is why when you read the scripture you must also pray. These two things must go together. Some people only pray. Some people only read the Bible. Your faith cannot grow in this way. The Word and prayer must go together so that we can know God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Then we can live a victorious life of faith. If you fail to do this then you cannot succeed. A student cannot go to school to take an exam without studying. Some people may read the bible once or twice in their lifetime. Others boast about knowing God if they have read it ten times. They claim to know God but what do they really know? If you really want to live a life of victory in God then do not let go of His Word. Some of you will say that you don’t have the time to read the Bible because you are too busy. But what about the time you spend for your entertainment? You forgo sleep doing what you enjoy doing. When you truly live a life of faith in victory, you will take out time from your physical enjoyment and use that time to spend with God. But many of us give God our left over time. Give Him your best time. Would you like you children to buy you a gift after they have spent all their money on good things for themselves, and with what is remaining they get you something as an after thought? How about the God who created the entire universe? How can you give Him the crumbs of your life and ask Him for blessings? Do not be mistaken. If you want to live a life of true faith then give God the first and the best. You must make this a habit so that you do not lose God or His blessings. We all love to receive blessings. If you want to receive blessings then you must act accordingly in order to receive it. I am telling you to act. We are a small number here, but may we truly live a life of victory in faith. Sermon by Pastor Joy Lee Translation by Miguel Park