Don’t Give Up the Battle! There’s a Shift Coming! Pastor Jamie Wright Maranatha Fellowship Church
Feb 18, 2004 Wed Bible Study
Guess what, we are not in a parade. This isn’t some holiday festival here in the kingdom of God. We are in a battle!
You can’t face the battle as long as you are on the bottle!
When baby’s whine we put a pacifier in their mouths to pacify their whining. Pastors have been pacifying the people too long. As long as you are pacified you won’t receive the power; power to fight the battle. Don’t quit! Keep on fighting!
We are in a war. It is a battle. Fight the good fight of faith. Put on the whole armor of God. Our weapons are not carnal, but they are mighty for the pulling down of the strongholds of the enemy. No weapon formed against me shall prosper. The battle is not mine it is the Lords. The kingdom of God suffereth violence and the violent take it by force. Be sober be vigilant for your adversary, your enemy the devil is as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
It doesn’t sound like a holiday parade to me. It is war. The battle is on. You will get bruised and battered in war. You may even have a few tragedies. It isn’t the end.
God uses life’s bruises! He has the ability to reverse the curse. He can shift the momentum of the mess your in. He can transfer your problem into a promise. A SHIFT IS COMING! Don’t GIVE UP THE BATTLE!
Life is a combination of
Mountaintops vs. Valleys
Sunshine vs. Rain
Blessings vs. Battles
Pleasure vs. Pain
Joy vs. Sorrow
Triumphs vs. Tears
Victories vs. Loses
Jarius comes to Jesus about his sick daughter. Then the woman with the issue of blood comes after Jesus and stops him. Jarius is literally going crazy in his mind. Come on lets go my daughter is dying. Jesus needs to get to her. Then one of his servants comes and says your daughter is dead. He is crushed. This woman delayed Jesus and now my daughter is dead. It is over. No way can I win the battle now he thought. But Jesus heard what the servants had to say and responded with.
Mark 5:22-36 Don’t be afraid only believe. Keep on believing. Don’t give up!
1. God can turn your setbacks into comebacks!
With Jesus this is just a minor setback. God is the God of comebacks.
Luke 1:37 For with God nothing shall be impossible
2.God can turn your tombstone into a stepping stone.
This is killing me. I am about to die. I can’t take it anymore! Job’s wife told him to curse God and die. God had different plans. He took what the enemy wanted to be a tombstone for Job and made it a stepping stone.
What’s just about ready to kill you? Use it as a stepping stone to the next level.
Hebrews 5:8 He learned obedience by the things he suffered
3. The devil wants to murder you, God wants to mature you!
John 10:10 Kill, steal, destroy
What you are going through can make you bitter or better.
Be ye perfect (mature) as your father in heaven is perfect. You don’t achieve maturity by keeping the bottle and paci in your mouth. You can’t stay in the elementary things, the milk of the word. It is time to go on to the MEAT of the word. If you don’t fight some battles you will never go any further than were you are now. Why do you think you keep fighting the same battle? Because you keep quitting before it is over. The battle is already won. But you must finish it to learn something.
The teacher is always silent during the test. Rarely will a teacher respond during a major exam. God is there during the test, but he is waiting for you to finish, then he will grade you and see if you have learned anything. If you will simply finish the battle you will have learned something by the time you get to the other side and that will make you a BETTER more MATURE Christian. GET off the BOTTLE move into the BATTLE!
1Co 15:57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
4. You are not the victim, when God has provided the victory.
On her TV program the other day, Paula White was giving some of her testimony. She was praising God for the victory. She said, I could have been the victim, I was the victim, but God has given me the victory. Sexually abused as a child, her father committed suicide when she was 5, she had a child out of wedlock, and felt abandon and alone. She is not allowing those circumstances to hold her back she is claiming the victory regardless.
Your crisis is meant to cripple you, instead let it catapult you.
Fear will paralyze you Praise will Free you.
Allow God to use your tragedy as a triumph!
Mark 2 Rip up the roof Mess made miraculous
5. See your mess as an opportunity for God to do a miracle.
Get your eyes of the mess and on the Master. If there isn’t a mess then you don’t need a miracle. We cause messes God causes miracles. Financial messes, relational messes, business messes, emotional messes, addictive messes, on and on. But God can shift the course of those messes within seconds they will be opportunities for miracles.
Matthew 14: 22-33 Peter walking on the water got in a mess when he took his eyes of the master. He started looking at the storm and the waves. He started sinking and needed a miracle and cried out to the Master.
6. Don’t let the storm cause you to sink. God wants us to soar.
7. God wants to turn your disappointment into a divine appointment.
By all appearances, Moses aborted his destiny by committing murder, because he spent the next 40 years on the back side of the Sinai Desert. A supernatural encounter with God, however, changed his disappointment into a divine appointment. He was then able to have the faith in a God that helped Him defy the might of Pharoh and change the course of history.
Peter was the first disciple to recognize the deity of Christ and the only man that we know of in the Bible, apart from Jesus, to successfully walk on water. Yet he openly and boldly betrayed his Lord and wept as bitterly as the Lord’s other betrayer Judas.
What set Peter apart from Judas? Both men betrayed Jesus; Judas secretly and Peter publicly. One hung himself from a lonely tree and the other went on to preach the first sermon in Church History. It appears that Judas felt remorse over his betrayal of Jesus, but the Bible does not tell us he repented or asked Jesus for forgiveness. In the end, he took his own life and died in sin and shame. On the other hand, Peter sought the face of God in the face of his own failures. His God appointment with the resurrected Christ so changed him that, according to Church history, Peter died for Christ through crucifixion on a cross. Peter remained faithful to his Lord, even after he had failed. By God’s grace, Peter’s faithfulness altered his destiny and changed his disappointment into a divine appointment.
