Faith is the Victory
We are born of the imperishable seed of God’s word. We are born of the same word that Mary received from the Holy Spirit that gave birth to Jesus.
January 30, 2023
1 Peter 1:23 (ESV) – since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God
We are born of the imperishable seed of God’s word. We are born of the same word that Mary received from the Holy Spirit that gave birth to Jesus. We are pregnant with God’s word! And everything we need and desire is in that word.
Romans 8:32 (ESV) – He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
The most precious thing God could ever give us was His Son. So now, we have all things through Christ.
Every seed produces its own kind. A seed that is of the word of God will produce its own kind. Now we no longer identify with Adam because we are born of God, and not of flesh.
Our Faith is the Victory
1 John 5:4-5 (ESV) – For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
Everyone born of God overcomes the world. The word “world” in this verse is translated in Greek as cosmos. That means we can overcome our circumstances and atmospheres too. As long as we are born of the word of God, we have the power to overcome the world (cosmos). Our faith is the victory. The moment we have faith, we can overcome the world. Our faith is that Jesus is the Son of God. But how does this work? If Jesus is in the same position and the same circumstance that we are in, and if He can overcome it, then so can we. If He can do it effortlessly, so can we! The revelation that Jesus is the Son of God and that He has overcome the world, should be like a mirror image for us – that if He could do it, so can we! Jesus is the prototype and we are made in His image.
We have the potential to overcome the world, but our mindset limits us. It is the same mindset that the Israelites had when they had to possess the Promise Land. Their mindset is what stopped them from entering the land. So how do we defeat this mindset? We need to see Jesus as the Son of God in our own, unique struggles and situations. Faith that Jesus is the Son of God, is the victory that overcomes the world. It is better to try and fail while believing in the Word, than put faith and trust in our experiences. Let the word of God define your experiences, and not your experiences define the Word.
The Eagle that lived like a Chicken
There is an old story of an eagle’s egg that fell into a chicken farm. When the egg hatched and the eagle was born, the chickens took care of him and raised him as their own. The baby eagle thought he was a chicken and so he acted like one and did everything that a chicken would. He behaved just like a chicken and scratched the ground looking for grubs and worms, and he learned to fly only as high as a chicken normally would, just a few inches off the ground. He imitated the chickens because he truly believed he was one of them.
One day, when an eagle flew over the chicken farm, he noticed the baby eagle amongst the chickens. So he approached the baby eagle and asked him what he was doing in the chicken farm. The baby eagle, convinced that he was one of them, replied, “I’m part of the family and this is my home.” The eagle explained to him that he wasn’t a chicken but an eagle. He tried to tell him that as an eagle, he could fly much higher than a chicken would and could soar at great heights. The baby eagle gave it a shot and tried to fly off to a higher point only to fall to the ground. The baby eagle was angry and came back to the eagle that found him, saying, “I told you I was a chicken! Now let me be!”
This is the story of our lives too. Jesus came to tell us what it means to be human and be born of His image. He showed us that we can do the same things that He did. Just like the baby eagle did not want to accept that he was in fact an eagle and not a chicken, the only thing that stops us from operating like Jesus is our mindset. In our journey with Jesus, we need to see what Jesus is doing and imitate Him.
Ephesians 5:1 (ESV) – Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.
It’s important to imitate Jesus in all that we do because we still don’t know our potential in Christ.
In a generation where technology has become so powerful and is starting to dominate and take over our jobs, industries and workplaces, we marvel at what humans have created without really understanding how much more powerful we are with Christ in us! Since we are born of God, we carry God-solutions to any problem that is out there. By faith, we have overcome the world! Imagine the possibilities with the Holy Spirit!
Ephesians 2:10 (ESV) – For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Walking by Faith
As long as we are here on earth and in the physical reality, we need to walk keeping our eyes open if we want to avoid stumbling and bumping into things. But in the spiritual reality, we walk by faith, not by sight. The opposite of faith in this context is, feelings. If we don’t walk by faith, we walk by our feelings, and feelings are always a hit or miss. Feelings are unpredictable, unstable and unsteady. But faith is victory all the time. Faith and hope are our eyes in the spiritual realm.
Faith comes by hearing the word of God. So if we don’t hear the word of God, we walk blindly, based on how we feel and what we experience. This makes us complain and blame God when things don’t go our way. Hearing the word of God is not a one-time thing. We need to constantly listen to and meditate on the word.
One of the works of the flesh is sensuality, which means giving into the senses. We shouldn’t be feeling-Christians, but faith-Christians! Let feelings follow your faith and not faith follow your feelings. Feelings and emotions are good and are meant to be enjoyed, but we shouldn’t let our feelings become our masters. We should move from faith to faith, not feeling to feeling.
Meditate and Confess the Word
Joshua 1:8 (ESV) – This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
It is not up to God to make our way prosperous, but it is up to us, and the way to do it is by meditating and confessing the word. If our way is not prosperous, we need to check our words.
Faith is like a gun. The bullet is the word of God and the trigger is our mouth. The gun is pointless if there are no bullets in it and if we don’t pull the trigger. When we fill our hearts with the word of God by meditating on it, it is like loading bullets in a gun. And when we put our faith into action by confessing the word in us, it is like pulling the trigger of the gun. Without hearing God’s word, we can’t confess His word. That is why it is essential for us to both meditate on scriptures and confess the word for faith to work.
Hebrews 4:12 (ESV) – For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
The word of God is double-edged, meaning one edge is God’s voice, and the other edge is our voice. When we meditate on His word, God speaks to us in the situation that we are in, and we confess what He says to us through His word. We echo His word.
When we confess, our hearts need to be in sync with our words. What we believe in our heart is what we confess. That is where meditation comes in. The word has the ability to change and renew our hearts. If our prayers and confessions don’t change the posture of our hearts, then we cannot expect it to change our circumstances. Whatever we are believing for, needs to first be received in our hearts.
Hear from the Lord; Believe in your heart; Confess with your mouth.
Whatever happens in the heart is what we experience as life. Each of our lives are different because each of our hearts are different. What is in our hearts, flows out to be our lives. So we need to fill our hearts with the word of God and allow it to flow from our hearts. Then we can be sure that when we release His word, it can change the atmosphere.
Persistent Faith
When Jesus sent His disciples out in pairs, He never asked them to pray for the sick. Instead He asked them to heal the sick. We often get tired of praying and confessing the word when we don’t see results, but faith is persistent. We need to tell ourselves that we won’t stop believing and confessing the word of God unless we see the word become a reality in our lives. We need to speak till we see the mountain move.
We all start with the same measure of faith. We may all have had faith as small as a mustard seed, but faith has the potential to grow into a tree. We need to grow our faith to a place where confession can work and bring about an instant change, just like when Jesus did here on earth. We have the potential to be just like Him and do the same things that He did (and even more!), but we need to exercise our faith by staying on the word and confessing it till we see results. The more we steward our faith, the more we are increasing its level.
If we are only satisfied with encounters, we will be left wanting more because encounters and feelings are temporary. It is the WORD that sustains us. So even in our encounters, we need to ask the Lord for His word. It was not the burning bush that changed Moses’ life; it was the voice of God that he heard. It was not the white light that Paul saw that transformed him; it was the word of God. The word of God is what changes us. It is better to hear God’s word and have massive fruit than to have massive encounters and no fruit. Once we receive the rhema word of God, all we need to do is confess it. That’s mountain-moving faith!
About the author
