The Overcomer

Get your Bibles out and let's lift them up, wave them around, make Jesus glad and the devil mad.

Say this together.

Say heavenly Father, I'm so glad to be here today.

This is Houston's Healing Center.

It's good for what ails me, Whatever infirmity I have in my head, in my body.

All the Word of God is coming forth to heal it.

Take it away in Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you, worship team.

Let's look at 1 John this morning.

You know John is the apostle whom Jesus loved.

Praise God, I always liked to call him that because he called himself that.

I like that.

I mean, you know 1 John, chapter four.

1 John, chapter four, very familiar verse, but we're gonna read it.

And then it says here you are of God, little children, and have overcome them because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

Notice, I mean little children have the overcomer living in them.

In other words, baby Christians can overcome, just like mature Christians.

We don't have to wait to grow up.

We can start as soon as we're born again.

We can start overcoming the world because the greater one lives on the inside.

And then the next chapter, chapter five, verse four for whatsoever, or whosoever, really, more accurately, whosoever is born of God overcome at the world.

And this is the victory that overcome at the world, even our faith.

So today I just wanted to, you know, share a simple message entitled the overcomer, because that's who we are.

We're the overcomers.

I mean from beginning to end, from the babyhood stage, all the way through the adult stage.

We are created to overcome the world, amen.

Everyone who's born again has the greater one inside, greater than what's in the world.

Praise God, there's a lot of stuff in the world that's pretty lousy.

Guess what.

The greater one lives on the inside.

We can overcome everything that we're witnessing right now.

We're built to overcome it.

You know it says here and we just recently covered this, romans 12, three, that every believer has been dealt the measure of faith.

And you know Jesus said if you had faith as a seed.

So you know, that's why a baby Christian can overcome, because I mean, they've got the measure of faith they took to get saved, and being saved is the greatest miracle you'll ever see.

I mean it's the greatest power ever exhibited in the universe was when we got saved, when Jesus risen from the dead, same power, and then he dealt us the measure of faith for that to work.

So we've got that faith, and that faith enables us to overcome the world.

It says in 1 John, chapter five this is the victory that overcomes it, even our faith.

I like the linguistic key to the Greek New Testament.

I looked that up in my little Greek teaching manual and it says that that faith is a weapon of war.

Just think about your faith being a weapon of mass destruction.

Glory to God.

I was reading where they're speculating that Gaza may have chemical weapons.

I mean I wouldn't be surprised.

Iran we know Iran has chemical weapons.

Whatever Iran has is sitting right there in Gaza.

And you know we've been praying.

You know, thursday night we prayed over Israel.

We prayed over Israel last Sunday, right after all of this happened.

And there's a whole lot of praying that we're gonna need to do.

I know that.

You know they've gotta go like Fallujah.

They gotta go door to door in Gaza, just like they did in Fallujah.

And I just think about the casualties that are ahead for Israel.

I hate to say it, but we know it's gonna be a bloody mess.

And then I have our president say, oh, we can't have any casualties, are you nuts?

What do you mean?

No casualties.

We've already had the casualties.

We're gonna make sure we don't have any more casualties.

I mean, I don't know.

This guy is a nut job.

Every time he opens his mouth he gets over there and makes a big thing out of the Oval Office, which is you know, it's a rare thing to have a president, you know address from the Oval Office and he sounded like he was nuts.

He started talking about the Ukraine, just left Israel behind, started talking about the Ukraine, goodness gracious.

Anyway, praise God, I die of that grass.

All of that we overcome.

Praise God, we overcome what's in the world?

Hallelujah, we've got a weapon of mass destruction living on the inside of us.

And so you know we can legally.

You know it states here legally that we're overcome.

As far as God concerned, he placed the greater one living on the inside.

So therefore we're overcomers Legally.

Everybody say legally I'm an overcomer.

But then on the other side we know from the legal versus the functional side Redemption has two sides.

Every coin's got a heads and a tails.

You know, if you let redemption be a coin, it's got two sides.

The legal side, which is legally yours, it's available.

But the functional side is what you've actually used of what has been given you, you know, it's whether you've used your faith to overcome what was in the world, and so that's why I preach this.

I mean some of you already have heard this.

Well then, it's water for the seed you already have growing inside of you, water for your faith.

Some of you're hearing about the authority of the believer kind pretty much for the first time.

I mean, if you've been raised up in a Baptist church, they don't, they don't Teach you a lick about your authority.

Methodist church, not a lick about your authority.

And so that's the wonderful thing.

When I got a hold of the word of faith message all those years ago 40, some odd years ago I mean it was struck me of how different it was from what I was raised on.

I was raised a Catholic, you know.

We had the liturgy, we had this thing, you know, the homily and all that good.

You know, boy, there's a boring man.

I was boring good church.

I mean I have to say I never look forward to going to church, never, never look forward to going to church.

It was something I had to endure, I mean it's.

I mean if I don't, then I'm going to hell.

I mean that's what they say, if you miss mass on Sunday and die, you'll go to hell.

And I mean, my goodness, I mean it's just bondage.

When I started, when I first time I walked in Lakewood Church, I mean it was amazing.

I was sat on the edge of my seat Wondering what was gonna happen next.

It was two and a half hours long.

I, I got out there it was two and a half hours and I, I mean I was so excited I couldn't wait to get back there.

I know that's how y'all are.

You can't wait to get back to Glorious Way Church.

It's another glorious day at Glorious Way, Hallelujah.

So what's in the world that we have to overcome?

You know it's a lot in the world.

Well, first of all, the devil and demon powers.

Well, jesus already defeated them.

They're defeated, not that hard to overcome them.

They've already been had the floor mopped up with them, and you know.

And then, of course, their sin.

A lot of people are sin conscious.

Are they guilty all the time?

No, sin.

Jesus defeated sin.

He took the sin.

He took our sin.

It's been defeated, he conquered it.

What else is in the world?

Sickness?

But sickness is not of God.

There's no sickness in heaven for God to give us.

He doesn't give it, he doesn't.

He doesn't sanction it, he doesn't permit it.

You know well, god permitted no, he didn't permit anything.

We're the ones that permit it.

We have the power to Permit or to forbid.

Jesus the one who said that?

I didn't say it, jesus said it whatsoever, whatever you buy it on earth, is bound in the heavens.

Whatever you lose on earth is loosed in the heavens.

The there again the authority of the believer, what we have, authority.

We don't have to be overcome of sickness.

We can walk on sickness, amen.

And then, of course, there's lack.

You know there's a lot of lack right now because of the economy.

Well, let's get out of that economy and get into God's economy.

You know you can switch economies.

You don't have to stay with a Biden flation.

You can get into the kingdom of God.

How he operates.

I Tell you, the more we get into his methods, in the way that he operates, the better off we are.

Praise God, we got our angels out there bringing our supply to us.

Hallelujah, trouble, lots of trouble.

You know.

Jesus said in the world, you shall have trouble, we'll have tribulation, but he said be a good, courage, I've overcome the world.

The implication is you can too, and it's verified.

I mean, he gave that revelation to John and John was big on that revelation.

You know, the apostle John was so big on that revelation that when they threw him on a pot of boiling oil he didn't die.

Oh, that's in Fox's book of mortars.

It's not in the Bible, but I believe that that's what happened to him.

I mean, they hated him so much they had to get him shut up here.

He is an old man.

He was on the Isle of Potomac.

He's in his nineties.

When he got the book of Revelation On the Isle of Potomac they finally said well, we can't kill him, let's get him on that Isle and over there where he can just do very little damage.

Well, he kept doing damage.

He wrote that letter to Southern Church of Asia Minor and you see the book of Revelation in his nineties.

Oh, I tell you, he overcame death, he overcame boiling oil.

I don't suggest you try that at home.

Amen, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha.

Oh yeah, seeming impossibilities.

It looks like, you know.

It just looks almost impossible.

And what makes me know that nothing is impossible is because the greater one lives only inside of me.

Amen.

So when I face any of these things that I have and I still do any of these things that look impossible, sickness, lack, when it just looks like there's no way, I just laugh.

I laugh at that thing.

Why is that sounds foolish.

Pastor, you really need to fast and pray?

No, really, you don't even have to pray when you get the revelation of who it is that lives only inside of you and what he's given you in the name of Jesus, the Word of God, the greater one.

You don't even have to pray about these things.

There's no point begging God about it, because you are in charge of it.

You can walk on it, you can laugh in its face.

You know, every time I laugh at something, I just picture it running away from me and hiding, trying to find a big rock to hide behind, to escape my weapon of mass destruction.

Lord, come on, lift your hand right now.

I've got the weapon of mass destruction living on the inside of me.

Come on.

Glory to God.

Well, I've heard this before.

Well, goodness watering you.

Then you need to be encouraged.

Just when you read, when you listen to these people talk and you watch all these riots and all these Notice, it's not the Jews that are rioting in the streets.

It's all the Muslims going crazy in New York City.

So they don't do anything about crime, so they just let them go crazy.

A Jewish lady right there in Detroit, you know, here she is a head of her synagogue or whatever they call it.

I don't think she's, I don't know that she's really a person of the book.

And you know, the Jewish people have a whole lot of different.

You know they've got reformed and they've got all these different ones.

You know A lot of it's just some of it's the occult, it's the orthodox that are people of the book and I don't know that she's really a person of the book.

But anyway, she had organized a Muslim Jewish outreach thing.

She was working with them and they murdered her on her front driveway.

Now the Dearborn was where that big just last.

They were just screaming and hollering death to Jews, death, you know.

And here we imported all these people into our country after 9-11.

This is how they repay you.

They're the ones that get ginned up.

They're the ones, in fact I read where the terrorists took drugs so that they would get, and I knew, when I saw some of them, I knew they'd hopped up on something and they were told oh, don't worry about Islam, islam doesn't sanction the slaying of babies and the slaying of old people.

Well, they did both.

Not only did they slay them, they mutilated them.

I was listening to one lady that moved there from New York 20 years ago to live in Israel and she said I'm the.

My parents were survivors of the Holocaust.

I grew up on the stories of the camps.

Nothing I heard growing up fits with what I've just witnessed.

This is much more barbaric, much worse than I've ever seen.

And it keeps going on and on and on.

Well, what are we gonna do about?

Listen?

Let's not forget who lives on the inside of us.

The greater one lives on the inside of us.

He can help us stand up and speak the truth and love.

Say me it.

Glory to God, hallelujah, come on, let's practice laughing.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha.

Oh, the overcomer, that's who we are.

That's who we are the overcomer.

Everybody say I am an overcomer.

See, it's true legally, but I wanna get you thinking this way so that you can functionally, I mean put it into effect in your life, in your family, in your home, your business.

So there's three things that I wanna tell you about today, about the overcomer that I see in number one, and it's a progression.

Everything starts, and number one is the overcomer thinks right.

And if you think right, then you'll.

The next one is talk right.

See, because you can usually locate people's thought life with what's coming out of their mouth and out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaking.

So you know, you gotta think right, then you gotta talk right, then you walk right.

So those three things, and they're a progression.

They're a progression.

So it all starts with your thought life.

Your thought life is where you win or lose these kind of battles.

I mean, how many of you know the devil is not gonna sit here and say, well, that's too hard a trial for him.

I think I'll turn the heat down a little bit.

That's just a two that he's a baby Christian, they can't take much, I'm just gonna bear.

No, he's here to kill you Anytime and anywhere he can.

And if he can't kill you, then he's gonna try to stop you.

And if he can't stop you, he's gonna try to discredit you and discourage you.

That's why Jesus said be of good cheer, be of good courage.

So the overcomer thinks right.

Romans 12, two Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

So when you read that, in other words, don't be conformed to this world's way of thinking.

The world has a way of thinking and it's always negative.

That's what sells newspapers, it's what gets people to watch, I mean you know we haven't got this evil Halloween.

Halloween is evil, basically.

So don't be celebrating Halloween.

I mean that's the devil's holiday.

I raised my kids.

That's devil mess.

You know we didn't go trick or treating and, yeah, they had to miss out.

They had to miss out a little bit.

See, your kids aren't missing.

That's why we have Hallelujah Day coming up, so the kids have something fun to do.

But we celebrate light, we don't celebrate darkness.

I got a guy in my sub-business.

He just celebrates Halloween.

Man, I mean he's got a whole graveyard in his front yard.

He lives on a corner, lives on a corner and I mean the whole corner is filled with devil mess, what I call devil mess Graveyard, werewolves, skeletons I don't know how many skeletons.

He's got five or six skeletons hanging around.

I mean you know just all this stuff and he acts like it's fun.

No, it's not fun.

None of that's fun, because there's a real devil and there are real demons, amen.

And there's real bondage.

No, let's celebrate the light.

But anyway, the world thinks.

And so he says be not conformed to this world's way of thinking, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

So we have to think what the word says.

Romans 8.29 says that we're destined to be conformed to the image of his dear son.

To be conformed.

That word conformed is an interesting word.

It means that we take on the shape from the inside.

It's like Jesus is an empty shell and we come along and we're spirit beings and we just start growing into him and our fingers grow out into the space where his fingers were, and our hands grow into that space and our feet grow into that space and pretty soon all of our body fills that space.

We're being conformed.

See, God, doesn't take a hammer and chisel and start knocking and shaping you like that.

No, you grow into him, you get conformed into him.

I have a cousin, max Griner Jr.

He's a sculpture and he's done a lot of Jesus sculptures and the last big one he did that I'm aware of is that Jesus is coming back on the horse.

You know he's got Jesus, the king of kings.

It's a huge thing.

I mean the horse stands just this tall, and then Jesus sitting on top is huge.

It's bronze.

Well, he didn't take a hammer and chisel and chisel it out of solid bronze.

He used what they call the lost wax method.

And so he takes wax and carves this beautiful carving out of wax.

And of course wax is not very durable, you can't.

You know, it's that's just the beginning of the process.

So he's got this wax carving of Jesus on a horse.

I mean his beard, his sword, the horse's tail, I mean every detail, the sinews of the horse is carved out of wax, and then he lays it down in a form.

He builds and packs this special sand around it and builds places for him to be able to heat that form up and melt the wax and create a void in the middle of the sand.

So that's a pretty big project right there, and so you've got to create all that.

Then you've got to have a place where you can pour in the molten bronze to take the place of the wax that melted.

That's hence lost wax.

The wax is lost and it's replaced by what Bronze.

See, it's kind of a.

That's how we're conformed to the image of Jesus and we look like Jesus because we've been growing from the inside.

Come on the inside out, oh hallelujah.

Well, you got to think right, you got to think like he thinks.

How does he think?

Well, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

Isaiah 55.

Where are his thoughts?

Right here.

Just reprogram that brain tissue and reprogram it in the positive Part of that.

Then, number two is your talk.

See, once you start thinking differently, you start talking differently.

And you must talk differently, because Jesus said you can have what you say.

I didn't say it, jesus said it.

Mark 11, 23.

Barely, very life saying to you who's to ever show, say into this mountain, be thou removed, be thou cast into the sea, shall not doubt in his heart but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass.

He shall have whatsoever he saith.

So say is three times, two times, it's the Greek word Lego, and then the one time epo.

Epo means a consistent dialogue, it means a systematic discourse.

Is what you say and keep on saying.

You can locate people, because if they keep on talking about lack and poverty, well then they're thinking lack and poverty.

They're thinking wrong.

Well, yeah, but I'm really having trouble.

No, we start thinking the other side of it.

Every need is supplied, glory to God.

Every need I have, my Father takes care of me in grand style.

Glory to God.

Where do you get that?

I've never seen the righteous forsaken or he's been seed begging bread.

Amen, amen, my God shall supply all your need, according to his riches and glory.

By Christ Jesus, philippians 419.

Amen.

So you think right.

Then you start to talk right.

I, you know it took me years.

I'm still working on it Because you know, you just, you're around negative, you're around the world, you're around the world's way of thinking.

It's negative, negative, negative, negative.

And if you're not careful, you start just going off on a tangent, going off on a tangent Negative, negative, negative.

Well, you know, hey, let's speak, what the word says.

Let's develop a systematic discourse about our lives, about our health, about our finances, about our children, about our family.

Amen, if you think right, you'll start to talk right In consistency.

Lives of power.

It's not what you said one time yesterday.

That's going to change much.

It's what you continually say.

It's what you're saying all the time.

It's what you're saying all the time and again, what you're saying is what you're thinking.

I talk a lot about that internal dialogue, and it's because every human being is wired the same.

We have the same brain as before we were saved, so it makes sense that it's got to get reprogrammed, doesn't it?

Now you've been born again.

Your spirit's different.

You're a new creature.

Old things are passed, way behold, all things have become new.

But if anything's going to happen to your brain tissue, you're going to have to do the changing.

You're going to have to do something.

You, everybody say it's on me now.

So you start thinking right and begin to talk right.

And when I say begin, because it's a lifelong challenge to control your mouth and especially what you say, most of the time you know it's like again, you can say a good confession here in church and then leave here, and the rest of the time Leave here, and the rest of the day it's just talk negative.

Well, you haven't done much.

Then really, it's out of the preponderance of what you're saying is going to come to pass.

You're going to, you're going to, it's all going to.

Jesus said you know you're going to have what you say, whether positive or negative.

Why is that?

Well, because we're in the God class of being.

We're not God, but we're in his class and we're created to live by what we speak.

Are you with me now?

Yeah, you know, years ago I just moved back from Corpus.

We were broke.

I mean, we were so broke we couldn't pay attention.

I was living in my sister's house, so a homeless base, and not homeless because she supplied us a place to live.

But I mean, if it weren't for my sister inviting us to stay with them, we would have been I mean, that's pretty, that's at the bottom of the heap Unemployed.

And it was no fun and I had to.

I had to just fake it.

I had to just put a smile on my face.

I had to put my one suit on and my one pair of shoes on and go to church.

And you know people that say oh John, good to see you again, how's it going?

Well, I'm hanging in there.

That was as far as my confession would take me.

I'm hanging in there.

Hey, john, what's going on?

I'm plugging along, I'm just plugging along.

And one day, for the thousandth time, I'd said I was hanging in there.

A guy asked me how I was doing.

I'm hanging in there, and I heard this voice, it was loud and I thought everybody in the church heard it.

He said, yeah, and your fingernails are about to break and he didn't have to tell me twice because I knew it was the Holy ghost corrected my bad confession yeah, your fingernails, you're hanging on there, your fingernails are about to break.

I never did have very big fingernails anyway.

So, man, I ran over that guy said, let me correct that I'm doing better and better.

Huh, what, what?

He didn't even.

He didn't pay attention.

He wasn't really caring about how I was doing.

He just greeting me with a casual greeting how you doing.

They don't really care.

You know how you doing.

Well, thanks for asking.

I didn't say that either.

So I had to correct what I'm saying and I'm telling you that's what I say how you doing better and better.

I'm doing better and better, I'm increasing.

I could say I'm blessed beyond measure, brother.

I could say that that sounds kind of religious, though.

I just like to say better and better, I'm doing better and better.

And they look at me and I'm kind of funny, like, well, okay, it matters what you say.

And then, finally, if you think right, talk right, then you're going to walk right.

What do you mean by walking right?

Well, you do right, you live right, you act right.

You got to act right.

Faith is an act.

Faith is not just a concept.

Faith is not a thought.

Faith is acting like the Bible is true.

Faith is acting like what you say is true.

I'm going to say it that way Because aren't you saying the word?

Aren't you speaking in the word?

So if what you're saying is what God is saying, then you've got to believe in your confession.

You've got to believe that what you say in your heart, you've got to believe what you say comes to pass, and believe as an action verb.

It's not just a mental agreement.

It means that you act like it's so, you act like it's so.

So, for instance, I mean, if you're going to act like your, that sickness is under your feet, well then you get up and do something that a lot of people just go to bed and just wait until they die.

No, you're going to get up.

Brother Hagin was paralyzed for 14 months as a teenager and he got a hold of faith.

He got, and nobody preached it to him, he just dug in too, because he didn't want to die.

His own Baptist pastor gave him up to die.

So the way he told his mother and grandmother, you know you're going to have to get him, you know, to accept his death.

He's not accepting it, he's, he's.

You know.

Of course he wasn't accepting it.

You're 15 to 16 years old, you've got your whole life.

No, he didn't want to die and he found in the Bible, you know, the woman with the issue of blood.

She got healed.

19 years, or 12 years, going to doctor, spent everything that she had Was nothing better, but rather grew worse.

But she touched Jesus, touched the hem of his garment and he said your faith has made you whole.

The Holy Ghost said her faith made her whole.

Your faith can make you whole.

He said your faith can make you whole.

So he, you know, one day he said, oh Lord, I just know I'm healed.

Well, if you were healed, you'd get up out of that bed.

See, he couldn't just say I'm healed and lay in the bed.

Well, he's paralyzed.

I know he's paralyzed, but he had to do something.

So he eased his legs off the edge of the bed, got his feet on the floor, eased himself, put his weight on his feet, still leaning up against the bed, hanging onto the bed post and stood at the side of the bed and then he got dizzy and he was weak.

He hadn't been up, so he fell back in the bed.

A little while later he did it again.

He just kept on resisting that paralysis.

He kept resisting the symptoms he'd left.

He was left with all these months and years, blood diseases, malformed heart, and he had a lot of problems and he just overcame by standing up and finally he walked across the room, got dressed and went downstairs and ate and he never got back in that bed again, except to go to sleep.

Oh, come on, let's lift our hands right now.

He had to act on what he believed.

He had to act on what he said.

God called him on.

He said oh, if you're healed and you'll act like it, you'll get up out of that bed.

You'll get up out of that bed.

Oh, glory to God, let's act like.

The Bible is true.

So you see the progression.

It starts with your thinking, goes into your speaking, but it finally goes into the action.

Part of it, I mean.

I like what someone said about the book of Acts of the Apostles.

It was written because the Apostles acted.

Somebody had to do something, somebody had.

I mean, preaching is great, you know, we can preach, preach, preach.

But if we and we pray in, I believe in prayer.

But prayer, prayer demands action.

There has to come an action to it.

There has to come an action to it.

I say there has to come an action to it.

Your faith is an act.

Glory to God.

I said it's progressive.

In Psalm one it says blessed is a man who walks not in the council of ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners or sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the word or the law of the Lord and in his law or in his word that he meditate day and night, talks about him becoming a tree.

But notice the progression, see.

I mean it says, first of all it says he stands not and then it sits not.

See, you can stand around a bunch of sinners.

You know you're gonna listen and finally you're gonna.

You know you're gonna sit down, amen.

So you see, you walk right by him or keep walking, don't stand there, don't sit there.

So you see the importance of your actions.

It's just so important for us to think right, talk right, walk right.

Your faith then becomes a weapon of war that overcomes all that is in the world.

Come on, lift your hands and receive.

I'm an overcomer.

Today, everybody say I'm an overcomer today.

I'm not let thing happen to me.

My faith happens to them.

I mean, when they come up against a faith person, I mean they wish they'd have been someplace else.

They start looking for the next suspect.

Glory to God.

Come on, let's lift our hands forward.

We thank you that you've dealt us the measure of faith.

It's.

Faith is a seed and Lord.

We're operating as if it's so.