The Overcomer 1

Get your Bible out.

If it's not already, let's wave them around.

Make Jesus glad in the devil man.

Say this together.

Say Heavenly Father, I do love Jesus and I love His Spirit and I love the Word of God.

Jesus is the Word.

Today I'm being taught and I have a heart receptive to the truth of the Word of God.

I will let it prevail over all of man's ideas.

I'm renewing my mind to your truth and I'm being transformed.

In Jesus' name you can be seated.

Amen, praise God.

Let's look at 1 John, the epistle, not the gospel.

1 John, remember now, he's the apostle whom Jesus loved.

I always like to say that Talk about somebody that knew who he was.

Praise God.

Everybody say I'm the disciple whom Jesus loved.

See, it's not exclusive to John.

See 1 John, chapter four, verse four.

You are of God, little children, and have overcome them.

Because everybody shout, because, because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

Everybody shout because I'm saved.

The greater one lives in me, the greater one lives in me, amen.

Now let's look at chapter five, just right over the next page, verse four and whosoever is born of God overcomeeth the world, and this is the victory that overcomeeth the world, even our faith.

And so today I wanted to share a message entitled the Overcomer.

That's who you are, that's who we are.

We're the overcomers.

That's what the Bible says that we are.

Because of what?

Because of Jesus, the one that we just magnified, the one that we just glorified, the one that we worshiped.

Because of Jesus, everyone who's born again has the greater one inside them, the greater one.

He's, greater than what's in the world.

Amen, amen.

And then it says that this is the victory that overcomeeth the world, even our faith.

So it's the greater one.

The Holy Spirit, linked up with our faith.

You know what you believe and say about something has the greatest impact on overcoming.

And the Bible says in Romans 12, three that every believer has been dealt the measure of faith.

Otherwise you couldn't have gotten saved.

God just gave you the faith.

It took for you to get saved, for you to believe the gospel.

He just gave it to you and you acted on it by believing in your heart that Jesus is your personal Lord and Savior and that God had raised him from the dead.

And you confessed it with your mouth.

You had to say it out loud, didn't you?

And then you had to do something else.

You had to start acting like you were saved.

You know we all started the same way.

We're babies Slaubrin', crying babies but you start to grow, you start to find out what the word says, you start to line your life up.

In my case, when I got saved, I was a cusser.

I'm in the home building business.

I mean everybody I talk to cuss like they say, cuss like a sailor, but I think they cuss worse than sailors.

Every other word was a blue I mean it light up the blue and gladness.

You know, when I started having kids and I'm cussing in front of the kids, gladness had fussed at me.

Don't say that to children.

Yeah, I know I'm sorry, but I couldn't control it.

I said I couldn't control it.

You know what?

It was?

An unclean spirit and I was lost.

I knew it was wrong.

You know my Catholic up, my mother told me it was wrong.

I mean I knew it was wrong but I couldn't stop it.

I'm telling you, when I got saved, I got saved and about three or four days later I realized that I hadn't cussed in three or four.

I mean, when I got saved, god delivered me from that unclean spirit.

Oh, thank God for the greater one and thank God for the faith that we get dealt to us, and that faith I like.

What?

The linguistic key to the Greek New Testament.

You know I'm not a Greek scholar, I can't speak Greek.

I know preachers that go to school and get their doctor of divinity and they've got all this head knowledge about the four languages of Hebrew and Greek and all that, which is that's great.

I'm not, but I've got a book and all the guys that contributed to that book, they are the Greek scholars.

So I did the linguistic key to the Greek New Testament.

It's just a cheat 10 bucks, thelon on Amazon.

Oh, you mean Amazon, don't give the Amazon's a devil.

Yeah, I don't know.

They sell good books every now and then.

So we used to have Mardell out here and when Mardell left, I mean it's kind of hard to find good Christian books, isn't it so?

But it says that that faith that we have acts as a weapon of war.

Glory to God, isn't that good.

You know Biden's talking about World War III.

Let me tell you something.

We've got a greater weapon of war.

I'm telling you we have the Word of God and we have the Holy Ghost and we have our faith, amen.

Faith is not just something you use when you have a crisis.

Faith is how you live.

Faith is a lifestyle.

Faith is a lifestyle for the Christian.

You're always continually walking by faith and not by what you can see, taste, touch, smell, feel all of that five senses.

You're not emotional about things.

You might have emotion, but you're not led by emotion.

God gets angry, but he doesn't act in anger.

What makes God mad?

Unbelief.

Unbelief makes God mad.

Aren't you glad, at the times when we walk in unbelief, that he doesn't do anything about it?

You know he just has mercy, doesn't he?

Thank God, it gives you another chance to believe.

So you've heard me say this if you've been around long and we have a lot of new faces, so I have to repeat myself.

God delivered me from the fear of repetition, but our redemption paid all the good things that God gave us through the blood of his son.

Jesus has two sides to it the legal side, which is absolutely finished, what Jesus died.

In other words, we don't have to pray about certain things.

We just know they're belong to us, like healing.

You don't have to pray for healing.

Healing is yours.

In the mind of God, you were already healed 2,000 years ago.

Himself bore your sickness, took your infirmities Matthew 8.17, by whose stripes you were healed.

1 Peter 2.24,.

It's finished.

That's the legal side.

But then there's another side of redemption, called the vital side.

In Vichy, in the Latin yes, I used to speak Latin.

I didn't understand it, but I spoke it every time I served mass.

I spoke Latin with the Latin mass when I grew up.

In Vichy means according to life.

In other words, what I'd like to say is it's your functional, it's the functional part of redemption, it's what you have received by faith in the Word of God.

So there's usually a gap between what's legal and what you've actually received.

Are y'all with me now?

How do you close that gap?

We've got to believe the Word and act like the Word is true Until what's legal becomes reality.

Amen.

Just because it hadn't showed up yet doesn't mean you've done anything wrong.

It doesn't mean that anything's wrong at all.

It just means that there's seed time in harvest.

Are y'all with me now?

Everybody say legal versus functional.

We overcome the world to the degree that we use our faith.

We overcome the world.

This is the victory that overcome at the world even our faith.

So we overcome the world by using our faith.

You're going to have to use your faith.

You're going to have to use your faith.

You're going to have to call the things that have been out as though they were until they are.

Are you with me now?

So what's in the world?

What is it that?

What's you know?

Jesus said in the world you shall have tribulation.

He didn't say if.

He said when the storms of life come and beat upon that house and it's founded upon sinking sand, it's going to fall and grace the fall of it.

But you know, you take the house that's built on the rock, the word of God.

If your life is built on the word of God, it doesn't mean it doesn't exempt you from trouble, it doesn't exempt you from storms, it just means when they come and beat upon your life, you're still going to be standing Glory to God.

So Jesus said you know, in the world you shall have tribulation.

But be of good courage.

I've overcome the world.

And, of course, first John says we overcome the world.

We overcome the world why?

Because we have the greater one living on the inside and we have faith.

So what's in the world?

So you've been one of those things is the devil and demon powers.

We've been talking about this on Wednesday night last two Wednesday nights, in case you haven't listened to the messages dominion over demons.

We have dominion, as Christians, over demonic powers.

All the demonic powers are roaming the earth.

I mean, they feel like they've won, they feel like everything's going to be all right.

Well, we know on their side it's not going to be all right.

On our side, we got it made.

We're on the winning side.

Amen.

Got to remind ourselves of that every day, don't we?

But the devil and demon powers.

I mean, you know, you want to see an example of a demon power.

Just look at the Supreme Court justice that they're considering confirming.

I'm just praying against her.

We had Thursday night prayer.

We cried against her.

Why?

Because she's a communist, she's immoral.

Left up to her, our children wouldn't be.

I mean, they'd be destroyed.

She's got a millstone ready for her neck.

I don't know if you're keeping up, but you ought to keep up.

She wasn't anybody's first choice.

She was not anybody's first choice except the squad, aoc and all of those people.

All the Marxist wing of the Democrat Party wanted her and, of course, biden's not going to stand up against that, he's just going to go along with the thing.

I'm praying that she be denied, you know, and just get ready for the racism.

You know they're already crying racism.

It has nothing to do with her skin color.

It has everything to do with what she believes.

Are y'all with me now?

Well, what does that have to do with your message?

Demon powers we have power over them until we give in to them.

When we give in to them, well then what happens?

Well, we get the worst of the deal.

We're not giving in to the devil and demon powers and Democrats.

Amen, diminion over the devil and demons and Democrats.

Praise the Lord.

Well, pastor, we wrestle, not against flesh and blood, I understand that, but they're yielded to those demons.

All right, enough of that.

What else is in the world?

See, they've already been defeated.

I mean they had.

We've already read the book.

They've been defeated.

All we've got to do is enforce the terms of their surrender.

We don't have to beat them all over again.

We just enforce the terms of the surrender.

Jesus stripped them of all authority and made them irrelevant.

He put them to naught.

The big book of Colossians says Everybody say big zero, come on, hold your hand up.

Big zero, see, that's the devil and demon powers.

Let's not brag on the devil.

Let's defeat him and keep him defeated.

Keep him under our feet.

What else is in the world?

Sin?

Oh, sin, sin.

Well, we don't have a sin problem.

Jesus put away sin.

If we miss the mark, we don't run from God.

We run to God.

We confess our sin.

First John one night.

I grew up Catholic.

We had to go to confession.

I hated going to confession.

I always wondered if he could see me through that screen.

I knew that what I was confessing was the same thing I confessed two months ago or one month ago.

I mean, you know, catholic school, one month, that's a long.

You're supposed to go every week.

I didn't go every week.

I cheated.

I'd go like once a month and then I stretched it out every not 30, 90 days or so.

But I always thought you know, I'm saying the same thing.

I said last time I'm doing the same things I did the last time.

You know it just.

You know it's just.

You know I got to where I ran from confession.

Well, we don't have to run, we can.

We don't have to go to a confessor, we go right to the top.

First John one nine, if you miss the mark, if you sin.

Well, you confess your sin, you own it, you admit it, you run to God, not from him, and then he is faithful and just to forgive you.

You're sinning, cleanse you of all unrighteousness and it's over with.

Not only does he forgive you, but God has redeemed you from the power and penalty of sin.

We don't have sin problems, amen.

Well, but I have this thing that keeps going on and on.

Keep confessing it and keep and keep working to fill yourself more and more with the spirit and the word of God.

It's the, the, the, the, the remedy for sin and besetting sin whatever it is, is spiritual growth.

I said it's spiritual growth, all for you.

Like I said, for years I'd try to control my potty mouth and I couldn't do it, but I got the minute.

I got saved.

I mean, god delivered me from that with no effort on my part at all, and I didn't even ask him to do that.

Other things took a lot more effort, but they left one by one, by one.

That's what happens to Christians.

Are you with me now?

All right, what else is in the world Sickness?

It's not of God.

There's no sickness in heaven.

God didn't allow it, god didn't permit it, god didn't send it.

I mean, get rid of that kind of thinking that God allows, god permits.

He look, he permits everything we permit.

Sickness is not of God, period, and so we just we don't have to put up with it, we resist it.

You know, the greater one is in us.

He's the healer.

The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead quickens our mortal flesh.

What do you think about that?

I mean, he quickens our mortal flesh, makes it alive.

There's so many ways to get healed and one of the ways is just knowing that the spirit of God is always generating health in your bones.

He's always generating resurrection power on the inside of you to keep you.

And it's one thing to get healed, it's another thing to just stay healthy.

Let's just believe for health, amen.

What else is in the world Lack?

As I've said before, you know all of my spiritual examples in the Catholic church the nuns and the priests, monsignor.

We had a Monsignor.

He's a step above the priest, he's just under the bishop, and he was an author and he was a man.

He had a book about the history of Referio County.

He was a very learned man, very nice guy.

Love Monsignor Oberstein.

He's a nice guy, but they all took vows of poverty.

But they lived in the biggest house in town.

They lived in the convent.

He drove a 57 Cadillac, he wasn't too shabby, you know, but they took vows of poverty.

So you know, as a Catholic, what is my example?

My example is says there's something holy about being poor, and I guess that's why I was so unholy, because I couldn't identify with how holy that was.

I didn't want anything to do with it.

Be honest with you.

No, poverty is not of God.

God wants to bless you.

God is already, in fact, god has already blessed you with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, in Christ Jesus.

Jesus is made poor that you might be.

What?

Having abundant supply?

Yeah, it's in the world.

But what do we do?

Overcome poverty and lack, overcoming?

So you know, there's trouble, there's anguish, there's betrayal, there's hurts, there's bumps, bruises, there's adverse circumstances, seeming impossibilities in the world.

But when we face those things, if we will look to the inside, to the greater one, and say you know what the greater one's on the inside of me, he's going to put me over this thing.

I don't care, I'm going to make it around you.

And if I can't make it around you, I'm going to make it under you.

And if I can't make it under you, I'm going to make it over you, and if I can't make it over you, I'm coming through you.

But I'm getting to the other side of this situation In Jesus name.

You got to have an attitude, you got to have kind of a chip on your shoulder when it comes to the devil and adverse, any adversities, because they're not from God, god doesn't send them.

This is 90% of the battle.

Most people think the trouble they're in is because God's punishing them, or God's allowed it, or God's, you know, teaching them something.

Listen, that's bunk.

That's religious brainwashing.

It's preached.

It's preached from the pulpit.

I've heard them say it, but it's wrong.

It's not in my Bible.

Oh, thank God for the blood of Jesus.

It paid the entire price, hallelujah.

I'll tell you.

When these things show up, I just start to laugh it and pretty soon these things just disappear.

A week ago this morning it was about four o'clock in the morning.

I woke up, and it's Sunday morning, you know.

I'm gonna wake up a little later.

I've got the alarm set for 6.30,.

I changed my mode of operation.

Since my heart surgery four years ago I used to get up at the crack of you know, I'd get up at 3, 3.30, 4 o'clock every Sunday morning.

I'd get everything ready all at once.

I tried not to even think about what was gonna happen Sunday until Sunday morning early.

Well, I put a lot of pressure on my body.

It cost a lot of with the load that I was carrying, leading worship, doing the preaching and all of the things that I did in the center of almost every decision meet with this one, meet with that one.

And you know, I just learned to take it a little more easy and I try not to schedule a whole lot of things on Saturday, sometimes not even Friday.

I just try to keep it loose.

I start thinking about Sunday, I start thinking about what it is I'm gonna preach and I usually have a few things that's on my heart and I kind of weigh them back and forth and when I know on Saturday, I'll start getting prepared on Saturday so that I don't have to get up at four o'clock in the morning, get up about 6.30, pray in the Holy Ghost and I'm already, you know, 75% ready and I get the final 25% early on Sunday morning.

You know what the Holy Ghost still shows up.

The Holy Ghost, the anointing, is still here.

I didn't have to do it that way that I did it, I just decided to do it.

I don't know how, you know now, I just started relaxing.

Anyway, a week ago, this four o'clock in the morning, I woke up and I had this pain around the middle of my body and it was it just, man.

It was hurting where I couldn't even really stand up straight.

I was just kind of bent over like this and the devil said you know, I heard this gallstones, kidney stones.

It was around the back, right in here, and then around my middle is all real tender to the touch.

And so I didn't say a word, I just started laughing Ha ha, ha ha.

This is a lie.

This is Sunday, I'm going to preach.

It doesn't matter what you do.

If I had to go to church and sit down, I'll preach.

Ha, ha, ha ha.

I didn't even pray.

What's there to pray about?

I had healing belongs to me.

Whatever this is is a lie, can't stay, it can't conquer me.

And so I was up 15, 20 minutes just walking around a little bit and I'd try sitting down.

It wasn't comfortable to sit.

I tried laying on my couch.

That wasn't comfortable either.

And so I just got up and I thought about this, this little heating thing.

I think Debbie.

Debbie gave it to me years ago as a rice, rice hulls.

You put it in the microwave, heat it up.

I like that better than a water bottle.

I heated that little thing up.

I got two sizes one big one and one small one.

I put the small one under the small of my back and laid back on the couch and it kind of eased me a little bit to where I could just keep laughing.

And I laid there and laughed for about 30 minutes and finally I got real drowsy and went back to bed and slept until 6.30.

Got up, came to preach.

Every bit of that left me.

Every bit of it left me.

Every bit of it left me.

Are y'all with me now?

See, I live what I preach, amen.

Well, you can do the same thing.

Everybody say I'm an overcomer.

All right.

So three characteristics this morning, and let's see this as a progression.

First, the overcomer thinks right, then he talks right and then he walks right.

Those three things, and they are progression.

It all starts with your thought life.

It all starts with thinking right.

Everybody say I think right.

Romans 12, 2 says and be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.

In other words, don't be conformed to this world's way of thinking.

This world's way of thinking is an anathema to God.

It's wrong, it's demonic, it's ruled by the spirit of antichrist.

This world's way of thinking is diametrically opposed to everything we believe is true.

So don't be conformed to the world's way of thinking, but be transformed.

Romans 829 says be conformed to the image of his dear son.

So that's right.

I say read your Bible.

It's like a mirror.

If you'll read your Bible, you'll find out how does God see you.

You'll find out who you are in Christ.

You look in the mirror and you see yourself in the mirror and you see that you need to comb your hair, or you see that you need to wash your face, you need to go to the dentist and have your teeth cleaned or whatever.

It is that you see in the mirror.

That's the natural.

But you know you've need to learn to see yourself in the Word.

You need to know who you are, what you have, what belongs to you.

See, that's the thinking that you've got to adapt and adopt.

I find that most people kind of schizophrenic, if I could use that term.

In other words, they kind of see a little bit of what they are and who they are in Christ, but then they kind of forget, they kind of drift and they get these insecurities and they're more.

Pay more attention to what people say on the outside.

Labels that people give you, starting off when you're a child.

Sometimes our parents don't know any better than they label us.

They're ignorant, they didn't know the damage they're doing.

Educators they mean well, but sometimes they label kids.

They're too quick to attach a diagnosis that is not true and even if it were accurate medically, it's not accurate on the word.

That's why children need to be taught on their own level.

They need to be taught who they are.

Are you with me now?

So if your image is wrong, you're thinking is wrong.

You're thinking is gonna be conformed to this world's way and God's thoughts Isaiah 55 are higher than our thoughts.

His ways are higher than our ways.

That's not the end of the story.

He gave us his thoughts, he gave us his ways so we can line our lives up in our thought life.

Quit thinking of yourself as a victim.

That's why I hate this whole thing that's going on right now and it's intentional.

It's intentional to tear down the fabric of America as founded and say that it was illegitimate, say that it was founded for slavery.

That's a lie.

Slavery existed universally and still does.

Slaver's been around forever and it comes from conquered peoples.

You know, when you get conquered, they had an old.

You know this was used by the North when they conquered the South and the Confederacy.

They came marching through and you know they burned Atlanta.

Sherman burned Atlanta to the ground.

I mean, that's the North, did that?

I mean, how much love is there in that kind of thing?

What was the purpose behind it?

So there's a lot of this stuff about.

You know, the evils of the South and all of the slavery that was here, but that was universal.

I'm not excusing it, it's wrong.

We got rid of it.

I said it was God.

You know we had a war and it was horrible war and instead of healing the South, the North imposed a statement on the South to the victor belongs the spoils.

And they spoiled the South, they raided the South, they victimized the South and it was decades before we got over it.

So they exacerbated the racial disparities in the South, and it's wrong.

Both sides were wrong.

There's plenty of wrong to go around.

What's the antidote?

The gospel.

One of the most segregated places was the church.

Well, look around you, it didn't.

It didn't segregate in here.

Praise God, we look more like heaven, don't we?

We look like heaven's gonna be.

Amen.

For some people it's gonna be a shock, but for us it's just gonna seem normal.

Praise the Lord.

Are y'all with me now Talking about the world's way of thinking?

You know, and so the thing about it is, you get off in a way of thinking.

It's looking at yourself as a victim, looking at yourself.

A lot of people think, well, I'm just poor, you know I grew up poor.

You know I don't need money.

Well, see, that's wrong.

You need a lot of money.

You need more money than ever before, because the harvest is near and we need to be able to fund the gospel.

You're looking to someone else to do your job.

Your job is to fund the gospel, at least partly.

That's why you're chosen to live in the last days.

Well, yeah, but look at inflation.

Yeah, there's an opportunity right now, see.

So you're thinking about these things.

You're thinking about all the inflation.

Oh, the gasoline.

Oh, oh, oh.

Listen, quit looking at yourself as a victim.

This is an opportunity.

I said this is an opportunity.

God has opportunities for the church to gain at this time.

Are you with me now?

So I'll start thinking differently.

Think about the Word of God.

Some people think of themselves as sick, trying to get healed.

They know you're healed, resisting sickness and disease.

They think of themselves as unworthy.

Know you've been made worthy by the blood of Jesus.

You must be worth the price he paid it.

If he paid the price for you, are you worth it or not?

You're telling God he doesn't know what he's doing.

See, it's really.

When you start saying that you're unworthy, you're saying to God I don't really trust your Word, I don't trust what you paid for me.

You got gypped.

Is that what you intend to say?

No, I know that's not what you intended, but you see, that's the implication.

See, start thinking about how you look at yourself.

You've got to look at yourself through the Word and through the blood.

And when you do, when your thinking is right, then your talking will get right.

Your talking's got to be right.

See, progression thinking.

If you think wrong, your talking's going to be wrong.

I can locate people just like this by listening to what they say and looking at their countenance.

I can see somebody looks like they lost their best friend.

Listen to them, say a couple of sentences and then I know that they are not looking in the mirror of the Word of God or I know that they've been taught religious baloney.

My job is to help you.

My job is to give you the Word of God that will change your life.

My job is to watch over your way of thinking and form that thinking with godly wisdom and then help you learn how to talk in relation to how you're thinking.

Jesus said out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

So when you continually meditate wrong, then you're going to talk wrong.

One example I've told many times, but I'll tell it one more time.

But there was a time in my life when I lost my business and lost my job, my job.

I went to Corpus Christi to be in lasted one year.

We hung on for another six months and that's when I lost everything.

I lost all my money, all my everything, except my early marriage furniture.

I had a whole garage full of junk that we moved back to Houston from Corpus Christi and really it could have all been hauled off to the junkyard, but we put it in the garage and we even paid $50 a month for storage for some of it.

That's just what you do, that's all you own, that's all you have.

I had to move in with my sister.

I didn't have money to provide for my family, and it was.

It was kind of I was kind of shell shocked.

So was my family.

And I know the word, I'm confessing the word.

I know prosperity.

I know I'm a tither, I'm a giver.

So what was it?

There was a gap between the legal and the functional and I didn't know where the gap came from.

It took a while to find out, but in the meantime we landed back at Lakewood Church, where we had left a year and a half before, and people would come up to me and say, oh John, how you doing.

Well, I'm hanging in there.

I mean, you know, I knew better than say I'm miserable, I'm broke.

I knew better.

I mean I went to church with the best that I could find.

I had one suit, one nice pair of dress shoes.

After about a year they started wearing a hole.

So every time it was wet outside, it was wet inside my shoe.

Why didn't you get them fixed?

Well, another amount of money that I didn't have.

And so another favorite thing I would say this is see, this was as elevated as I could get.

My confession.

I was still reading my Bible, I was still praying in other tongues.

I was doing all that, but I had a hard time saying you know, I'm blessed because I just felt so unblessed.

I was more motivated by my circumstances than I was what the word said.

I just wouldn't, I couldn't seem to call the things that be not as though they were.

And if you look back on 40 years of me being a Christian, 34 years being a minister, this is what I see most people missing.

They're not able to call the things that be not as though they were because they feel guilty doing it.

They feel like they're lying.

I don't say that I thought that, but it just I was hindered, I just couldn't bring myself to say the right thing.

So I said I'm hanging in there, I'm plugging along.

People would come up at church, and so finally, one Sunday morning, somebody asked me that question.

About a thousand time I said, well, I'm hanging in there.

And you know, they didn't.

No, they were asking to be polite.

They didn't really want to report.

You know, they didn't want a tablet full of all the check marks Box is checked.

So I said I'm hanging in there and out loud, the audible voice of the Lord, just audible, holy ghost.

I thought everybody in the church heard it.

Yeah, and your fingernails are about to break.

I'm hanging in there, yeah, and your fingernails are about to break.

And then I looked around.

I turned red.

I was embarrassed.

I knew that I had messed, I knew that I had been saying the wrong thing and I ran after that person.

By that time he's, you know, 14 rows down the aisle from me and he had already forgotten anything.

He'd even talking to me.

You know, I tapped him on the shoulder.

Let me correct that.

I'm better and better.

Huh what?

It didn't mean a thing to him.

He didn't pay any attention.

He didn't really care how I was.

He was just, you know, being polite.

But it was important for me to correct what I said.

If you asked me any day, every day, every time, people ask me how you doing pastor, better and better, better and better.

From that moment, and when I started saying better and better, was it better and better?

Well, no, it wasn't, as a matter of fact, got worse.

How could it get worse?

Well, I won't go into all of that.

How many of you determined to have what the Bible says?

Yeah, you're determined to be who the Bible says you are, and that is an overcomer.

You're an overcomer.

It didn't say that it was gonna all just be sweet and peachy and lovely and kind, and cherries, right, you know, dropping off the tree so you could eat them and throw the stem away, and then no, you're gonna have to possess the promises they been.

Yeah.

So you start to talk right.

Your thinking is right, you talk right and that means you walk right or you do right.

You act right, you live right.

Basically, you live by faith.

Faith without corresponding action is dead.

You have to start acting, like the Bible is true.

You have to continually act like the Bible is true.

This is not something you do when pressure's on.

This is something you do all the time.

See again, faith is a lifestyle.

It's not just something you do when the emergency lights on, when the sirens going off, amen when the doctor gives you a bad report, when you look at your checkbook and there's too much month at the end of your money.

No, that's not.

Listen.

You live, the just shall live by their faith, and so that means you walk by faith, not by sight.

Are you with me now?

Yes, faith is acting like the Bible is true, just that simple.

So my simple confession saying you know better and better.

Then I started thinking you know, things are looking up, things are better and better.

By this time it's the spring of that year, 1987.

God began to speak to me out of the word.

God began to give me things to do, and I was unemployed.

Nobody wanted to hire me.

I had been a self-employed business owner and then I was president of a real estate development company in Corpus Christi.

They didn't want to hire me for some lower.

They said Mr Griner, you're over-qualified.

Well, that means you ought to hire me right now.

I'm better than qualified.

Why wouldn't you hire me?

I don't know.

Because they learned, you know, in whatever dipstick school that they went to.

So about some professor told them oh, don't ever hire an over-qualified prospect because they'll quit.

As soon as things get better, they'll quit.

Well, they didn't know me.

I'm not like that.

Are you with me now?

So I started having to speak on a higher level.

I started looking at what the Bible said about me.

I started calling them things that be not, as though they were in a greater See.

It spurred me into thinking right, talking right, and then I started doing things.

God began to give me favor.

I started confessing favor and, you know, just like that, I got a job.

It was paying me, in fact.

I got paid for travel time and the travel mileage was more than the salary.

I made twice as much for my worn out Oldsmobile that had a hundred thousand miles on it.

They paid me per mile to travel all over South Texas, central Texas, doing this menial kind of stuff, and I got paid for that.

But I got paid more for the mileage.

I mean, by the time you add the two together, I could actually pay a few bills.

I mean, the bleeding started, you know it wasn't totally gone, but it was much improved.

It felt so good to have a tithe.

You know, 10% of zero is zero.

I hadn't tithed because I hadn't had an income.

Now I've got an income and we start, you know, slowly, slowly, and then, right after that, I got a much better position.

Are you all with me now?

Yeah, it didn't just happen overnight, but within a year and a half of all the debacle.

I had my own business building houses.

18 months Everybody say 18 months.

Can you make it 18 months?

I mean, you know it takes time If you're in the ditch.

You gotta make your way out of there.

You've gotta correct how you've been thinking.

You've gotta correct how you've been talking.

You've gotta correct the decisions you've been making.

And when you do that, let me tell you something you're gonna get on top.

Come on, let's lift our hands right now.

Praise God, notice the progression.

That's what I wanted you to see this morning.

These characteristics of the overcomer, they're common.

I've lived this.

I know it to be true.

I know that it works every time that it's utilized, not attempted.

You don't attempt that, you don't try that, you do it, you just do it.

Everybody say I'm doing it, I'm acting right, I'm walking right, I'm living right, amen.

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

Come on, lift your hands and receive today the overcomer.

Did this help anybody you encouraged today?

Well, come on, let's rejoice.

Glory to God, thank God, we're overcomers, we're not victims.

There's such a victim mentality in the world right now and we can't allow it to leak into our consciousness.

We've got to fortify our thinking first and make sure that we guard.

The Bible says guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.

So if you let things that are in the world into your heart, that can cause great difficulty.

You know, I've seen people, even preachers.

I know one in particular that he had a really good church.

He had all the big names that come to his church Jerry Savelle and Kenneth Copeland different ones that come to his church all the time and he was well known in that circle.

He didn't have a traveling minister, he's a pastor.

But I heard Jerry Savelle give this testimony about these things, about things don't happen overnight, they happen gradually wrong thinking.

But they noticed something about him that he just seemed like he'd gone to the tanning salon.

He looked and he was wearing Hawaiian shirts.

He looked like he'd just got back from Las Vegas and he started wearing a big old gold chain with a big old thing around it.

That's back in the 70s when that was popular Gold chain big old manallion hanging down and he had the shirt open right there at the neck where the medallion would be right there and he's all slicked up and he was looking like a dude, pastor, dude, and anyway, next thing, you know, he's run off with some woman and wrecked his marriage and his ministry.

And Jerry would just Brother Savelle would just say, and that didn't happen overnight.

He just started drifting off, he'd started letting himself, giving himself permission to think in a way that was not God's best, carnal thinking, and then he didn't stop it.

He just kept going that way and it progressed.

It progressed.

See, notice the progression, the progressions.

They started with a thought life, then it moved into what he was saying, what he was magnifying, what he was putting up His clothes, his trips, all of that and then it affected what he did with his life.

Are you with me now?

That's the negative side, but you know what?

It's true of the positive side.

I said it's true of the positive side.

Everybody say I am an overcomer.

Amen, praise God, glory to God.

Thank you Jesus, wonderful Jesus.

He gives us all the tools, he gives us everything we need for success.