What Victory Looks Like | Pastor Loren Covarrubias

I've been speaking about Joshua for a few weeks now, and I

wanted to remind you with a couple opening scriptures why

this is very significant to us. The scriptures I read to you

were when the children of Israel were going into the Promised

land, crossing over the Jordan River, and the first obstacle

they would face would be the city of Jericho.

Now, before they went, there were spies that had been sent

into the land, and these are the names of the men whom Moses sent

to spy out the land. We're focusing on one and Moses

called Hoshea, the son of Nun Joshua.

Now, this is a very significant thing for us to understand

because the name Hoshea means a deliver.

And so this shows us how the new creation of God works.

The Bible says that which is natural comes first, afterward

that which is spiritual. You are both a natural being and

how many know when you're born again, you become a spiritual

being. It is the natural and the

spiritual that comes together and gives you that ability to

walk as the new creation of God in the earth.

And we've talked about a few people who went through a name

change literally to accentuate the fact.

And in this case, Hoshea, which was a deliverer, would go in as

one of the spies into the promised land.

When he went into the land, he was a very strong of character

person. When he saw the land, he saw it

was a land flowing of milk and honey, just as the word of the

Lord had come to them earlier. But in that land, they also saw

that there were giants in the land.

Out of the 12 spies, 10 of them came back with a bad report,

convinced everybody you don't want to go in that land because

there's giants in that land. But Joshua looked at things from

a different perspective. He said those giants will just

be bred for us to eat. Now, this wasn't just because he

was a naturally inclined person. In the book of Exodus chapter

Exodus 17 · chapter mention

17, you read a story how when the children visitor were facing

a battle that the Lord had Moses stand on a mountain in the view

of all the people as he lifted his hands, they would be winning

the war. When his hands got tired and

they started going down, they would start losing the battle.

And so Aaron and her, two of the elders lifted up his hands so

that he could stand and the people of God received a

victory. Now, this wasn't just the way

God used to win the war, but it also was a very good object

lesson for Joshua because God began to teach him that it

wasn't just his natural strength that we give them the victory,

but it was the natural strength mixed with the power of God that

would give the victory. And it's so important that we

would understand that church because often times we fail to

understand how important it is for us to walk with both the

natural and a spiritual aspect to our observation as we're

going through life. Now we've been sharing this

because it's so important to understand this particular

reference of Scripture because when Mary became pregnant with

the child, Joshua was going to put her away privately.

But the Bible says the word of the Lord came and said, she will

bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will

save his people from their sins. So all this was done that it

might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the

prophet saying, behold, the virgin shall be with child and

bear a son, and they should call his name Emmanuel, which is

translated God with us. And I shared with you how

important it is for us to recognize when Joseph was told

he was to call the child in the new Gospel of Matthew, Jesus

because he would save his people from the sin.

That's actually the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua.

And so there's a picture that was drawn up immediately.

This child is going to grow up and be a leader of the people,

and he's going to take them into the promised land.

He's going to bring them into the place of their full

inheritance. That would have been easily

understood by them. But for us, we have to

understand that though the name Jesus is special to us because

that's what we call him in our language, it's important also to

understand that Jesus had this mark upon him.

The Bible says the Old Testament was written for our example and

also for our admonition because a lot of people think that Jesus

Christ died for their sins and that's the end of it.

But if you notice in the Scripture, it says He will save

their people from their sin. He doesn't just want to forgive

you, He wants to deliver you. Can you say Amen to that?

And that's why at Mount Zion, give him a praise on that.

That's a good one. We have our life enrichment

classes. That's why we have our Oasis

ministry to provide you with the support, but also the tools that

will help you become an overcomer in this life.

It's very essential that we understand that God has called

us to be overcomers. Now Jesus would also be called

Emmanuel, which adds to the Joshua name, which means God

with us. The Bible teaches us that Jesus

Christ was not just a man, he was also God, God come in the

flesh. In Christian Church we teach he

was truly man, but we also believe that he was truly God.

Some people can't understand how that works and there's always

been discussions about it, but just in simple faith say, Yep,

that's true, He was a man and he was also God come in the flesh

as a man. He went through all the life

experiences that each and every one of us go through.

So he he could say, I know exactly how you feel, but he

also became the source of our deliverance because when he was

obedient on the death and rose from the dead, he ever lives to

make intercession for us. He sent us the Holy Spirit to

empower us. And so the God part lets us know

we can be an overcomer in this life.

Now having said that, I want to go today's story from Joshua

Joshua 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1, beginning with this admonition that Joshua was given

as they started going into the prom.

The Lord said, the book of the law shall not depart from your

mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may

observe to do according to all that is written in it.

But then you will make your way prosperous.

Then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you?

Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid nor be

dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Now again, this is very important for us to know.

He was given 2 admonitions. Remember the Scriptures.

He was called the Law of Moses at that time, what was called

the Torah later on. We need to be a people that

understand the power of living in the Word of God.

As a little boy, even in Sunday school, reading about these

Bible stories about the people I've been sharing about, as

we've been talking about Joshua and Jacob and Abraham, different

ones of the Bible. There's so much that we can

learn. And this is important for us to

know that just by reading the Scriptures and following that,

it's going to give us a good life.

It will give us, just like God said to Joshua, good success.

And I've shared this all my life because I said, you know, the

Bible says the way of the transgressor is hard.

Sometimes people think it's difficult to be a Christian.

Sometimes it's difficult to make these certain choices that God's

expecting of us. And we get this idea that being

a Christian is a burden for us. But in reality, the Bible says

when you know the truth, it's going to make you free.

How you know, Jesus said follow my word and you're going to have

blessing in your life. Amen, Amen.

That's important to understand. But not only do we need the

Scripture. When I was 17 years of age, I

received the baptismal Holy Spirit, received prophetic

enablements if you would, and began to learn about the power

of hearing the voice of God. And that's a second component

that we promote for the people of God to understand.

Some people think that's not for them.

Maybe Pastor Lauren hears the voice of God or some of the

leaders in the church. No, Jesus said my sheep know my

voice. It is not that hard.

And it says in another place, trust in the Lord with all your

heart. Lean not into your own

understanding in all your ways acknowledge him and he will

direct your steps. And so when you were learning to

hear the voice of God, it isn't a scary walk that we should look

at it or that we're going to make a mistake.

Because if you acknowledge God in your heart and seek his

voice, how you know He has the responsibility to get you

through the situation. Because in the end, it isn't

about your ability to hear something.

It's God's ability working through us.

So we just have to trust Him. The voice of God feeds us.

Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that

proceeds from the mouth of God. And the voice of God will lead

us, and we have to understand that.

So this is where Joshua was in the story that we're reading

today about going in and taking the city of Jericho.

Because the city of Jericho was securely shut up because of the

children of Israel. None went out, none came in.

The Lord said to Joshua, see, I've given you Jericho into your

hand, it's king and the mighty men of valor, you shall March

around the city. All you men of war, you should

go all around the city once. This you shall do 6 States and

seven priests shall bear 7 trumpets of Rams horns before

the ark. But the 7th day you shall March

around the city 7 times, and what?

The priest shall blow the trumpet.

Now this is so important here because he's getting divine

instruction. Now remember he won this battle

40 years earlier. He had been Moses's security

man, if you would, and he had for 40 years LED as the

commander of the armies because there were a lot of conflicts

that they had in those forty years in the wilderness.

But now as he's leading the people of God, God's giving him

this strategy to take the land and take the city, if you would.

In this particular case, he's saying now I want you to bring

the ark of the covenant. I want you to bring the priests

and they're going to lead the army as they March around the

city 6 days and one time a day, on the 7th day, seven more

times. And I can imagine myself because

I always like to think about the human side of things that Joshua

might have thought, OK, I know God, I've got to listen to your

voice. But aren't those priests going

to be just in the way? I'm, you know, if you were a

soldier, you would be thinking it'd be better not to have the

priests out there in the battle if you would.

Why don't we put them over on the sidelines and let them pray

over us over there? But Joshua knew about the voice

of God, and so he understood. Well, I've got to follow these

divine instructions. And to me, this is a picture, if

you would. That's why I love these stories

of the Bible, because it gives us a picture of how important it

is for us to bring both the natural and the spiritual

components together if we want to walk fully into the victory

that God has for us. And that was necessary then and

it's necessary today. Jesus had the natural and the

spiritual, and He teaches us to walk in this way.

And so divine instructions as we follow God are going to have the

component of both a natural and a spiritual aspect of what we're

supposed to do. But as we think about that, we

want to realize how important it is to bring God into every area

of our life. He should be your partner in

your family. He should be your partner in

your finances, your business, your vocation, whatever it is

you're doing in life. I know God wants to be your

partner. Church, Amen.

And what a partner we have when we have God on our side.

So the priests and then instruments, why is it?

Why are we going to play music? They're not that bad that

they're going to scare the people in Jericho.

You know, Jericho was a city that had high walls.

And even if you study archaeology, they'll even tell

you there was a city of Jericho. Of course, they'll disagree with

the Bible scenario for sure, but they will tell you it was this

is city famous for very high walls and very thick walls.

How do you come into a country and take a city like that?

As you notice in the Scriptures, it says they close their door.

They were shut up because they're like, we can make it.

You'll give up sooner or later, but you're going to know you're

not going to get over these walls and have a victory for us.

Now, having said that, I want you to see how important this

scripture is from this context where it says, for though we

walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.

So we do have a natural walk, but we have to understand that

the power of warfare, if you would, is not a fleshly one.

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but what mighty

and God for the pulling down of strongholds, casting down

arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the

knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the

obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience

when your obedience is fulfilled.

Now this is a hard thing for us to face so often times, because

guess what? We're natural people.

When it uses the word carnal, we sometimes think that that's just

a bad word. No, carnal just means it's

coming from your flesh rather than from your spirit.

There is a place for the natural, again as there is the

place of the spiritual. But one of the problems we have

in the natural is we make a separation in the 2.

And that's why we have to learn to bring these things together.

This is especially important in our prayer life because often

times when we're praying, we look at our situation from a

natural perspective. We come up with what we think

God needs to do and able to get His work accomplished.

And we usually start praying from our expectation of what's

necessary. In church, we don't necessarily

know what is necessary. Amen.

That's why I the funeral I use a store and I wanted to share it

again today. Different side of it a little

bit here. When I was sharing about my

sister-in-law Sherry and my brother Bill because my brother

Bill had some problems. One of them was excessive

drinking. I can say it because he would be

the one to tell you how God delivered him out of that.

But he had a filled marriage and life is kind of hard on him.

So we were like praying God send him the right wife.

I've often told the people how important it is for us to have a

savior. I said women need a savior, but

men usually need a savior and a Good Wife too.

Can I hear any men on that? But anyway, yeah, there's some

claps there. You know what I'm talking about.

But anyway, when Sherry come along, she was she didn't

exactly fit the bill, if you would.

The problem was that she liked to party like my brother, but

she even went to church. We're like, this is going to

cause confusion if you would. And I remember when they got

married. I was the best man for that

wedding. And I remember, I don't remember

how the conversation came about, but she said something about you

were standing next to the baptismal.

And I'm like, I wasn't standing next to a baptismal.

Yes, you were. No, I wasn't.

Don't you think I would know if I was standing next to a

baptismal? Well, I'd never been in a church

where they didn't immerse like we do.

This is a church where a little dabba do you, if you ever

remember that commercial from a long time ago.

So I couldn't have fathomed what they were talking about.

But yes, I was actually standing next to the baptismal, but it

wasn't what I expected. But anyway, we went through the

marriage ceremony, went to the reception, and it was a German

family background from the religious tradition they were

part of. And so I was quite shocked as

they started, they said we're going to have the pastor come up

and he's going to bless the beer.

My brother had a drinking problem.

Last thing he needed was blessed beer.

I don't know what that would do to you.

So I'm like, Oh my God, my God, why have you forsaken us?

So, you know, that was in 1972, and it was 1978 when Sherry

found the Lord and my brother Bill found the Lord, and we

began to experience change in their life.

But it's so amazing to me that we would have never in a million

years thought Sherry was the answer to our prayers.

And it didn't happen overnight. Amen.

But God did the work and it was a good thing that we saw.

So we have to realize how important it is for us to

recognize that will. God's ways are not our ways.

His thoughts are not our thoughts.

Amen. Church, but when we follow him,

we will always see that his word comes to pass.

Now I want you to notice that this scripture puts the onus on

us. What's onus?

I want to use that word for you to remember, perhaps because

that means when the responsibility is on you.

Now, that's important to understand because in that

Scripture it's talking about warfare, it's talking about

spiritual warfare, but in the end it says when your obedience

has been made complete, God will avenge all disobedience.

In other words, as you're going through that situation and

you're wanting God to do what you want Him to do, don't think

about how you're going to make everything happen.

Let God's Word work in you first because when you allow God to do

the work in you, then what happens is you release the power

of God in your situation. That's very difficult for us to

understand what we're wanting to see God move.

A church is something that's essential if you really want to

be a person that walks in the fullness of everything that God

has for your life. And I believe it's so important

that we understand how important it is that we would be a people

with a divine strategy and our strategizing.

Jesus said, remember this, Behold, I send you out as sheep

in the midst of wolves. Therefore be what as servants

and harmless as doves. Now, the word wisdom is the key

point. That's why I actually want to

repeat that story about Sherry because I've used it a lot over

the years, because it's so important that we understand

that as we're walking with God, He wants to teach us wisdom.

If you're thinking the same today as you did 20 years ago,

you're not letting God teach you wisdom.

I love my stories, not because sometimes that they can be funny

or even interesting, but every story I have is a story about

how God taught me some wisdom since 1978 when I saw the

miracle of the new creation in my brother and in my

sister-in-law. Since that time I realized how

that when you pray and ask God to do something, it may not look

anything like you thought it would look, but you don't give

up. Sometimes it's kind of fun to

kind of stand back and say, what's God going to do with this

mess? God, it looks like you made it

worse, but you're actually making it better.

How is this going to work out? Give the Lord a praise on that

chart. And I really believe with all my

heart, I preach a few weeks on a Wednesday.

This is the time of wisdom. 7 is a number of perfection in the

Bible. That's why you notice in this

story and the Bible talks about the sevenfold anointing that

would be upon the Lamb and the Isaiah Chapter 11.

Isaiah 11 · chapter mention

It tells us that part of that is wisdom, it's counsel, it's

knowledge. There's a whole new level.

Of strategizing that God wants to bring the church to, but we

have to understand how His wisdom works.

Sometimes he will just give us wisdom.

The Bible says if anybody needs wisdom, let him ask God and he

will give it liberally and not hold anything back.

But God is asking us to go on to maturity so that in the process

of our development, we have gained wisdom through our

experiences. So when I share with you the

things I got to speak and I don't just talk about

experimental type stuff anymore when I preach to the Bible like

I may have when I was 24, but I found out that this works and

that wisdom that God gives to us, we need to walk in fully.

Now the word harmless as a dove. And again, I often like to say

this, sometimes we have to look at the deeper meaning.

And I have a computer program where I can just click a word

and it'll give the original meaning of the word.

And in this particular case, when it says harmless as a dove,

it actually means having no mixture.

Sometimes we mix together the natural and the spiritual, and

we have to understand that God wants us to keep it the way it's

supposed to be, which is very separate.

And because when we do that, we're not acting like a serpent,

but we're strategizing like a serpent.

What does a serpent do? Well, he crawls through the

grass, through the jungle, through the wherever he is, and

he's Slytherin about looking for prey, and he has a plan of

action on how it's going to come to pass.

We are supposed to be that people of wisdom, but in the

end, how do we respond? We have to respond as a dove, if

you would, because our goal is not to be like a serpent and

swallow our prey. Our goal is to be a blessing

everywhere that God has called us to be.

Amen, Church. And so it's very easy for us to

get mixture in what we're doing. That's why I often share with

people, I don't have political, political things that I talk

about in church. Now some people will say I don't

like that church. They talk politics.

Well, I do talk about issues that political significance.

For instance, how do you know abortion's a moral issue?

If you talk about it outside the church, they're going to think

you're Republican. If you're against abortion.

Why? Well, that's the way the

political thing has around. But for us, it's a moral issue.

So we can't not talk about it because it seems political.

Amen. So we do talk about moral

issues. Sometimes God will give me

prophetic insight, as I shared about the last election, and I

know it's true, so I'm going to share that too.

But I also understand that in the process of that, I want to

be very, very careful because there is a place of you can

accomplish certain things in the political process, but when you

come to church, you have to understand we have something

much bigger than that. Amen.

I said, you know we have something much bigger than that.

Now if I start make the church issue about politics, what

you're going to do is you're going to mix them in your head.

I'm going to have a strategy so that I have you being people

that understand how to take this power out there, to be the

priest in front of the army. Amen, Church, because we can't

lose in our spiritual warfare that God sets us out on.

I've been observing politics since I was 10 years old, and I

know that politics accomplishes very little when a person

warrants for president. Everybody gets all excited to

talk about the issues, but they all tell you that after the

first half of the first year, that's about the end for most

presidents as you go through the history of things, because

there's this kind of window of honeymoon, if you would, and

then everybody goes crazy and goes their own way, whatever.

But politics has a limited place.

We encourage people to be involved in politics because

that's your civil responsibility and there's authority we have in

that. So it's important to get

involved in the issues. But when you come here, I want

you to understand we have something much more powerful

than politics that can get the victory.

Amen. And sometimes that's going to

show up in this way. But when we do what God wants us

to, it empowers us for every area of life.

Unfortunately, in the 1980s there was a well known Christian

figure who was a head of a broadcasting company that was

built for the purpose of having a Christian witness to the

world. And he got real involved in what

was called the Christian Coalition, which is an amazing

idea. Get Christians involved in

politics. That is necessary and it should

be true. But unfortunately, after a

while, he gave up his position of minister to run for the

president. And when he ran for that, he

lost. And so really after that, he was

known as the guy who tried to be present who wasn't.

And it changed the perspective of how the world looked at him.

They had a channel that they had purchased in order to have

Christian content was called the Family Channel, so that there

could be something that would be where Christians who go and say,

hey, here's a Christian version. But they sold that to ABC and

the Disney Corporation and it was still the family child.

But how many know they do have a different idea of our family.

The point of that is, is we have to learn to strategize and

understand well, this is how far we go in this area and this is

how we can release the power of God in this area.

And so we have to understand how this is in order for us to

strategize. And I believe that we're going

to have strategies in this state for the body of Christ.

We're going to see a great awakening in the United States

of America because we're going to be a part of a worldwide

visitation church. But we do have to be mature

enough to understand how God wants us to do it.

So I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open and

read the scroll or to look at it.

But one of the elders said to me, Do not weep.

Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has

prevailed to open the scroll and to lose his seven seals.

And I looked and behold, in the midst of the throne of the four

living creatures, in the midst of the elders, stood a lamb as

though had been slain, having 7 horns, 7 eyes, which are the

seven spirits of God. Now this is important because it

talks about a lamb, and it talks about the lion of the tribe of

Judah. Now most Christians see this,

that when Jesus Christ came to the earth the first time, he

came as a lamb that died for the sins of the world, and that one

of days he's going to come back as a lion and he's going to

subdue all the enemies of God. Well, that's not the way you

should look at that picture because he saw the Lamb on the

throne and he knew him to be the lion of the tribe of Judah.

Because you have to understand something.

When you act as a lamb, you release the power, the power of

a lion. When Jesus Christ died on the

cross, the Bible says that He destroyed the powers of the

enemy. He nailed principalities and

powers to the cross because when He was obedient, it subdued all

of the disobedience. We don't yet see all these

things come to pass because why? God has put it in our hands to

finish the job if you would, but He gave us this example how to

release power. As a local church, I've often

told you the story about how we bought these 52 acres here next

I-75. God wanted us have a very

visible piece of property. When we first began to

negotiate, it looked very good and found out the property had

been sold to somebody else. We went to prayer about that.

Guess what? We ended up getting the

property. Amen.

God's faithful. Well, after we got the 52 acres,

we had a plan drawn up. We went to the Township and said

this is our plan, We're going to build a church.

You know what they said? That's the lands too valuable to

use for a church. We were thinking maybe medical

use or something like that. And they basically said no.

Well, I'm like, they're not going to say no to us.

God gave us a land. He's going to give us a permit

somewhere along the way. And so we were allied to all the

people. We went door to door.

We took up a petition. We had a 9798% approval from the

community as we were reaching out to them when they had a

board meeting, we had hundreds of people there waving our flags

and everything like that. We're all excited about God

giving us the victory. And the Lord said to me, I

didn't tell you, do all that. I want you to submit to the

government. I'm like, what?

Go back and tell them, what do you want us to do?

We're going to do it. And when we went back, it was

kind of humiliating one way because they said, oh, we don't

want that building for sure. And they wanted to look more

like an Independence Township kind of look.

And then there was one lady especially there, she loves

windows. I love windows too.

I could live in a glass house and it would make me happy,

would make my wife Bonnie happy because she'd be bigger on how

she could shade the place so when no one could look in.

But anyway, but when you're building an auditorium, it's

better not to have windows so that you can control the light.

So people aren't there going like this because the light's in

their eyes from the sunlight, whatever.

But anyway, they told us all these things and whatever they

said, well, that's exactly what we did.

They downsized what we were doing, everything they did.

I just figured, well, this is God's hand to do what He wants

us to do now. It worked out well because we

did make some changes, adding balcony and different things

that we were able to do to kind of fit us at the time.

And we were experiencing phenomenal growth then as the

Lord has blessed us along the way.

But also something else happened as we've we're feeling God

leading us to reach out more to the community.

But we purchased a building in Waterford, which is now the

Mount Zion Community Center. And at the time we had the

Clarkson Christian Association, which is a ministry that we had

on Sashabaw Road. And we actually bought a

building that was a store that I worked in when I was a kid.

So that was kind of fun for me to buy the place.

I used to work for Jesus. And it impressed the former

owners as well because they're like, wow, this is amazing what

you've done. Now when we went back to get

approval for the Community Center, because we were serving

the community, even our most vocal person that was against

this changed to our side and we had pretty well unanimous

approval to open up that center. And it worked out nice because

there was a time when all the drug stores were buying up

corner properties. So, so that building was

starting to have some severe problems to it because it was an

old building. Somebody came in and offered us

twice what we paid for. We paid 2 million, they offered

4 million. I mean, no, that's a good

business deal. But anyway, that gave us the

money to buy the building on Baldwin build, add to our plan

at the time for our theater, which has been very helpful for

our ministries here. Anyway, God has this strategy

that involves business and involves all kinds of different

things, and he's the best financial officer you could ever

have. Amen, Church.

It's true. And what we found out is that

when we came to add on this building, man, this would have

been explosion number one in Clarkson at the time, but we had

full approval and they even approved us to not do some

things that would have cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars

and as opposed to sidewalks or whatever like that.

So anyway, God showed us this is part of our wisdom.

And that's why it's important to repeat our stories about wisdom

because guess what? We learned something, if you

submit, God will release his power along the way.

So it's Lamb power that brings the victory.

Isn't that an amazing thought? So full surrender brings full

power. I've always been a person who

did whatever I was told. I obeyed my parents.

That's why it was always funny when I was hanging around with

my brother Bill because he didn't obey the parents

whatever. And I was a when I became an

employee. I do whatever I was told when I

was in school and with God. I've always been obedient

person. It's just how I was created and

it's not any effort for me. And I've also have a desire to

serve people. I enjoy serving people.

And so I'm an obedient servant. Now that would make me look

passive, but I'm not passive at all.

I can be as hard as nails if it's what God has told me to do.

But anyway, I said all that say that when I get to heaven, I

don't think I'm going to get any special awards for being

obedient because that was a natural for me.

I enjoy it. No special accolades for being a

servant. I always enjoy doing that, but I

tell you, it has helped me on planet Earth.

I've always had Favor. When I wanted to join the MCS

program that I was involved in, I didn't have any of the checks

in the box that would say you could get in, but when I went

and talked to them, I got in. I can look back through my life

and see how I got Favor everywhere.

I was getting promoted all the time, and guess what?

I've always had followers. When we started the church at

age 24, I had people twice my age age believing what I said

God had spoken. I always have had authority

based upon my willingness to be this way.

And so I certainly already get rewards if you would.

But I have learned by example that God's Word works.

Full surrender brings what full power Jesus said.

You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and

hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your

enemies. Blessed those who are cursed

you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who

spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of

your Father in Heaven. For he makes his Son rise on the

evil and on the good, sends reign on the just and also the

unjust. You see, we are in an upside

down Kingdom. How you know?

It doesn't make any sense to bless those who persecute you,

but we found out it works. When you apply the Kingdom

principle, it works and you will see this every step of the way.

That's why we have to be people of strategy, because it's so

easy for us to think from a natural perspective and not

realize how God is able to turn things around.

When you walk in this upside down Kingdom and you understand

how it works, sometimes there's a principle in the Bible called

the law of iniquity. And what that means is when

people disobey God, He releases them to do what they want to do

and the excess can actually bring them to a place of

repentance. In our history as a nation,

sometimes God has given us leaders that you wouldn't think

as a Christian would be a good one.

But what it has done from time to time is release an excess

that in the end people see the fruit of their choices and they

say we don't want that anymore. We're seeing that in our country

right now. People are saying no, we don't

want that anymore. Well, sometimes God has this

strategy quite different than what we expect.

So we have to learn the wisdom of the upside down Kingdom so

that we can truly be the sons of our Father who is in heaven.

In Joshua chapter 6 it says so the people shouted when the

Joshua 6 · chapter mention

priest blew the trumpets. And it happened when the people

heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a

great shout that the wall fell down flat.

Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before

him, and they took the city and they utterly destroyed all that

was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, oxen,

sheep and donkey. With what the edge of the sword?

I put this as the follow up. You see when they shouted the

walls came down. But how do you know after the

walls came down, they had to go in with the army and fight the

war? Sometimes people get all excited

because of the walls come down. We get involved in the shouting

and excitement of seeing the walls store down, but we don't

go in and take the city. That's the analogy I want you to

see because in the charismatic movement, we used to shout and

we used to be happy and excited and praised would lift this up

into the heavenlies, but we didn't go out into the highways

and the byways and to compel them to come in like God said.

So God says don't stop when the walls fall down.

Take advantage of the blessing. That's why it's important to mix

the natural and the spiritual. God can bless you financially,

but how do you know if you don't steward what He's given to you,

that blessing's going to do you no good.

So that's how we take the natural and the spiritual and

put them together. And God saying it's time to go

in with a full shout and see the victory.

And it came to pass on the 7th. Day 7 speaks of completion.

They rose early about the dawning of the day church.

This is the dawning of the new day.

And they marched around the city 7 times in the same manner.

And that day they only marched around the city 7 times.

And the 7th time it happened, when the priest blew the Romans,

the Joshua said to the people, Shout for the Lord has given you

the city. I want you to bow your heads for

just a moment and I want you to hear this in your spirit.

Thus saith the Lord, Shout for the Lord has given us the city.

I believe that we're going to see things begin to transpire in

our local area, in the world church, there's a shout.

You might not hear this shout if you're just listening in the

natural, but if you have an ear to hear what the Spirit is

speaking, you hear the shout of heaven and God's saying it's

time to take the city. With every head bowed and every

eye close. I like for you for just a moment

to think about your life and say, God, give me your divine

strategy. I don't want to be flesh and

spirit alone. I want to be flesh and spirit,

natural and spiritual together. I want you to show me how to

make this work. There's a level of wisdom,

Father, that you're bringing us to.

And Lord, give us the capacity to begin to walk in this new

level that you have for us. We ask it in Jesus mighty name,

Amen. This is Pastor Lorne Coverbius

from Mount Zion Church. We thank you for joining us

today and invite you to connect with our church family by

visiting mountzion.org and following us on social media.

God bless you.