Not Unredeemed

From Victory For Victory Part One 
From Victory For Victory Part Two 

Victory, for the Christian, comes down to worth, trust, and position. To start walking in victory we must believe that we are His sons and daughters. We must trust Him that we are what He says we are – not what we feel and think we are.

The most incredible thing about faith and belief is that they are gifts from the Spirit and we can ask for them (1 Cor. 12)! Even here the Lord does not ask or require that we do it on our own. He says, “You need faith to understand your position in Me so that you can fight from victory for more victory.”

He doesn’t ask anything of us that He doesn’t provide the answer for. <— Tweet this

Our greatest stumbling block to fighting from a position of victory is trying to fight on our own, or trying to take over what God is  doing. We often don’t trust Him to finish the work He has started in us. We mask it by saying “I don’t trust myself to not …” And while it is good to have a healthy respect for our weaknesses, what we are really saying is “God, the work you are doing in my heart isn’t enough, I don’t trust that the work you are doing in me will stick.” That line of thinking will handicap us far greater than we can ever imagine!

While God wants to take us to new heights and depths with Him – gaining victory over new territories, we are stuck guarding a piece of ground long conquered and the presence of our distrust (aka –pride), opens that territory back up to sin because we are back to fighting for victory again, thinking we can do this by our own determination.

Twice in the books of Timothy, Paul urges him to guard the deposit that was put in him. We do have to guard the things the Lord does in us but Timothy is instructed to guard them by the power of the Holy Spirit – not by his own strength and or will. The Lord has impeccable judgment. He will not waste His time or cast His pearls before swine. If He is doing something in you – enabling you to fight from victory – than He has counted you worthy. 1 Tim 1:12 says that Timothy was judged faithful for ministry.

Oswald Chambers in his book Approved Unto God says:

“If we have the idea that we must face the difficulties with pluck, we have never recognized the truth that He has counted us faithful; it is His work in me He is counting worthy, not my work for Him.”

He counts His work in us worthy. Why shouldn’t we? <— Tweet this

Counting what the Lord has done for us as enough, worthy and true is what makes the difference of whether or not we will be able to fight and overcome sin in our lives. It is the difference between fighting for victory and fighting from victory.

What position are you fighting from right now?

From Victory For Victory  – Read Part One Here.

We will only win the war against sin when we understand who we are and what sin means to us now that we are His.

“We did not believe that [the sin] this man had done was evidence of his true identity. Paul said we once were darkness, and we now are light. Just because you have darkness in you doesn’t change your true identity.” (Danny Silk – Culture of Honor)

You see, sin is a bit like a nail.

“…as we were walking, I stepped on a board and a nail went through my foot. I lifted my foot and saw that there was a board attached to the bottom of my shoe. I could clearly see that a nail had entered my foot. But never once did I think. “I’m a nail!”  I was however very interested in getting the nail out of my foot. And when a child of the light discovers darkness in him or her, it does force the issue: What are you going to do?” (Danny Silk – Culture of Honor) <— Tweet this.

Our fight against sin comes down to our identity in Christ. Knowing and understanding who we are in Christ determines what battle position we start in. Do you start thinking “I’m a nail!” or do you start thinking, “I’m a child of God and He has the power to change me.”?

In our battle against sin these are the mindsets of the different positions:

Fighting for victory thinks: 

• I’m a sinner
• I’m not worth it
• I’m broken
• I’m getting /doing better!
• I can do this!
• I’m not good enough
• I must…

Fighting from victory thinks:

• I’m a saint
• He died so I can change
• I’m whole
• He is changing me!
• God save me!
• He redeemed me
• He did…

When we start fighting from victory, for more victory, we start by abiding in Christ and what He has done for us. Ecc 3:14-15 says:

I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

Think about these verses in the context of victory–they depict a beautiful picture displaying part of God’s character. The victory that the Lord has endures forever – it’s complete! We can’t add anything to it or take anything away from it. <— Tweet this.

God bought the victory so we would fear Him and understand that He is God and we are not.

If we could bring about the change we wouldn’t need Him. Striving for victory on our own is trying to be God. It’s pride, and God resists the proud! No wonder we can’t change on our own no matter how hard we try. We will fail because the Lord is resisting us! (James 4). He, however, gives grace (the ability to change) to the humble. The ones who says, “God I can’t do this – I need you!”

A humble person is one who sees themselves as God sees them – both as weak and yet strong. In weakness we see His strength. The victory (our position in Christ) already is, has been, and will continue to be. And when sin drives the victory away – God seeks it for us. He renews us! The victory remains, when we walk out of it and drive it away, it still remains. He died to bring it back to us and now reminds us that the victory is already ours!

From Victory, For Victory concludes  with part 3 – read it here. 

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Life is a battle, whether we realize it or not and we are only given two choices for the battle:

(1) Whose side we are on.

(2) What position we fight from.

The letters of 1, 2 and 3 John draw very clear battle lines – either you are for Him (the Lord Jesus) or you are against Him and with the Devil. There is no in-between in this life. In 1 Timothy (1:18) Paul encourages him to “fight the battle well” and Ephesians 6 calls us to “put on the armor of God.”

All throughout Scripture, life is defined as a battle. 

As a Christian and follower of Jesus Christ, there are only two positions we fight from. We either:

(1) Fight from victory.

(2) Fight for victory.

The choice is ours. Christ chose the victory for us – and now invites us to walk in it. He invites us to fight from a place of victory, rather then always fighting for victory.

While the Lord asks us to fight new areas of sin in our lives, what we most often forget is He already won the battle against that sin. His love is stronger then death (Song of Solomon 8), it broke the curse of sin that brought death. He died to FREE us so we could walk in victory.

We must fight with the knowledge that only the Lord changes us and the victory is already ours, or we will lose the battle.

When we fight against sin from a position of victory we have all the power in the world on our side. When we are simply fighting for victory, we have only the power of our own determination. For a time, our determination may be able to change our behavior; but it does not change our hearts or our emotions (the way we see and feel about things).

Only Christ can change those things.

In Psalm 51 when David prays “create in me a clean heart Oh God” the Hebrew word for create here is “bara”. It means to create without a physical starting point, with only God as the subject. Essentially what it means is we cannot, in and of ourselves, create a clean heart. When God comes in and creates a clean heart in us, He doesn’t use any of us in the creation of our heart – He uses only Himself. He gives us Himself.

That is why we can fight from victory – because He does the work. Our behavior will always follow our hearts. We must fight for victory in our lives, but in order to do that in Christ’s strength and not our own, we have to start fighting from victory – which is what Christ has done for us.

Too often, as Christians, we know the Lord wants us to change and to fight against sin, so we immediately jump to position 2 – fighting for victory. We don’t realize that by missing step 1 – fighting from victory, we are now fighting sin in our own strength – missing the point of what Jesus did for us on the cross.

We are told to fight against sin – I’m not saying that fighting from victory means that we don’t fight sin anymore – we do – but how we fight changes. In Hebrews 12:4 we are told to fight even to the point of bloodshed against sin. But we can’t effectively fight against sin for victory, until we fight from victory. Fighting from victory means we start fighting from our position in Christ – as sons and daughters of God (John 1:12)- which gives us the position and the power to fight for more victory.

If we fight for victory without fighting from victory, we won’t win the battle. It’s only from within our position in Christ that the battle against sin can be won. <—- Tweet this.

Read part 2 here.

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