WALKING IN VICTORY

By Pastor Michael Olawore
New Wine Church, London

Sunday 23 October 2011

Foundation Scripture: Matthew 16: 13-18
Over the past few weeks we have been looking at Jesus’ assurance in Matthew 16:18 that the gates of hell shall not prevail. Last week we understood that related to this statement was Jesus’ promise to give us the keys to the kingdom, illustrating the truth that to every problem there is a solution and the fundamental importance therefore of knowing who we are, knowing what we have been given and know what to do with what we have got. Today, I want to unravel these truths further and in particular, for us to reach a collective understanding that we are destined to walk in victory, irrespective of the circumstances that we face.
It is essential for this truth to be settled firmly in your spirit: you are destined to walk in victory and that is the conclusion of the matter. Romans 8: 37 states: ‘Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.’  This confirms that we are called to take charge and we must never permit situations and circumstances to overwhelm us. In Genesis we understand that God created us and gave us dominion which means that we have authority. Jesus’ statement in Matthew 16:18 that He will give us the keys to the kingdom of heaven and whatever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever we loose on earth will be loosed in heaven further establishes this truth. The essence of these scriptures is that we are in charge and circumstances are subject to our prerogative, a reflection of the enormous power that has been bestowed on us.
God’s plan for you is that you should walk in victory; this is our mandate. We have no business in engaging in prayer if that were not the case as prayer is the mechanism by which we enforce on earth what God has already established for us. There is no situation that can arise for which you have not been already been empowered by God to come out victoriously. Psalm 23:4 states ‘Yea, thought I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for You are with me; Your rod and your staff comfort me.’ We must understand that regardless of how the circumstances appear, we are only walking through the valley of the shadow of death – it is not our destination and in addition, we can be assured that God is with us, His rod protects us and His staff guides us. The fact that you are facing challenges does not mean that you are not walking in victory. In fact, if we do not face challenges, warfare, contention and battles, it is difficult to see how we can declare ourselves to be victorious. Many of us love the idea of victory but do not like the process by which our victory is established and want the battles of life to pass us by but it simply does not work that way.
I want to make it clear to you today that it is okay to experience difficulties and challenges; what is not okay is to be come out of the battle in defeat – in fact, I forbid it! In the realm of the spirit, victory is not measured by the process but by the eventual outcome of what you go through.  If we assessed victory in terms of the process rather than the eventual outcome we would conclude that Jesus’ death on the cross marked His defeat but we know that the outcome of the process, namely Him being resurrected and seated right hand of the Father represented an indisputable victory.
Everyone will go through rough patches in life; it doesn’t mean that they’ve been cursed or have no faith. Jesus made clear in John 16:33 ‘In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’  If you had lost the battle, how could He possibly instruct you to rejoice? Jesus Himself is the ultimate example of victory, despite having faced the humiliation and suffering of the cross, now being seated at the right hand of the Father. The process produces the victory. The pit was the process by which Joseph was brought to the palace. I am sure that when he excitedly recounted his famous dream to his father and brothers as a young man, he could never have imagined the hardship that he would face before that dream was realised. God often speaks of the end of a thing but will rarely tell you the process by which that end will be realised.
God has declared the outcome and has awarded you the winner’s trophy before the competition has even begun. He has brought you out in victory and you simply cannot be held down, whatever you may be going through. God cannot be bound and in that He lives in you, you cannot be bound either. Victory is your covenant right. Proverbs 24: 16 says ‘For a righteous man many fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity’. Micah 7: 8 says ‘ Do not rejoice over me my enemy; when I fall, I will arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me,’. You are assured therefore that regardless of the situation that you face, regardless of how many times you may fall, you cannot stay down. You will arise and walk in victory.
In life you will face storms and tribulations, circumstances in which you will experience days that look like the darkest of nights but be assured that God is not unaware of what you are going through. The outcome has been pre-determined and the story has been concluded: your end is a good one. Psalm 139: 16 says ‘Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.’ From this we can understand that God has concluded the conclusion of your story before the beginning; everything about your life was concluded before your life began, in fact, the beginning was only permitted to begin after God had concluded the conclusion. God will not start a thing and not conclude it, therefore you can be assured that your life is a finished work and nothing takes Him by surprise. He is aware of every situation and nothing perplexes Him. In Jeremiah 29: 11 says ‘For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not evil, to give you a future and a hope.’ Despite the pain, hurt and the frustration, He knows.  Our challenge however is to reconcile the uncomfortable truth that affliction is a tool in the hand of God. We see this as early on in scripture as in Genesis where the Spirit of God was there in the midst of the chaos and further, in the life of Jesus, whose experience of being tortured, mocked, whipped, abused and eventually crucified and buried, was part of God’s plan.
My assignment today is to release the spirit of victory over you and to make you understand that the fact that you go through difficult circumstances does not mean that God is not there. Jeremiah 29:11 arises in the context of the affliction of people of Judah at the hand of Nebuchadnezzar which was so extreme that the people cried out to God in anguish. God’s response was to confirm that His thoughts towards the people were of good and not evil, essentially the pain was part of His plan. If you fail to understand this truth, it is very easy to step outside the will of God for your life or to take action aimed at ‘helping God out’.  In Jeremiah 29:10 God confirmed to His people that after 70 years were competed in Babylon, He would visit His people and perform His good word to them and causes them to return to their land. From this we can understand that the problems that we face have an expiry date and will not last forever; further, in His promise to visit His people we can be assured of His presence, the presence which causes the mountains to melt like wax and also, in His promise to cause the people to return to their land, we can be assured of restoration.
This leads me to the core of my message today, namely how to walk in victory. The victory walk can be broken down in to three key components: the walk of faith, the walk of hope and the walk of confidence and I want to examine each of these in turn:

1. The Walk of Faith

In Habakkuk 2: 4, Romans 1: 17, Galatians 3: 11 and Hebrews 10: 38 we are told ‘the just shall live by faith.’ This means that for those who are justified by the blood of Jesus, faith forms the basis of their lives. These scriptures represent four witnesses and from the repetition of this truth, we can safely conclude that God is trying to get our attention. We live by faith, not by knowledge or by our experiences; faith is the way in which we live. Faith releases God into your situation. It is the substance of what you hope for and the evidence of what is not seen; the tangibility of the intangible, the raw material of the things that we hope for.
Romans 10: 17 says ‘Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God’; we must understand the inextricable link between faith and the word of God. The word of God sown in our heart generates faith, which is the raw material which produces what we hope for. Experiences do not generate faith; only the word of God generates faith. Everything therefore begins and finds its origins in the word of God. Once the word of God is sown, faith is released and what we hope for is manifested.
In the story of creation in Genesis to each of God’s ‘Let there be’ we saw a corresponding ‘and there was’. Everything starts with the word and therefore we must never tire of confessing the word of God as this is the source of our victory. The more that the word of God is poured into a negative situation the more the negative situation is displaced and replaced with the manifestation of what you desire to see, namely what the word of God promises you. I challenge you to be a good, diligent and consistent student of the word.

2. The Walk of Hope

Hope, we are told in Hebrews 6: 19, is the anchor for the soul. It is this that brings about stability and keeps you going. You must determine therefore not to lose your hope regardless of the circumstances with which you are faced.

3. The Walk of Confidence

The story of the three Hebrew boys Shedrach, Meshach and Abednego in the book of Daniel, and their determination not to bow down and worship the idol at Nebuchadnezzar’s instruction and threat of being burned alive is a perfect illustration of confidence. They were confident that God would deliver them and were therefore able to respond to Nebuchadnezzar’s threats in Daniel 3: 15-16 ‘We have no need to answer you in this matter..our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and He will deliver us from your hand O King’. Their confidence in God however came from an intimate knowledge of Him. Your intimacy with God will form the basis of your confidence in Him.
Be assured therefore that, regardless of the challenges that you face you are mandated and empowered to be victorious. Your walk of faith, being grounded in the word, your walk of hope, which brings about stability and the ability to keep going and your walk of confidence, borne of your intimate knowledge of God guarantees that you come out with your hands raised in victory.