Priscilla Shirer – Stand in Victory

“At the end of the day, the enemy is going to be sorry he ever messed with you. You’re about to become his worst nightmare a million times over. He thought he could wear you down, sure that after a while you’d give up without much of a fight. Well, just wait till he encounters the fight of God’s Spirit in you. Because . . . This. Means. War.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman’s Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

Well, hey, y’all very glad to be here with you before you take your seat.
Why don’t I just go ahead and pray and ask the Lord to bless our time together in his word, Lord Jesus.
We thank you so much that you are indeed the one true God and that we have the privilege to hear your voice through your word.
We do not take it for granted, Lord, that you speak to us.
And so today, I’m praying that you open up every spiritual ear, Lord from the front of this room all the way to the back.
Lord, so that every single one of us will hear a direct personal word from God.
We are sitting on the edge of our seat this morning.
We cannot wait to hear what you will say in Jesus name. Everybody agreed and said, amen.
You may take your seat. It is great to be back with you again.
We love your pastor so much and we love the leadership of this church.
I love that I get got to be a part of the um women’s conference and now to be here with you on this incredible Father’s day.
It’s great. I um told my husband that today, even though it is not Father’s Day in the US, that he should celebrate Father’s Day because it’s Father’s Day in New Zealand.
And so he is, um, wasn’t able to come with me this time to New Zealand.
I’ll tell you why in just a few moments.
But, um, he is there celebrating a New Zealand’s Father’s Day in the US.
So I just brought a little photo along of them so that you can see uh my man and the boys.
Um all my, my big boys, that’s Jackson over there, Jerry Junior and Jude and then my husband of, of nearly 16 years now, right there in the center, center and so happy father’s day to him and to all of you, it is just a joy that, that I get to be a part of this day with you.
And the reason why Jerry was not able to come with me this time is because this week happened to fall on a week that was very busy in the boy’s lives.
There were a lot of firsts, a lot of new school year, things kind of happening during the course of this week.
One of those things is that baseball season was starting.
You need to know that my second son, Jerry Junior, which is this one here on the left side of the screen.
Jerry Junior is a baseball player, the other two.
Honestly, they’re still trying to find their niche if it’s going to be in sports at all.
And if so if, if baseball or American football or soccer or whatever, it’s going to be, we don’t know.
But what we, you know, for sure is that Jerry Junior loves baseball and honestly, I, I will brag on him just a little bit to tell you that he’s actually pretty good at it.
He’s a good baseball player. My boys, as I told the ladies this weekend are actually pretty big boys.
My 11 year old wears a size 11 men’s shoe.
Yeah, somebody come, help me feed these people.
My nine year old, a 10 year old just turned 10 years old.
He stands about eye height on me so far. He’s a kind of bulky kid. A hefty kid.
He’s got a lot of power behind him.
So when he takes those swings there at the base, he’s already hitting the ball over the fence when he gets a good hit.
Uh, he’s great at first base. Lots of catches, lots of stops.
And so he’s pretty good at the game of baseball.
And, um, he’s normally pretty confident about his game as well.
He’s, he knows that he has a lot to learn a long way to go, but he’s pretty confident about his game.
We like when baseball season starts, particularly spring ball, he plays in the fall, which our fall is right now.
We’re going into fall and then um, also in the spring and when the season starts, we actually really enjoy it.
And the reason why we mostly enjoy the season when it starts in the spring is because it’s not summer yet.
And in Texas it gets hot in the summer, it is a scorching kind of deathly heat.
It can be sometimes and you just don’t want to be outside sitting there for those games.
But in the spring time when, when the season starts, it’s fantastic.
We go out in the evening and it’s still cool.
There’s a breeze in the evening, the sun is going down. It feels great.
Even on Saturday mornings when it’s time for those games.
Most of the time in the spring time, it feels great.
But the season goes on for several months and inevitably the summer comes bringing with it that scorching summer heat and there you are as a parent sitting out there at those games in the summer trying to be happy that your kid is winning when really all you want to do is get out of the heat.
It normally is still ok though, if you’re just playing one game on a weekend, but toward the end of the season, you have the series, the end of the season tournaments.
Those of you that have Children that are in little league sports, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
You’re there for Friday, uh, Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday and you’re not just playing one game at a time.
You are playing up to three or four games every day that you are out there and there you sit watching your kid play trying to be excited that they’ve won this game and they’re going to the next game and then they’ve won that game and they’re going to the next game.
I don’t know if it is ever ok for you to pray your kid loses so you can go home and I will neither confirm nor deny that I have ever done that.
But I do recall last summer being out there at one of these, what they call the Little League World Series.
I don’t know why they call it the World Series.
They really just mean all the teams that live in your neighborhood are going to get together for a tournament at the end of the season.
And so we were playing one game after the next, after the next, on Thursday, maybe about three or four games.
The same on Friday. We got to th to Saturday and we were about halfway through the day.
They had won the last game.
So they were going on in the tournament, but it was at least time for a break.
So we all went off to a nice air conditioned restaurant.
We were so glad to just cool off for just a little while and get refreshed after lunch.
We came back to the baseball diamonds parked our car got out all of Jerry Junior, we call him J C, all of J CS equipment so that we could be ready for the next game.
We got all the stuff and we began to walk over to the field where this next game was going to be played.
And my son who’s normally confident was actually pretty excited about this next game.
He’d been talking about it on the car ride back over to the baseball diamonds.
He was excited about playing again.
But as we walked over toward the field where we were going to be playing this next game, I watched my son’s countenance change his chin that had been held up high.
All of a sudden I watched it start to hang low, his chest that had been poked out in enthusiasm about this next game.
All of a sudden I watched it kind of get sunken in and he hung his shoulders down and he started to wring his hands.
He actually looked nervous. I could not figure out what was going on, what had changed from when we had just gotten there in the car to now walking over to the baseball diamond.
I looked around me to try to figure out what was going on and then I spotted what I thought must be the problem.
The team we were about to play in the next game was seated underneath the shade of a tree.
They were all laid out in the grass just trying to get a little shade before the game began.
And when I got a good look at this team, I realized what the problem was.
My son’s team had faced this team earlier in the season.
And when this team had played my boys team, they had annihilated my son’s team.
It had been a complete upset. This is a team that is filled with serious baseball players.
You know, those kind of kids.
These are the kids that had the parents that when they gave birth to them, they put a on one hand and a baseball in the other.
Y’all know what I’m talking about.
The kind of team where they’ve got those serious parents that just aren’t messing around.
These boys were serious baseball players.
I, I I can never forget them because they had been so good when they had played my boys team before.
So when my son saw them, I watched his countenance change.
He got nervous because he had to face this team.
But as we walked right by them, we had to walk directly by them to get to the dugout on this particular baseball diamond.
As we walked past them, we overheard two of the team members whispering to each other.
They weren’t doing such a good job.
So we overheard them, one of them leaned over to the other and said, there goes that big kid from the other team, do you remember he was the one that hit the ball and it went over the fence.
You mean you mean the kid that was at first base?
The one that any of the outs we got, he was the one that caught all those balls and got the, got the outs.
The other team member said, yeah, that’s him. That’s Jerry Shire.
When my son heard his name pass the lips of the opposing team members, all of a sudden his head that was once hung down, all of a sudden it popped back up again.
All of a sudden he got his swag back.
In fact, we had to bring him down a few notches before the next game began because it is amazing how your countenance changes.
When you really understand what the enemy thinks about you.
It occurs to me that in a group this size, very many of us are facing our own battles.
And when we look at them, our tendency is to get insecure when we’re facing that difficulty in our marriage or in our finances or in our ministry or in our organizations in which we’re involved or whatever it is that you may be facing in your life.
It is our tendency to look at it and hang our head and discouragement because we feel overwhelmed just looking at it.
But when you really understand what the enemy thinks about you, it changes the way you face your battles.
You need to know that every time he sees a daughter or a son of the most high.
He is shaking in his boots because he really recognizes what your potential is.
You need to know that even if you don’t believe every single thing that the word of God declares to be true about you, the enemy does.
He knows, even if you don’t believe it, that you have been forgiven, he knows that you have already been given the victory.
He knows that you have been made competent by the spirit of God.
He knows that He is already under your feet. Listen to me.
He knows that he can form a weapon against you.
But he’s very clear on the fact that it will never prosper.
He understands and knows and believes every single thing that the word of God declares to be true about you and about me, he knows that you have been given power and authority that He will never ever have access to.
He knows that you have been made competent by the spirit of God.
What ashamed it would be y’all for the enemy to believe more about our potential than we do.
What ashamed it would be for you and I to face our battles with insecurity and lack of courage because we don’t even understand as clearly as the enemy of our soul does how potent and powerful we really are.
So it doesn’t mean that your troubles will change, your battles will change that you don’t have to play the baseball game.
It doesn’t mean you don’t have to play it.
It just means that the way you face it changes when you recognize that when God is for you who can be against you, there is a man in scripture who knows exactly how it feels to be overwhelmed, to be insecure, lacking courage.
Like some of you may be as you look toward what’s happening this week in your life or a decision that is approaching or a problem that is just imminent that you’re gonna have to deal with or a marital issue or an issue in your parenting.
And maybe honestly, it feels overwhelming to you. This guy can relate. His name is Gideon.
Gideon was facing an army of 145,000 mids.
The problem is there were only 300 with him, 300 going against 145,000. The ratio was 450-1.
Talk about being the underdog, talk about being overwhelmed in a position where you are just in over your head.
Gideon was in that position and he was insecure. He felt overwhelmed.
He lacked courage when we see him in the scriptures.
He is completely timid and shaking away in fear from what it is that is approaching in his life and in the life of the Israelites.
But God told him that before the battle started, he wanted him to creep down into uh the MidNite camp during the evening hours and he had Gideon position himself right outside of the tent of two members of the opposing team.
And when he heard these two men talking to each other, he overheard what they really thought about Gideon.
They, they knew that God was on Gideon’s side, they knew that that God was for them.
And so it didn’t matter what their army did, that they were going to come out successfully.
And when Gideon overheard what the enemy thought about him, all of a sudden, his chin was back up in the air.
His chest was poked out in confidence. The battle had not changed.
He changed because he knew that his great God was for him and that victory was already on his side.
And so with this new level of confidence, Gideon now faces the battle and in the passage, you and I are going to look out for just a few moments today.
He is going to teach us how to win a battle. Anybody interested in knowing how to win your battles.
If you have your Bible and you want to turn with me to judges chapter seven, you can or they will also put these verses on the screen in the book of judges.
You and I meet Gideon. He is one of about a dozen judges or so that ruled over Israel uh before they became ruled by kings.
One after the other. Gideon is one of the most famous. Another one is Samson or the the woman Deborah.
There are several names that we know in a list of others that ruled over the nation of Israel.
But Gideon is one of the most famous because of this battle of the 300 against the 145,000, the underdog taking the victory in these principles that his example is gonna show us today.
He is going to give us courage to know that no matter what circumstances we are facing.
We also have opportunity for victory judges.
Chapter 7, verse 15, right after he has heard the discussion between the two men from the opposing team.
This is what Gideon does. It came about that when Gideon heard the account of the dream and its interpretation.
That’s the conversation between the two men that he bowed in worship. Let’s just start right there.
Gideon is still facing a battle, there are still 145,000. He still only has 300.
He is still the underdog. The circumstances are still against him.
He’s still gonna have to swim up upstream to try to make this thing work out in his favor, but in the midst of impending danger with an army facing him and daring him to come after them.
We find that Gideon teaches us the primary way.
The very first thing that we have to be committed to doing if we’re gonna win battles in our life, he teaches us that the way to win a battle is to begin the battle on your knees to make a choice that even though the circumstance has not changed, that you are gonna thank God in advance for the victory that you’re anticipating him to give.
Do you know if I were your enemy? If I were?
And you do know we have a very real enemy, right? Y’all, we have a very real enemy.
Listen, if I were the enemy of the church of Jesus Christ, what I would wanna do is devalue the significance of the most potent weapon you have.
I would want to make you think that the most powerful and potent weapon that I know that you have, I would want to make you think there is no value in it that there is nothing powerful about it.
I would wanna make you lay it down and pursue other things instead of grabbing hold of what I know will be the thing to bring my kingdom down.
Do you know that worship is the most powerful tool that you have?
And if the enemy can get you and I to relegate worship to just Sunday mornings, he’s got us exactly where he wants us.
If the only time you worship God, you thank him, you are grateful toward him that you exclaim his grandeur and his authority and his glory in your life and in the life of your family.
If the only time you do that is when the praise team and the band is up here on Sunday morning.
Then you have not worshiped God enough.
It’s on your Monday mornings and your Tuesday afternoons and your Wednesday on the job and your Thursday running errands and your Friday out with your friends and your Saturdays.
It is in the regular rhythms of our everyday life in the face of our battles.
When we choose to get down on our knees and stretch our hands up high and say thank you Lord in advance for the victory that I know that you are going to grant me when you make a decision and when I make a decision, listen, I I’m talking about before the 145,000 have been cleared away.
I mean, you are looking at the problem. Your marriage is still a disaster.
Your child is still living in a way that is not a congruent with the way that you raise them.
You’re still having a hard time with your boss on your job when you are still looking at the problem, but you choose to worship your great God.
It is an affront to the enemy.
It lets him know that you are still, your allegiance is still firmly planted to God.
When you worship God, you roll out the red carpet, that’s what worship does.
It rolls out the red carpet for God himself to descend and march into your circumstances and the enemy knows that.
That’s why He wants you to do everything except begin the battle on your knees because he knows that, that if you do what Gideon did, if I do what Gideon did begin that battle by worshiping God in advance.
He knows he can’t do anything much with a person that chooses to live a lifestyle of worship where worship is not an event, it’s just what you do because you’re breathing today.
Do you remember when Joshua, Joshua uh took the Children of Israel into the promised land.
After 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, they finally crossed over the Jordan river and then they came to this problem called Jericho.
These walls were huge. They were Impenetrable.
They had no idea how they were going to be able to conquer uh Jericho.
They were waiting on this strategy from God that they thought would have to involve uh lots of brutality and force.
But, but oh no, God said, you know what I need you to do, I just need you to walk around the walls one time every day for six days.
Then on the seventh, I need you to walk around the walls again.
But I want you to walk around the walls seven times. On the seventh day.
He said, then what I want you to do after you walk around the walls seven times is I want you to blow the trumpets and then before the walls come down, I want you to shout.
I do not want you to wait on the walls to come down before you shout.
I want you to shout in anticipation of the walls coming down. Your shout of praise to God.
Whether it’s in the quietness of your heart or verbally outlaw your exclamation of the greatness and grandeur of God is part of the key that has to be turned for you to experience the walls coming down in your life.
Gideon teaches us that if we want to win the battles of our life, y’all, we gotta stop devaluing the significance of worship.
We got to make it a part of our, of our life where we just look upward and say, thank you Lord.
Yep. I’m still in trouble. Thank you, Lord. Yep.
I still have no idea how I’m gonna get through this financial difficulty. Thank you, Lord. Yep.
I’m struggling in my health. Thank you, Lord. My job is difficult. Thank you Lord. This ministry is hard.
Thank you Lord. This relationship still has a breach in it, but thank you Lord in advance because I anticipate that because you are good, you will do good on my behalf.
Begin the battle on your knees.
I go to a wonderful church that I have been in since I was one year old.
I’ve been planted in the same church since then. Uh It’s a great church.
I will let you know though that my church um still carries with it.
A little bit still carries with it.
Some of what you would think of when you might think of the traditional African American church experience.
So if you’ve ever kind of seen that or been a part of a church service like that, then you know what I mean?
Um It is just a little bit more traditional. I have a lot of um women, women.
Uh In fact, let me just say this, that, that you guys make me feel right at home because y’all talk back, y’all talk back.
You know, I go to the kind of church where it’s not quiet, it’s demonstrative.
There’s a little soul in our church. You know what I’m talking about? Yes.
And, and I go to the kind of church where we still have some folks that are a little bit old school in our church.
There are some older ladies that will come to church and they don’t believe in any of this skinny jean wearing business.
They don’t know, they don’t know anything about that. They still think they need to have a church suit on.
You know what I mean? So they’ll have AAA jacket on, that jacket will match that skirt.
She will have panty hose on because that’s what you wear to church.
And then she will have on her patent leather shoes that will match her skirt that will match her jacket.
She probably will have a handkerchief. You know, the kind that has the lace embroidered around the side.
She’s gonna pull that over her knees when she sits down and inevitably to cap it all off, she will have a hat on the top of her head and it will not be a regular hat.
Oh, no, it will have some freaky design to it.
And there will be a feather sticking up up over here on the left side.
That’s just the way, that’s just the way it is always a little feather or something sticking up on the side.
There is one woman that will always um if I can’t see her feather through the crowd, even if I can’t see her, I know she’s there because if nobody else is talking back to the, the pastor, she is talking back to the pastor.
She’s been there so long that I call her mama.
I’ve known her since I was little and I love having mama in church.
She sits down the center aisle and she always sits on the aisle seat.
She never sits in the middle of the row because there’s not enough room for her.
If she’s in the middle of the row, she likes to sit on the edge because then she has access to the aisle way and she needs the aisle way because every now and then randomly during the service, she will just get up in the aisleway and worship God for how great He is and how majestic he is.
And if the pastor’s preaching and it gets real good to her.
She is the one that’s gonna say, mm, she’s gonna say preach it, brother.
She’s the one that if it gets real good to her, she might throw something at the pastor, a handkerchief, a shoe, a baby.
Anything. I love having mama in church.
It’s become endearing to me to hear her celebrating the greatness of God. She is a worship.
I mean, she just worships God so passionately and fervently and she’s not embarrassed. She doesn’t care who’s watching her.
Her God is good and she wants him to know it. I love that about her.
She has two daughters that grew up with me pretty much all our life.
But um in the youth group, we were particularly close during youth group. Uh her oldest daughter’s name is Suria.
We called her Mimi. That was her, her little short name Mimi.
And so um Mimi, when she was about 32 years old, she contracted a disease.
I can’t tell you the name of it because it was so long. I could never remember it.
Uh the name of it, but it’s a disease that causes your joints and your muscles to harden over time.
So it is almost like you become a statue. Everything stops functioning, it just becomes stiff and hardened.
She was relegated to a wheelchair.
She’s, you know, 32, 33 years old, I watched this disease seem to take over her body so quickly.
It seemed so quickly and her mother was pretty much her full time caregiver.
So myself and a friend from the youth group every now and then, maybe once a month or so, we would just go and we would, um, begin to, to just kind of hang out with her and, and spend time with her and, and, uh, just to have lunch with her and relieve mama just a little bit so she could have some time to relax.
And it was really great to have an opportunity to do that with her and to spend time with her.
We enjoyed that very much, but after just a couple of years, that disease claimed her life.
And I remember that we were shocked, you know, but not shocked that the disease claimed our life.
And I will never forget the funeral when we were at that funeral.
Mama wasn’t sitting in the back towards the center anymore like she normally does on a Sunday morning.
She was sitting right there on that front row in front of the open casket where her daughter was, her daughter’s body was laid.
We sat right behind mama, several of us from the youth group, we were there to be a support to her.
We thought, but during that service, there was a little bit of a pause, a little bit of a break between the eulogy and then a song that was going to be sung right after the eulogy.
And for some reason, there was a little bit of a break in the program and there was just a little bit of quiet.
Just enough time for Mama. Our church is set up similar to this one.
There is a platform and then there is a little chasm of space between the platform and the front row and, and that’s all that mama needed right there in front of the open casket.
Mama stood up on those same two ft that have marched her confidently around that church and worship to God for years.
She raised those same two hands that have celebrated God for years.
She opened that same mouth that in the good times was worshiping God right now in front of the open casket of her daughter.
She celebrated the greatness of God. She said, Lord, you are good and you are kind.
And Lord, I thank you that for these 33 years, I’ve gotten to be the mother of this child.
I thank you, you gave her to me and I thank you Lord that she placed faith in Jesus Christ, which means I’m gonna see her again.
Anyway, I thank you Lord that at this funeral today, there are some people in here who will come to know Jesus Christ as savior as a result of my daughter’s life.
I thank you Lord for all that you have done.
And we sat there on the second row and everyone who had gathered that day, completely stunned that in the face of so much tragedy and hurt and grief.
Mama was teaching us how to begin the battle on our knees that even when there is Greece, that even when there’s grief and hurt and hardship and difficulty, I mean, y’all, we could not believe it right there pacing back and forth in front of the empty casket.
She was saying, I thank you Lord. Anyway.
And with that choice that she made to begin the battle on her knees.
With that choice, she rolled out the red carpet for God to come in.
She knew that she was gonna have a hard time in the months and years ahead.
And yet she said in advance in advance, I’m gonna say thank you Lord for all that.
I expect you to do. Gideon teaches us when you’re facing a battle.
The way to start that battle, the only way to start that battle is to begin the battle on your knees.
The second thing he teaches us is also found in verse 15.
It says that after he bowed in worship, he returned to the camp of Israel and he said, arise for the Lord has given somebody say, has given the Lord has given the camp of Midian into your hands.
I love this so much because Gideon goes back to the Children of Israel, the 300 that are fighting with him and he doesn’t walk back to them lacking confidence.
With his head held down. Now, you need to understand when he had left them.
This had been an insecure timid guy. He had no courage at all.
He had been trying to figure out any way he could to not go into this battle.
But all of a sudden after hearing what the enemy really thought about him, his entire countenance has changed, he goes back to the same men that knew him to lack courage just hours before.
And he says, y’all, let’s get up and go. There’s a victory to be had, let’s go get it.
He does not say a rise for the Lord might give us the victory today.
He doesn’t say arise and let’s hope that God does justice for us today.
He says, arise, get up, put a smile on your face, guard yourself in courage.
Let’s go get the victory that has already been given.
You know how you win the battle, my friend, you begin that battle on your knees and you face the battle from a stance of victory.
Do you understand that you have not? Or you and I are not fighting for victory.
We have already been given the victory. We are fighting from a perspective of victory. It changes everything.
When you realize that in the end we win.
I mean, I don’t know if you’ve read it or not, but at the end y’all, we’ve already got it in the bag.
Victory has already been given to us, you and I are just going to claim what God has already given in the scriptures.
There are over 8000 promises that have been offered to believers in Jesus Christ.
Listen, y’all, not a couple dozen, not several 100 Over 8,000 promises, God has given us promises are opportunities for you to experience God while you’re on earth.
Ok? He did. He never intended for us to wait to get to heaven to experience heaven.
He planned for you to experience heaven while you’re yet on planet earth.
That’s why He gave us the Holy Spirit so we can experience what it means to have God with us.
John chapter one verse 14, the word became flesh so that He could dwell among us.
I love the message version of that. The word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.
He plans to hang out with you.
He fully intends to be engaged in the regular rhythms of your everyday living.
And so when you and I are, when you are making a decision to face the battle from a stance of victory, it means that you tell yourself and remind yourself that these promises that they are available to you right now.
But do you know of those 8000 promises? Most of them? He did not place in our hand.
He placed them within our reach, which means you have to do your part in order to claim what God has already given you access to.
It’s not that they’re not there. It’s just you have to do your part to go get it.
Gideon says to them, listen, we already have the victory.
But if we sit over here in the camp and never go toward the battle to fight it, we will never experience the victory that God has already given us when I was growing up.
Um My parents did not allow us to watch a lot of television during the week.
We just didn’t really have a lot of time for that. You know how it is.
You’ve got homework to do with the kids and you’ve got dinner to make their chores to do.
So there wasn’t a lot of time for TV. And that was just a rule of thumb for our house.
We had more time for it on the weekend.
But on the weekdays, we were only allowed one hour of television a week.
It was the same hour of television that most people in the world in their own time zones were also watching television because at seven o’clock, on Thursday nights, the Cosby Show came on and then on seven, at 7 30 right after that, a different world came on.
Do you remember those two programs? So, we would sit for an hour, we were riveted.
We loved watching these telephone, these, uh, television programs.
Well, when I moved out of the house, when I was much older and I was setting up the apartment for my husband and I, we were getting married and I moved into our apartment first and I was kind of getting everything organized.
We decided we were gonna get cable television. I was so excited.
I had been looking forward to the day the cable man was coming. He rang the doorbell.
I raced over to the door. I let him in.
He moved the arm that was holding my television in it.
And he started hooking up all these cords and cables in the back of the television to the wall.
And then he pushed the arm back in place.
He came around to the front of the television and he gave me the remote control.
And he said, let me show you how to work this.
He said, you see that little button there, the guide button, he says, press the guide button.
And I remember pushing the guide button and be com being completely stunned at all of these channels that started flashing across the screen.
I had never seen so many channels in my entire life.
I didn’t even want to turn on a particular program because I was amazed with the channels.
All of these channels seem so brand new to me.
I had never really seen all of these channels before, but the channels already existed. Channels weren’t just created.
It’s just that now I had the right hook up so I could pick up on their frequency.
This is what happens when you and I tap into the promises of God.
If you’re not experiencing them, it’s not because they’re not there.
It’s just because you don’t have the right hook up to tap into their frequency.
If you want to experience the promises of God, you have to have the connections that draw in their experience in your life.
And I don’t know about y’all, but I assume that you are like me and that you appreciate the God that we know and hear about from the scriptures.
You appreciate it. But, but I want more than to just appreciate it and know it.
I want to experience it if he is this powerful and this mighty and this worthy and this glorious and this capable and able as the scriptures declare that I don’t want to just know it and celebrate it from afar.
I don’t want to just hear other people’s testimonies of all that God has done in their life.
I’m grateful for what he’s done in your life, but I want that same God to do it in my life.
And so you know what I want the hook up, I want the connection that draws in the experience of God to my life.
Gideon says this is how you do it.
You begin the battle on your knees and then you face the battle.
You stop looking at it from a position of failure and lack and defeat.
You face that battle from a stance of victory.
And when you have a stance of victory, it will change the way you approach and go into and deal with the trouble that might be in your life.
Can you imagine how it must have affected the 300 to have Gideon come back so different than he left?
I mean, here’s their leader and he’s timid and insecure and worried and concerned.
Likely the 300 were the same. They didn’t want to go to battle.
Their leader didn’t even want to go to battle.
How must it have changed their countenance for him to come back and say guys, we got this in the bag.
Let’s go. 300 people’s perspective was completely changed because one person had a revelation of what the enemy thinks about them.
What will happen with your kids when mama comes home and goes guys, we got this in the bag because if God is for us, who can be against us, what will happen is if you dad on this father’s day, go back to your family or your job or whatever it is.
And you say, you know what I am a man who has been redeemed by God.
He has already given me the victory.
How might the countenance of your wife and your home and your Children and your legacy be revamped just because one person chooses to believe everything God says about them.
So Gideon teaches us to begin the battle on our knees and to face the battle from a stance of victory.
Just one more really quickly that I want to share with you. There are several here but just one more.
I want to share with you that he says to them. Next.
Gideon says to them, here’s the plan that God has given us.
Verse 16, he divides the 300 men into three companies.
He puts trumpets and empty pictures into their hands, torches inside the pictures and he says to them, look at me and do what I do.
And behold when I come to the outskirts of the camp, do everything I do when I and all who are with me, the 100 who are with me because he divided them up into companies of 33 100 groups.
He says, when I and all the people who are with me, blow the trumpet, then you blow the trumpet all around the camp.
And everybody say for the Lord and for Gideon.
Now in my Bible, there’s a heading above this section of scripture.
The heading is the confusion of the enemy.
Now, I want you to know that I believe the Bible is 100% accurate. Nothing should be changed.
But if I were writing this particular passage of scripture, it would not be labeled the confusion of the enemy.
I would have labeled it the confusion of the 300 because if Gideon had looked at me, had I been one of the 300 and said, go get you a jar, a light and a trumpet and let’s go to battle.
I would have said you got to be kidding me. It makes no sense.
The strategy makes absolutely no sense.
Proverbs 3 5 and 6 do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him.
Even when it’s irrational, even when it does not make sense.
Even when it goes against what you think would be the best plan suitable to win this battle in your life.
You don’t do it your way, you do it God’s way because spiritual battles can only be fought with spiritual weapons.
And most of the time, spiritual weapons don’t make sense to our natural mind.
How do you win a battle?
You begin the battle on your knees, you face the battle from a stance of victory and you plan for battle using not your strategy but divine strategy.
Ephesians chapter six puts it this way, our struggle. It’s unusual.
So it calls for unusual weapons because it isn’t against flesh and blood, but against rulers and powers against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Therefore, do not take up the armor that makes most sense to you.
Take up the armor that has been divinely given to you by God.
Because in this battle, that’s the armor that you need to be effective and to win the victory, you guys remember the late great Michael Jackson, right?
Y’all don’t try to be holy. Y’all remember Michael Jackson?
One of my favorite of Michael Jackson songs was Billy Jean.
They were doing a documentary on the making of Billy Jean.
They interviewed the director and they said to him, what was it like working with one of the most incredible entertainers, arguably the most incredible entertainer of our time.
What was it like the director said many cool things.
But one of them was, he said that when we were making this video, he said there was a part of the video, you all will probably remember this where Michael Jackson is dancing up and down this particular path and everywhere Michael steps his feet, the path lights up a square in the path lights up.
Do you remember that? The director said when we were making that scene, when we were filming that scene, I had to, to sit Michael Jackson down the great Michael Jackson.
And I had to say to him, listen, Mike, you are a great dancer.
It’s very clear to us that you could dance all over this pathway and do something incredible.
We know that, but I want you to know something.
I have already gone before you and pre lit certain squares.
If you dance all over this entire walkway, but never step on the squares that I have pre lit, then you’re gonna be doing all of that and exhausting yourself.
And doing all of that energy. But the path will never light up.
If you want the lights to light up, you got to reel in all of your, your own personal impulses and make sure you put your feet where I have pre lit the squares.
The Lord says to you today, I have already gone before you and pre lit the squares.
He put it this way in the book of Ephesians. I have prepared good works beforehand.
All you gotta do is go walk in them, plan for your battle using divine strategy.
Ask him where he wants you to put your feet and then reign in your own personal impulses to cure the situation your own way.
Just do what he’s asked you to do and everywhere you place your feet in obedience to God, you will be assured that the light of His grace and his glory and his power and his goodness and his presence will make itself known in your experience every single day.
No matter what the battle for the rest of your life. Will you bow your heads with me please?
Lord, I thank you for this clear instruction on how to win a battle.
Lord, here in this room and across the other campuses, campuses that are joining us during this message.
We thank you Lord that it is so clear to us.
The instruction is so clear as to how we are to win a battle. Would you seal it?
On our hearts and cause us to go home and make choices and live differently as a result of what we’ve heard.
But Lord, in this moment, I’m also going to ask that you would prick the heart of anyone who really is in a battle, but they’re in it alone because they, they’re not in a relationship with you while every head is bowed.
And I