We all want to be winners. We’re hard wired to survive and scramble for top position. For some, winning comes easy and for others it never comes. Victory. I told myself it wasn’t that important. If there’s a drawing to win, I won’t. If teams are chosen, I’m last. It’s just the way it is.
But it is important.
Christ set us free for freedoms’ sake. For his sake. He didn’t set us free so we would struggle and believe the lies of defeat. Victory is important. Winning is important because God wins in the end. At the end of it all when the dust settles and the fight is over, God is triumphant. You and I need to have winning attitudes.
In Christ, I am victorious. I don’t have to live defeated and it’s something I have to remind myself of everyday. You are victorious. But maybe you doubt it? Maybe you think winning is bad. We live in a world where children receive trophies for participation rather than for winning. But participation in the kingdom of God isn’t our end goal. Victory is.
“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your mind; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” Ephesians 4:22-24 NIV
Step One to Victory
The first step to victory is to put off our old selves. We’ve been given a new identity in Christ. We’ve been covered with robes of righteousness. The problem is that sometimes we still wear our ratty, smelly clothes underneath. So that stinky sock? Throw it away. That shirt that’s seen better days? Burn it. Colossians 3:8-9 has a lovely little list of stinky clothes we need to throw away: anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language, and lying. Throw them all off if you can, and if you can’t, then tackle them one by one.
Step Two to Victory
The second step is to be made new in the attitude of our minds. It doesn’t work to merely change our outsides. That is temporary change that burns up like dried kindling when under pressure. Lasting change happens when our minds are changed: specifically the attitude of our minds. An attitude is a tendency or orientation of the mind. So if you’re trying to put off swearing, but you’re still thinking it, eventually it will slip to the surface. If you’re acting cordial to someone, but in your mind you’re thinking the worst of the person, it will be made known. Our attitudes must be renewed and the power of Christ does that for us.
Step Three to Victory
The third step is to put on the new self. The gift of righteousness is given to us through Jesus Christ and God sees us as righteous, but in order to love people as he commanded, we must put on righteousness so others can see God in us. Colossians 3:12-14 gives us a list of our new clothes: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, and love. Once we’ve exchanged unkindness for kindness, throwing kindness around like confetti becomes easier. Loving others becomes a reflection of selflessness.
We achieve victory in this life when we put off our old selves, have our attitudes in our minds renewed, and when we put on the new self. It won’t matter if you’re chosen for the team or you win a contest or if you’re the slowest runner in the race. It won’t matter because you know that in God’s eyes your life victory is assured and everything else is merely a training ground for you to learn to walk in that victory.
The Giver of light gave me the gift of flickering light after a long season of darkness. Hope flashed briefly in the darkest of soul night where I had wandered searching his word, playing God-music, fellowshipping with the body of Christ, praying and waiting for Light. I waited a long time for that flash. But I knew this hope:
Isaiah: 30:18 “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.”
Waiting.
It speaks of inaction, of watching paint dry, of pointlessness. Yet it’s not.
Andrew Murray describes best:
“Waiting in the sunshine of his love is what will ripen the soul for his blessing. Waiting under the cloud of trial, that breaks in showers of blessing is as needful. Be assured that if God waits longer than you wish, it is only to make the blessing double precious.”
God certainly waited longer than I wished. Much longer. I feared I would never hear from him again. I feared that my Christian life would be shallow. I feared how much longer I could go through the motions.
But I learned much in the dark and when His Light pierced through I knew this:
God longs for your heart. Your heart that says yes to him even if the red sea doesn’t part or the flames consume or the lions devour or the waters overtake.
But the only way you can give him your heart is if you understand the power of his presence in your life.
Not the power of his promises, although they are mighty. It’s his presence that our hearts should most long for yet we substitute his promises for his presence.
It is possible to experience both—his promises and his presence—and we should experience both because if we don’t then we have things a little mixed up. It’s mercy and grace and judgement in one package that transcends comprehension.
[bctt tweet=”Seek God’s presence no matter what. Seek his promises and his presence will be lost.” username=””]
Why? Because God longs for a relationship with you. And relationship comes when you enjoy and long for his presence. He wants to know you and be known by you. Waiting on God will bring joy and peace and also discomfort because if we are to make him known he will continue to rid us of anything that is not of him.
My dark night? It was rooted in anger at God. An anger I didn’t know was there until God pierced the recesses of my heart and brought it into his light.
His judgement or conviction is something we don’t need to fear if we know his presence. When we know his presence then we know his heart is for us, that he thinks good thoughts towards us, that he makes good out of bad.
But if we don’t know the power and beauty of his presence then we fear conviction and believe it leads to depravation. But it really leads to freedom. Freedom to be who he created you to be. Freedom to choose him and his ways. Freedom to live for him and in him and through him.
The Lord longs/waits to be gracious to you and blessed are you when you wait for him.
If you are in a season of waiting for God to be gracious to you, may I offer you this? Keep waiting. Keep leaning. Keep trusting. God may be growing you in this waiting time so that you experience a double blessing when the sun breaks through the dark, dark soul night.
A double blessing of his presence and his promise.
Rejection lurks and lingers, taunts, and threatens to show up where I least expect it. It’s a cocked and loaded weapon aimed directly at my heart and I walk through life with hands held up ready to surrender my identity, my purpose, and my relationships.
I’ve called myself names, I’ve believed I don’t have anything to offer, and then I’ve believed that my gifts and talents don’t have as much purpose as yours.
Rejection steals my identity in Christ because my security is in Him.
Rejection kills my purpose because of the impossible cycle of pleasing people.
Rejection destroys relationships because I view them through a fear-filled lens.
Do you live defensively expecting to be rejected? Do you approach relationships planning to be rejected? Do you self-condemn so rejection doesn’t surprise you?
I’ve self-condemned, self-sabotaged, and self-hated. Have you? But God wants us to be filled with him. He is our defender so we don’t need to live defensively. He is our greatest cheerleader so we don’t need to be afraid to step out onto the stage of life. He is our greatest champion so we don’t have to worry whether we win or lose because our hearts, our life, is safe in his plans. God becomes who we live to please—not ourselves and especially not what other’s want us to be.
We don’t have to enter every friendship with the expectation that it will end in rejection. We don’t have to hold ourselves back from relationships, isolating us further into self-condemnation.
You see, when we self-condemn, we partner with Satan’s three tools of destruction: to steal, kill, and destroy, but when we partner with God we are given freedom, joy, and life.
Our minds and hearts work together and we must realize that our self-condemnation is a default response to our fear of rejection. The way to be free is to have our mind renewed.
The most effective way I’ve found to renew my mind is through transformation and captivation.
Romans 12:1-2, “Therefore….present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”
2 Cor. 10:5, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
My thoughts transform as I submit my life to God’s holy and acceptable way of living. Living fear-filled is not holy and acceptable. We are called to faith-filled and courage-filled and trust-filled lives. God finishes what he starts and works everything out.
Self-condemnation is not a holy and acceptable way of thinking. And those thoughts—the ones that tell me I’m no good or not enough need to brought into captive obedience to Christ.
[bctt tweet=”Christ lives in us and when we diss ourselves, we reject Christ in us.” username=””]
Today, right now, offer your life as a living sacrifice.
The pain of rejection is worse than letting God touch those tender places in your heart. As you lay your fear down, step back, and turn your eyes on Jesus. Let his heart for you wash over you. And when you’re tempted to self-condemn, bring that thought captive and make it obey Christ. It looks a little like this: instead of saying, “I am a screw up,” Say, “I’ve messed up, but God loves me, messes and all, and I run to him instead of hiding in my shame.”
Those thoughts we have about ourselves? They’re going to come, but as we learn the process of captivity and obedience we will experience transformation and then become the fear-fighter we want to be.
The Giver of light gave me the gift of flickering light after a long season of darkness. Hope flashed briefly in the darkest of soul night where I had wandered searching his word, playing God-music, fellowshipping with the body of Christ, praying and waiting for Light. I waited a long time for that flash. But I knew this hope:
