Overcoming Through The Word Of Our Testimony

WHAT IS KEY TO OVERCOMING THIS WORLD, IS RESTING IN HIS WORD!

Years ago there was a popular bumper sticker that said “God said, I believe it and that settles it!”

We need more than ever to believe God’s Word. One day we’ve got to stop sucking our thumbs and burying our heads in the sand and become the victorious church Jesus died for! AMEN! I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!

The next part of Satan’s strategy is to turn you against the leaders God has set over you and who must one day give an account. He tries to make you feel that God’s leaders are trying to harm you and you get offended.

Think about that for a minute. How many times have you heard somebody say, I’m not going down to that church! I know deacon so and so or someone else and do you know what he or she does when they’re away from church? I’m not going down there with those hypocrites!

Today, the heat we face is many times hotter than it was a generation ago. For example, Satan has rigged the entire technology of our age -- corrupting it with seduction, sensuality, lust and temptation. Why do we face such a white-hot furnace of temptation today? Why are lust and sex being used to sell every conceivable kind of product? Why are there thousands of porno websites on the Internet?

Who’s the target of this flood of filth?

Surely it’s not the wicked masses -- those who are already blinded by Satan, according to scripture. It isn’t the secular world, which has already been seduced. No, Satan’s target is none of these. Rather, he has manipulated the media to snare the hearts of overcoming Christians. He wants to weaken and destroy the testimony of the gospel!

Right now the furnace is being heated seven times over in the lives of many believers. Satan has created situations in their homes, on their jobs and in their relationships that are more intense than ever. And many once-strong Christians are giving up, quitting on God. They no longer pray for help. Instead, they think, "My trial is too intense for me to survive!"

Yes, things are going to get hot economically, physically, mentally, spiritually and in every other way. But God has already placed his hand on separated, godly men and women in every place. And his gospel will be preached as a testimony.

Then the Lord will come!

I love lost people and I’m comfortable around them because I spent most of my adult life lost. I can sympathise with their weaknesses, because I once owned them myself. But I cannot bear to see men and women lost in sin. I want them to experience pardon and joy – the breathless wonder of God’s forgiveness!

I want to tell you this evening from the OT just how precious the testimony of God is. I want us to take a look at the ark of the covenant:

God said to Moses in EX 25:10 "Have them make a chest of acacia wood--two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. 11 Overlay it with pure gold, both inside and out, and make a gold molding around it. 12 Cast four gold rings for it and fasten them to its four feet, with two rings on one side and two rings on the other. 13 Then make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. 14 Insert the poles into the rings on the sides of the chest to carry it. 15 The poles are to remain in the rings of this ark; they are not to be removed. 16 Then put in the ark ‘the Testimony’, which I will give you.”