Three Steps To Victorious Living

Title: Three Steps To Victorious Living

Text: I John 5:4b

Intro: ABC Wide World of Sports use to come on with the words “The Thrill of Victory and the agony of defeat.” There is nothing as exciting as winning. The taste of victory in our lives is sweet. Victory is essential to our health and happiness. Defeat is destructive to our lives, and remaining in defeat can destroy our faith. It is not God’s will for your life to walk in defeat, but it is His will for you and I to rise-up in the middle of Satan’s attacks upon our lives and live in victory.

I. To Live in Victory you must think Victorious

1. Gloom breads failure

- It is impossible to live in victory without a victorious concept

1 Corinthians 15:57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

- The old saying goes you are what you eat.

- The same is true for our lives:

· If you are defeated in your thought life with negative thoughts of failure then you will never win.

· But If you put your mind into victory and HOPE you will always win.

Romans 15:13 Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.

- We have hope

· I don’t want to fall into the hands of a doctor without HOPE

· I don’t want to fall into the hands of a lawyer without HOPE

· I don’t want to fall into the hands of a minister without HOPE

Psalms 71:14 But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more.

- We serve the God of hope

· Not the God of defeat

· Not the God of pessimism

· Not the God of disillusion

· We have HOPE and beyond We have blessed assurance

Psalms 98:1 O sing unto the LORD a new song; for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory.

- You can live in doom and gloom or you can live your life surrounded in HOPE

2. David never allowed himself to focus on problems

- He will never be remembered as a blues singer

- He had bumps in life

- He had battles in life

- He had failures in life

- He had difficulties in life

- He wept

- He mourned

- BUT he learned to live in praise

Psalms 42:5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

3. Learning to Live in Praise in Essential to Victorious Living

- Praise builds our courage

· (Jehosphat) II Chronicles 20

· (Paul & Silas) Acts 16:20

· (John) Revelations 1:10

- Praise builds our faith

· Praise puts our faith into action

· The building of our faith pleases God; It excites God when we trust Him.

Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

· Praising God in the midst of our trials is like saying: “God you are my source of strength and though storms rise and winds howl, my trust is in you.”

- Praise brings the power of Heaven to our aid

2 Samuel 22:6 The sorrows of hell compassed me about; the snares of death prevented me;

2 Samuel 22:7 In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried to my God: and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears.

2 Samuel 22:8 Then the earth shook and trembled;

· God heard

· God moved

II. To Live in Victory you must get your eyes off of Circumstance

1. Peter got out of the boat

- Peter focused on Christ not the storm

- As his attention shifted he began to sink

2. Lame man at pool of Bathesda

John 5:3 In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.

John 5:4 For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

John 5:5 And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.

John 5:6 When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?