Overcome

Our earnest hope and prayer for you today is that the Lord has given you the grace and power to overcome this week.  Pressures, payrolls, pains, powers & principalities, and personal issues can sometimes sweep over us but we have a biblical undergirding that tells us we can overcome.  Let’s talk about that.

I have heard the tag line many times; Overcome or Overcomer.  I vacillate between those two positions.  For example, when we were kids we would go swimming in Weiss Lake every day of the summer.  The aquatic form of king of the hill was to try to climb up on a tractor tire inner tube and stand up without falling.  It was toil, success, and failure.  You either overcame and stood tall as Grand Champ of the Goodyear or splashed down in defeat.  Sometimes our balance, or lack thereof, determined our position.  Other times it was our conniving cousins who caused our tumble into the overcoming water.  Then to add insult to injury in our weak moment they would shove our head under the water.  That was the ultimate in being overcome. Overcome – under water.  Overcomer – standing tall on the inner tube.

John 16:33 is the key verse for the child of God when it comes to Christ’s overcoming power. Jesus is imparting truths to His disciples concerning the Holy Spirit, resurrection, joy, the Father, peace and tribulation.  THEN the Lord puts it all under one overriding heading, “I have overcome the world.”

But, what about those times we find ourselves under the water.  Romans 12:21 gives us an admonition.  “Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.”  So it is sin that is our conniving counterpart trying to affect our footing.  The enemy and our own sinful nature not only knock us down but try to get over us as we try our best to climb.  Being overcome is described accurately in II Peter 2:19 as being put in bondage. But we do not have to be overcome.  I think of that Collingsworth Family song, You’re About To Climb.  As we toil in the waves Jesus is walking on the water cheering us on!  “You can make it.  Climb! I have overcome Satan, I have overcome Sin, I have overcome the grave, I have overcome the world so you can too! Climb!”  I have some things that I need to overcome and I need the help of the Lord to help me out of the water to stand tall as an overcomer.  I think you probably do, too. He has overcome so we can, too.

LORD HELP US TO OVERCOME ALL THAT WOULD TRY TO PULL US DOWN!

BroAdamB