WHO SHALL OVERCOME?

THANK YOU FATHER.
Jesus said, These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me you might have peace.
In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world.

How did He do it?
He overcame evil with good.

The Way, The Truth, The Life.
In Him is where our peace lives.

As we in my home celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King we reflected on the
unlawful things that happened not 2,000 years ago but only 50 years ago when the unrighteous and immoral treatment of men and women was challenged in a unique way in America.

Anyone who was born in 1940 or earlier would have been prime age to either stand with Dr.King in support of or against his goals. The goal and right for all men to live as God intends His children to live and to pursue the same basic human opportunities.

Whether in Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi or wherever.

I learned so much from observing and listening to tapes, documentaries and reading documents,speeches and letters of Dr. Kings. As well as watching interviews from men like Andrew Young, Senator John Lewis and others who lived and walked with Dr. King.

I learned that he was more than an activist, he was a great man of God.
That his strategies were not mere tactics learned by Gandhi but principles given by God in Holy Scripture.

Taught by God to hold fast to our faith even in the face of temptations, persecutions and violence until the death as our Saviour did.

Dr. King was called a troublemaker and agitator much like our Lord was, yet he was a man who believed that unrighteousness anywhere is unrighteousness everywhere.
In the White house, The courts or the temple, sin is sin the same as our Lord taught.

As I watched a documentary about the times in which Reverend King lived it described how 18 days after the march on Washington on September 15, 1963 The 16th Street Baptist Church In Birmingham Alabama was bombed injuring 15 and killing four little girls.

Murder of the innocent, a sin.
Morally wrong in the eyes of God.
It struck me how limited the number of voices where that spoke out about the immorality that surrounded this tragedy.

As they buried the innocent, the mourner's sang " We Shall Overcome"
How could they in the aftermath and even in the face of what they were going through sing of overcoming?
Faith that greater was He in them than he that was in the world.

It was the way of the world that murdered those four innocent little girls on Sunday morning as they prepared for church.

The Lord led me to 1John 2,3,4, 5 and Galatians 5 where The Father began to reveal more to me about what it means to walk after His Spirit, service, love and what it truly means to have the victory that overcomes the world.

The people who had to bury their children without retaliating truly possessed the victory that overcomes the world.

Listen.

Dear children, don't let anyone lead you away from what God has established as truth. Anyone who does what is right is righteous, just as Christ Jesus is righteous. Anyone who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

When I think about and am not even able to fathom what my emotions would be like if my two girls were to be in that same situation, it makes me examine my self and what I truly believe about God.

There could have been a full fledged race war with all of the things the people in those days suffered at the hands of ignorant and fearful men.
But God.

Anyone who does what is sinful and deceitful is of the devil because the devil has been sinful and deceitful from the beginning.
Genesis 3:1-4 Eve was deceived.

The reason Christ came was to destroy the work of sin and deceit.

And the Bible teaches us that no one who is born of God will continue in sin and deceitful acts, because the seed and Spirit of God have come to live in him and he cannot go on to live after a deceitful manner, because he has been born of God.

He can no longer go on to live in pride and arrogance or anger and haughtiness.
For this very reason Lucifer was cast out of heaven.
So no man who hates his brother will enter the Kingdom of God.

THIS IS HOW WE KNOW WHO THE CHILDREN OF GOD ARE:
Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God, nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.
What is love?
A command of God and a two way street.

Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother.
Why did he murder him?
Because his own actions were evil and his brothers where righteous.

Don't be surprised my brother's if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

Even when the law enforcement stopped being brutal for fear that the cameras would reflect their appalling and violent behaviour to the world, who they would rely on for tourism, the hearts of these men who opposed righteousness was still filled with hatred.

Anyone who does not love remains in death.
Anyone who does not love is not born again or of God.
Anyone who does not love is dead.

Alive in Christ, is dead to sin.
Alive in Christ does not seek to kill it's brother.

As I watched archival footage of water hoses being turned on children in the streets of Alabama in the early 60's.
This scripture came to mind:
There is no fear in love, But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

Do you understand what made perfect in love means?
Born Again, where the epitome of love has come and taken up residence in your soul.
Your mind, will, feelings, emotions.

We don't love because we have been raised around something, but we love because we have known and believed that God first loved us and we are born again.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is The Anointed One, born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves His children as well.

This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out His commands. And His commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.

Everyone that is born of God overcomes the feelings that are contrary to God's Spirit.

This is what it means to overcome the world.
It means that we overcome the works of the flesh, it's feelings, and adverse emotions and reactions.
It means that we don't stand on a platform given by God and rant and berate and start a campaign of hatred.

Galatians 5 teaches us if we live following The Spirit of God we won't be overcome through gratifying the worldly nature.

The world said that black people were not humans who deserved to be treated as children of God and that they were not entitled to live as free men with the same opportunities as all men.

The same was said about the Jewish nation.
But God has said something to the contrary through His Son Christ Jesus.

That they were not fit to enter universities, high schools, lunch counters, travel, vote, live where they wanted to, or even drink from the same water fountain as other free citizens.

The men who had not Christ revelled in their freedom while denying others the rights that God had given to all.

The Bible would say to them:
You, my brothers were called to be free and given a place of privilege, don't use your freedom and it's privilege to indulge the sinful worldly nature by abusing your position; rather serve one another in love.

In their arrogance and deceit they had no concept that when God speaks of service that He means to love your fellow man as you love your self.
That means to treat your fellow man with the same respect that you your self expect.

There was a man who stood outside of my office door a couple of weeks ago yelling to someone in our lobby saying, "I don't care what you say you are a lie if you say you love God and don't serve!"

Oh! how I wish that I was not busy with a patient and my work that morning.

People, be careful not to become conceited.

Some believe we can sum up what service is in recalling how The Lord Jesus took a basin and towel and washed His disciple's feet.

Don't believe that you are serving God when you do anything no matter if it's cleaning barns, if it's done with hostility or with an antagonistic attitude that wreaks of open opposition.

I don't profess to have anymore revelation than the next man, I have the same Bible.

This is how we serve one another, by not biting and devouring one another.

The Bible teaches us that the acts of the world and it's nature are obvious in Galatians 5:19.
Those acts are things that even in the midst of activity can be rampant and when this is you, you have not overcome the world.

Standing out side my office door hollering is not serving other people but it is serving the flesh, which is not walking after The Spirit of God or overcoming the world.

We overcome the world by first being born again and then we walk in the newness of life.
What is the newness of life?

Is it hatred?
A fear that is centered on causing injury or hindering another in some manner.

Is it envy?
Jealous to the point of competition.

Is it idolatry?
Materialism, position, possession, deeds, or relationships that are the focus of our admiration more intensely than our reverence for The Father.

Is it trying to incite hostility against God's way of governing?
Ideas and beliefs opposed to the doctrine of Christ Jesus?

Men have long begun to have an inordinate affection towards many things, creating idols of their lifestyle and have taken on the attitude that they will devour anyone to get it and to keep it, that's the way of the world.

It has been that way long before I was born.

That type of thinking is what kept men oppressed and under the yoke of slavery before Dr. King was born and fed injustice in the days of Dr. King and beyond his lifetime.

As we pay tribute to the life of a man and those who lived and walked along side him who believed that, by taking on the attitude of non-violent retaliation they could make a change for the better in the lives of all men, I ask:

Who shall overcome?

Who will overcome the world?

Romans 3:4
Romans 12:21
2 Peter 2:19,20
1John 4:4

LOVE Y'ALL :)

Think on It.