Born to Win

Recently as I was walking through my daily work routine at the Church, the Holy Spirit dropped this phrase into my mind "You were born to win".  I had recently admitted to my wife that because of my background in life, I always expected defeat with an occasional small victory thrown in to keep you going in life.  I had recently been meditating on Romans 8:37 "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us."  Since I had been experiencing the frontal attack of intimidation and fear for many years with small breakthroughs but not complete victory, this phrase by the Holy Spirit was shocking.  It did not rise up out of my own thoughts but from a deep place within that seem to shift my whole being, like an earthquake does to land.  This phrase seemed to reach into the very core of my being to change my very DNA.  In 2 Peter 1:4 it says, "For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust."  It is through the promises of God actually getting inside us that we become partakes of the divine nature, we are transformed by our agreement with what He has done for us.  As I went back to the phrase the Holy Spirit spoke to me, I saw that in the beginning when God created the Heaven, the earth, and Adam and Eve that their commission was to rule and reign over the earth.  Genesis 1:28 says, "God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."  As John Eldredge points out in his book "Wild at Heart" you don't give instructions to subdue something that is not wild, and the earth outside the Garden of Eden was wild.  God did not bless Adam and Eve to be frustrated, defeated, struggle, and only hope that their children will make it safely through life, He blessed them with a powerful (grace) blessing to overcome the earth spreading the glory of God over the entire earth just like God had established in the Garden of Eden.  The Garden of Eden was God giving Adam and Eve an object lesson and a prototype for what the whole earth was to look like, yet the rest of the earth was wild so they would need the strength and blessing God had given to overcome it.  We all know the story, that Adam and Even chose independence and self-sufficiency only to end in the Fall and separation from God.  So even though in our DNA is a desire to win "in Adam" there is also the sin that entangles us, we like Adam get caught up in self-effort, striving, performance, competition, greed, and then fall.  Because when Adam and Eve had children they were in their image, no longer in the image of God.  We are born again not by water but by the Holy Spirit and born into being united with Christ.  We have the DNA of Jesus Christ Himself, we have a new nature, and we are new people (2 Corinthians 5:17).  Jesus was born into this world to win!  Jesus Christ as the 2nd Adam would win the victory in every place that Adam lost, over deception, temptation, sin,  disobedience, separation from God, independence, Satan, fear, death, and being orphans.  Jesus Christ, the God man, would face the biggest Giants of the human race and defeat everyone of them through humility, submission to the Father, dependence, obedience, sacrifice, and finally laying down His life out of love.  On Christ's 3 1/2 year mission on the earth, His face was always toward the Father and the destiny the Father had for Him, which also meant squarely facing the Enemies of humanity.  When the Bible announces that "...we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us." this is speaking to the very DNA of our beings is transformed.  Not that we will sometimes have victory but that we will continuously be victorious over things like nakedness (lack of resources), peril (torment & attack of the Enemy), and sword (human enemies coming after us).  It is not through our self-sufficiency, our orphan-hearted strivings, or the latest successful human attempts to conquer a problem but through Him would loved us (Christ Jesus).  I heard one pastor and author Bill Johnson say it this way, "God never leads you into a battle He has not meant for you to win." Yet when we appeal to an orphan heart we have varying degrees of success and failure in life in the short-term but I believe God is not interested in blessing our efforts.  In another post I talked about being child-like, the verse in 1 Peter 5 says God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble.  Our pride and self-sufficiency come out of an orphan heart, which is made up of lies not our true identity as sons and daughters of God.

An Overcomer,
Bret