Who I Am – 7

Who I Am – 7

Subject – More than Conquerors

by Rick Welborne

Psalm 139:13-18 (NLT) 

13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 

14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. 

15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 

16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. 

17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! 

18 I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me! 

Last sermon in this series:

1. In discovering your soul print you will discover that God allows you to go through certain seasons on your journey.

Batterson: Every divine appointment is preceded by a season of preparation.  And if we submit to the preparation, God will fulfill His promise. If we don’t, He won’t. Why? Because God never sets us up to fail. 

2. In discovering your soul print you will discover that often there will be divine delays.

Dutch Sheets: Are you struggling to get to the next stage?  Don’t give up. Your struggle won’t be wasted; they may even be necessary. The key is not to quit.  

3. In discovering your soul print you will discover that without a crucifixion there is no resurrection.

Batterson: You never know how or when or where a dream will be resurrected, but if it’s God ordained, then God Himself will bring it back to life somehow, somewhere, sometime.

–Today I want us to see how God truly wants us to find our soul print and to be more than conquerors.  

1. In discovering your soul print, and being able to see that you are more than a conqueror, you will have to recognize your compensatory skills.

–David was not your typical hero type...the youngest in Hebrew meant also the smallest. The reason he was the most unlikely in the story was because he was the runt of the litter. I know that pain.

–While others were prepared for battle (sword and spear) David was prepared in guerilla warfare on the hillside watching sheep.

–His compensatory skill was using a slingshot...big deal...who would have ever thought that God would use this skill to catapult him into being a national hero.

–We all know that David’s defeat of Goliath was, to a great degree supernatural, but hear what Batterson says about his compensatory skill.

Batterson: If David isn’t an expert marksman with a slingshot, there is no way he defeats Goliath; he most definitely does not become king; and he therefore never produces a royal lineage that includes the Messiah.

–A skill given by God and developed by David is used to help him be more than a conqueror!

–David probably complained about taking music lessons on a harp but that skill was used by God to get him in the palace...He soothed Saul’s troubled spirit and he met Jonathan.

–You never know what skill God will use for His purposes in your life...God used Noah’s building skills to build the ark, Joseph’s interpretation of dreams, Esther’s face and figure, the Magi’s knowledge of the stars.

–No skill that we have is unredeemable or unusable in God’s grand scheme. David’s skill of song writing has touched people for over 3000 years and most of those came out of very trying situations...out of pain and trials.

–You may not like where you are right now or what you are going thru but it may just be possible that God is helping you to be more than a conqueror by developing your character.

–God always finishes what He starts as long as we do not quit on Him. The worst circumstances often produce the best character and just adds to our story.  True of David and true of us.

2. In discovering your soul print, and being able to see that you are more than a conqueror, you will have to deal with your control issues.

–One of Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest) powerful statements was: Chambers: Let God Engineer. What he was saying was that we must let God be in control...let Him be sovereign. 

Batterson: Most of our emotional problems are symptoms of one deep-rooted spiritual problem: lack of trust in the sovereign God. It’s our lack of trust in Him that results in high levels of past-tense guilt, present-tense stress, and future-tense anxiety.

–Sadly, many of us find our confidence in the things we can control, but it’s a false sense of confidence. Having confidence in God is not circumstantial, it is providential. 

–Too often we allow our circumstances to get between God and us. Holy confidence puts God between us and our circumstances. When we do that...God takes care of the giants.

–Let’s face it...we want to be in control. We want to control our circumstances. We want to control others.  And, ultimately, we want to control God Himself. Him working for us!

Batterson: Lack of trust is more than refusing God’s help. It is a prideful attempt to help God by doing His job for Him. We play God by trying to control everyone, everything. But God hasn’t called us to be God. He’s called us to be ourselves. And our control issues are really trust issues. The less we trust God, the more we have to control.

–To so many the loss of control feels like a loss of life. All of us will be faced with our mortality when we find out that we are not in control at all...this is a good thing.

–Please understand...nothing is more spiritually, emotionally, or relationally exhausting than pretending you hold the planets in orbit.

–On the other side there is nothing more freeing in the world than relinquishing control and submitting your life to the Sovereign God. 

–When you do this...self-confidence is crucified. Self-confidence must die if holy confidence is to be resurrected in your life. The two cannot coexist. About giving up control Paul said:

1 Corinthians 6:17 20 (NLT) 

17 But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. 

18 Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. 

19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 

20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body. 

–You do not belong to yourself...you belong to God...you were bought by the blood of Jesus so give up your desire to control what you do.

–What an insult to the Lord Who gave His life for us and we convince ourselves we can live an immoral lifestyle and still serve God. Flee from sin and run to God!

1 Corinthians 7:23 (NIV) 

23 You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. 

Romans 6:15 18 (NIV) 

15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 

16 Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey  whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 

17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 

18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. 

–What’s the point...stop trying to control your life and give up control to the Lord and to Holy Spirit.

3. In discovering your soul print, and in being able to see that you are more than a conqueror, you will have to recognize your unconquerable-ness. 

–Oswald Chambers not only said “Let God Engineer” he also coined the post powerful word “Unconquerable-ness”. He took the phrase “more than conquerors” and added a twist.

Chambers - No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerable-ness.

–David had this unconquerable-ness about him. He would not step back or step down. He knew that this fight with Goliath was his date with destiny. He saw God in all this:

1 Samuel 17:45 47 (NIV) 

45 David said to the Philistine, "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 

46 This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 

47 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give all of you into our hands." 

–If you will look you will see God is doing the same in your life...It starts with little opportunities of faithfulness and small victories.  

–God uses this to build confidence...not confidence in yourself or a confidence in your abilities...It is a holy confidence in God.

Batterson: In a sense, our faith is really a by-product of God’s faithfulness. God proves Himself to be faithful, and it builds our faith as we connect the dots.

–We must realize that it was God who delivered us from the paw of the lion and the bear and that He will also deliver us from the giants in our lives.

–No matter how big your giant is, God can give you an inner unconquerable-ness...You are more than a conqueror...it always starts with small wins.

 –Winning the small battles will give us the confidence that God can even do greater things in our lives.

–Each wild animal that David conquered...each new psalm of worship that he wrote to the Lord, each time he practiced using his sling was moving him closer to his day of destiny.

–You see, it takes time and it takes faithfulness to able to stand before the giants, but know God will complete the work in you.

Philippians 1:6 (NKJV) 

6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ; 

–God is ordering your steps just like he did with David...there will be delays, there will be seasons, and there will be disappointments along the way...that’s just life. 

–There will be times that it seems others go before you...brothers off to war while you watch the sheep, but be faithful God will redeem all this time as we are faithful.

–Can you imagine David’s oldest brother ever wishing he would have kept his mouth shut?

1 Samuel 17:28 (NKJV) 

28 Now Eliab his oldest brother heard when he spoke to the men; and Eliab's anger was aroused against David, and he said, "Why did you come down here? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride and the insolence of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle." 

–There was coming a day David would be king...Eliab’s king and commander...what he did not know, and maybe what you are not seeing, is that God is not finished yet.

–The longer we live the more we should thank God for the disappointments in our lives, these disappointments may prove to be divine appointments.

–They may come disguised as divine delays or perceived disadvantages but if you will remain faithful to God, He will redeem your disappointments.

–Let God engineer and let Him build in you your inner unconquerable-ness!!!