Who can separate us from the love of Christ?  Can affliction or anguish or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  As is it written:  Because of you, we are being put to death all day long;  we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.  No, in all these things we are more than victorious through Him who loved us.  Romans 8:35-39  HCSB

As a child, my parents and my sister read me all the favorite fairy tales.  There was Cinderella, the three little pigs, and one of my all time favorites was the Wolf and the Seven Kids.  We read those stories as kids and find them exciting or uplifting.  We love it when the hero wins every time.

My mom is a huge John Wayne fan.  I often tell people that I was almost 12 years old before I knew that you could go to the theatre and actually watch a movie that did not star John Wayne.  Every movie I had ever seen at the theatre had starred John Wayne, who knew?  There is one John Wayne movie that greatly upset my mom and this is The Cowboys.  If any of you John Wayne fans will recall, in this movie, spoiler alert, John Wayne’s character is killed just before the end.

We all want the main character or the hero to be victorious.  We want to live vicariously through these characters.  For a couple of hours we want to  believe that we are an action hero or heroine.  We want to believe that we can conquer evil and we can jump tall buildings in a single bound and fly through the air.  We want to believe that we can save the person in distress.  We want to believe that we can get ourselves out of a tight jam and be victorious in the battle.

Well, we can.  We can win.  I have read the end of the book and I am telling you that God’s children will reign victorious.  The other really awesome thing is that we don’t fight the battle alone.  We don’t fight the battle on our own strength.  We can rely on God’s supernatural strength.  We can rely on God’s supernatural power.  Romans 8:31 says that,  if God is for us, who can be against us?

Sometimes in life, we have tasks that are laid before us that we feel we could never accomplish.  I have been amazed to find that I have done things that I never thought I could do.  When God calls us to do something, he equips us to do it.  In Genesis 7, God called upon Noah to build an ark.  He gave Him everything he needed to do the job.  In Exodus 3 God called on Moses to bring His people out of Egypt.  Moses tried several times to assure God that He had the wrong guy, but God assured Moses that He would give him all he needed to get the job done.  In Joshua 1, as Joshua takes Moses place in leading the Israelites into the promised land, God promises to be with Him every step of the way.  He promises to protect Him and make him victorious in battle.  But there is one little catch.  God warns Joshua not to depart from His law.  He tells him to meditate on it day and night (Joshua 1:8).  God wants Joshua to follow Him.  God is preparing Joshua to lead a great number of people, but Joshua must learn how to follow God and His instructions.

God has called me to do things that I never thought that I could do.  But I have learned that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me  (Philippians 4:13).  I also know that all things can work for my good (Romans 8:28), if I love the Lord with all my heart and do what He calls me to do.

Think about some of the great Bible stories that you learned as a child.  Remember how cool it was when God shut the mouths of the lions for Daniel when he was thrown into the Lion’s den (Daniel 6)?  How awesome was it that  Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown into a fiery furnace, walked around in it, and came out without even the smell of smoke on them (Daniel 3)?  One of my personal favorites was when David, just a young boy, killed a giant with just a slingshot and a stone (1 Samuel 17).   I also love the story of the battle of Jehoshaphat when two vast armies came against this one small army.  The small army won because the two larger armies started fighting each other.  Jehoshaphat’s army didn’t have to strike one single blow, they only had to go in and collect the vast amount of plunder (2 Chronicles chapter 2).

You may feel at times as though you are small and insignificant, but not in God’s eyes.  God sees you as a conqueror.  God knows that you will be victorious because He will see to it, if you only trust in Him.  The one thing that Moses, Joshua, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and David all had in common was their love for the Lord.  They trusted in God.  They knew that they could do anything and survive anything with God’s help.

You too can count on God today.  You can be victorious in the battles that we face.  Ephesians chapter 6 tells us that our battle is against the dark, spiritual forces of the world.  Kind of sounds like a sy-fy movie right?  But it’s for real.  It’s real life and it is happening here on planet earth every single day.  If you want to be more than victorious when you face these dark spiritual forces of evil, then turn to God.  Give all your troubles to Him and trust in Him to make you victorious.  Trust in Him to help you defeat the vast armies and take the giants down.  Trust in Him to keep you safe in the lion’s den.  Trust in Him to keep you cool in the fire.  Take refuge in God and rely on His strength and power to bring you through the hard times.  You will be so glad you did.

Have a great day!