FAITH: THE POWER TO OVERCOME

When your health, your finances or family are at risk, you suddenly realise how fragile life is. Today you may be living on the sunny side of the street, but if you live long enough adversity will come knocking on your door. When it does, you’ll discover that things like power, possessions and popularity won’t sustain you. If power could do it, Joseph Stalin wouldn’t have been afraid to go to sleep at night or been so paranoid that he appointed a soldier to guard his very teabags. Ifpossessions could do it, fear wouldn’t have caused billionaire Howard Hughes to live like a hermit and die alone. If popularity could do it, John Lennon’s biographers wouldn’t have described him as a fearful man who slept with the lights on and was terrified of germs. Earthly supports can only sustain you so long. Courage for living comes from a deep abiding trust in God, whose Word says, ‘This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.’ But faith is only as valuable as the thing it’s placed in, and our faith is in a God who never fails! David said, ‘Through you we push back our enemies; through your name we trample our foes’ (Psalm 44:5 NIV). Jesus said, ‘I have given you authority to…overcome all the power of the enemy…’ (Luke 10:19 NIV). Paul said, ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us’ (Romans 8:35-37 NIV).