This morning I want to speak with you about victory in Jesus and what that is. And to do that, in the back of my book, I included in the epilogue section, so if you don’t read anything else in the book, I want you to read the last thing in the book, is the epilogue section. And I want to read it to you.
I felt bad, I usually keep a piece of paper that I have printed out in my Bible, but I have two Bibles. I have a Bible that I carry with me on the plane, and, well actually, I have several Bibles. One by my desk, one by my worship room, one that goes with me on the plane, one at my 3ABN apartment, and then the one that I take with me to churches. And of course, one of these, this Bible here didn’t get one of those pieces of paper, Victory in Jesus.
So I was down here and I was like, “Oh Lord, I know You wanted me to read that to them today”, and then the Holy Spirit just said, ‘Brenda, it’s in your book’. And I knew there were books in my car, so I got one of those books and I can still read it to you today.
It’s Victory in Jesus, and my, I don’t know how many of you get those forwards that forward around, I might be the only one, but I really don’t have time to even read those things usually, because I probably get 1500 emails a week, and I have a hard enough time reading the things I’m supposed to read. So I usually see a ‘forward’, I just delete, delete, delete, so I never even read them. But this forward came from my sister Linda, and I know she doesn’t like forwards any more than I do, so if she sends me one, I know it’s got to be good. So I actually read this, and it was so incredible, I want to read it to you because this changed my life in such a positive way. And so listen carefully to the words.
Victory in Jesus. And this is an author ‘unknown’ felt what victory in Jesus was. And I couldn’t agree more.
Victory in Jesus.
When you are forgotten or neglected, or purposefully ignored, and you do not sting or hurt at the oversite, when your heart is happy just being counted worthy to suffer for Christ, that is victory in Jesus.
When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise up in your heart, or even defend yourself, but you take it all in patient, loving silence, that is victory in Jesus.
When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, any unpunctuality or any annoyance, when you stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility, and endure it all as Jesus endured it, that is victory.
When you are content with any food, any offering, any climate, any society, any solitude, and interruption by the will of God, that is victory.
When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your own good work, or even smile inwardly when someone pays you a compliment. When you can truly love to be unknown and allow Jesus only to be known, that is victory.
When you receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself, and can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up in your heart, that is victory.
Would you agree with me? That is victory in Jesus. Isn’t that powerful?
You know, victory in Jesus cannot just be obtained by wanting it. It can’t. Victory in Jesus is the gift that we can only get through our Heavenly Father. It’s through our intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father that we can achieve victory in Jesus.
I pray for victory every day. Every time that I am tempted, you know, to have an inward hurt because of something someone said, or maybe it’s somebody just doing something that you know is not going to work, and you have to silently keep that to yourself and not have a bad feeling about it. You know, it’s one thing, sometimes we do the right thing, but we’re not thinking the right things inside. We’re doing the right thing, but we’re going uhuhuhuh, you know. And that’s not victory in Jesus. I really strive, and I want, that victory in Jesus. I want that passionate prayer life with Jesus, that I will know His will for me so intimately that my will becomes His will.
You know, there’s many things that the Lord has asked me to do for Him that really wasn’t my will at all. I had to submit, and you know, in order to really have this victory in Jesus, we’re going to have to die daily to self. That means we’re going to not talk about our things that we want for our own selves, the things we want to do, but we are willing to submit our life totally and completely, fully surrender all to Jesus.
I’m having a little bit of a hard time realizing, ‘cause I’m stuck with the microphone that’s right here right now, so you can see I’m wanting to walk and talk, and I’m having to behave myself, but for the second service, I’m going to get that microphone and walk a little bit, but, I can tell you that I really want to have a total submission to Jesus for His will.
If you will turn with me to Matthew 7, 21 through 23, this text is one that you want your yellow highlighters or orange highlighters or whatever color you like, highlight it, underline it, put your bookmarker there if you still have the bookmarkers I brought to you last time, put that in this one right here, because this text alone is going to change your life. Matthew 7, 21 through 23. “Not everyone that sayeth unto me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. But he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ’Lord, Lord, have we not prophecied in Thy name, and in Thy name have cast out devils, and in Thy name done many wonderful works?’ And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
Do you realize what this is saying? That we could be out baptizing people, we could be out passing out Bibles in India 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We could be out doing… on the road singing gospel music. We could be doing all these things, wonderful as they may be, but if it’s not what God has chosen for you to do, if it’s not the path God wants you to do, it is for nothing. Pretty incredible isn’t it?
So that’s why it’s so important that we know the will of our Father. We can’t know the will of our Father if we don’t have that passionate prayer walk with Him. If we haven’t talked so much with our heavenly Father that we have not learned to listen to His voice.
Someone said to me, “Well, I don’t know. How can I listen to God’s voice? How do you know God’s voice anyway?” And I asked them this. “When your best friend calls you on the phone, does she have to say what her name is before you know who it is? When your mom calls you up and says, ‘I need blah blah blah’, and just starts talking, do you have to say, ‘Excuse me, who’s calling please?” No! Why is that? Because, you have talked to that person so much, that you what? You know their voice. Well, guess what. It’s the same way with our heavenly Father. The more we spend time with Him, the more we talk to Him, the more we learn to know His voice. We well know when it’s God talking to us. We’ll know what God’s asking us to do. God’s never going to ask us to do anything that goes against His Biblical teaching. God’s never going to ask us to lie, cheat, steal, any of those things. If somebody’s asking us to do that, or if our thoughts are thinking those ways, we know that’s not the voice of our Heavenly Father, right? But we do know, when we listen to God’s voice, we will know His will.
Some of the things that God’s asked me to do, I’ve had to completely, I’ve had to pray and ask God to make me willing. Sometimes I’m not really that willing. I just came back from two weeks in South Africa with my sisters, and I have to tell you, I didn’t really want to go again, because I’d been one time before. And I knew how tough it was over there. And then everybody, you know, the devil tries to do this, he uses people sometimes to discourage you. He uses things to discourage you. Even the news media and stuff, it starts talking about how bad everything is over in Johannesburg right now, and how dangerous it is, and they’re calling it the murder capital of the world, right now.
And then, two weeks before I was supposed to leave… By the way, we didn’t tell sister Linda about the danger. And two weeks before we’re supposed to leave, I get a call from a ministerial secretary in Kentucky-Tennessee conference, and he has a nice accent, and he’s invited me to come and be their speaker for their ministerial meetings this year. And I said, “By the way, where is that wonderful accent that you have, you know, what country is that from?” And he goes, “Oh, South Africa.” And I said, “Really?” I said, “You know, I’m getting ready to go there next week.” And he said, “Oh, sister. Can I tell you please, to watch your back.” He said, “It is very dangerous there.” He says, “I am from South Africa,” and he said, “and I still go there”, he said, “every other year.” And he said, “It is still very dangerous for me too.” And so he sat there and told me about how dangerous it was. And so I got off the phone and I called Cinda up, I said, “Cinda,” I said, “this man, he’s from South Africa, he’s saying that where we’re going, that particular place where we’re asked to go, is really, really dangerous.”
Well, you know what? The devil would like me to focus on that danger, right? But is God every going to ask me to go anywhere that He’s not going to protect me, or help me? He’s going to always supply our needs because my God has promised to supply all our needs, right?
And so, I got on my knees, and I didn’t even mention this to my husband. I just said, “You know, I’m just going to take this to the Lord in prayer.” And so I started praying, and I asked God to take the fear away. And He did. And when we were over there in South Africa, they had guards with us all the time, we couldn’t walk from one building to another. They had somebody with us all the time. The camp-meeting itself had, there was camp-meeting over there, and they had guards that patrolled around the perimeters, which was all fenced in, all day long, all night long. Guards were hired just to, to... And at night, the first night we were there, there were gun-shots, and it was closer than from here to that back door. And so we were on our knees praying and asking the Lord for protection. And we asked the people the next morning, “We’re quite sure we heard gunshots.” And they said, “Oh yeah, yeah, there were gunshots, but the guards took care of it.” I said, “Well what would happen if someone shot the guards?” She said, “Then there would be a problem.” I was like, “ok”, so we kept on praying.
But God just worked so many incredible miracles while we were there. We had so many blessings while we were there. We had not a shadow of a doubt why, we knew why God had asked us to go there. I had been asked to give my testimony in front of the main tent, which was about seven thousand people. And as you know, I was here before, and I gave my testimony. It’s one of the hardest things I do. And it was one of the things that, you know, I just had to really pray and plead with the Lord to be with me through. And yet, when I finished, God showed me so many reasons why. You know, one pastor came up to me afterwards, and he said, “I want you to know,” he said, “that I’m a star in your crown.” And I said, “Excuse me?” And he said, “Six years ago, my wife to be, we were engaged. we had gone together all through school, she was my best friend, and she would have been the perfect preacher’s wife, she played the piano and she sang”, that’s a criteria now-a-days, huh? For all the theology majors here at Southern. And he said, “She was such a people person, and she just really loved the Lord, we had such a wonderful future together.” And he said, “And then one night while I was away preaching, something very bad happened to her with six men.” And he said, “It was a horrible situation, she almost lost her life,”, and he said, “I have not been able to forgive.” He said, “She ended up pushing me away from her, and I ended up blaming myself, ‘if I hadn’t been away preaching, if only I hadn’t been away doing this, maybe I could have prevented it’”. He said, “It totally changed the course of my life and her life.” And he said, “And I haven’t been able to forgive.” But I had stressed the importance, how critical it was, no matter what has happened in our lives, no matter how bad someone has hurt you, no matter what it is, we must forgive. And when I stressed that, and he listened, and he said, “If you can forgive what happened to you”, he said, “I realize”, and he said, and he just was crying like a baby, and he said, “I want you to know, I finally laid that burden at Jesus’ feet.” And he said, “I feel like a new man.” And I said, “Praise the Lord.” I said, “Thank you, Jesus.”
We had such a wonderful time with the kids. We had a youth tent every morning, we were in charge of the youth tent with the kids. And we had a wonderful time. We sang til we were almost hoarse everyday. And I tell you what, those kids love to sing. And in the afternoons my sisters and I were doing cooking demonstrations for them, and in the evening we were doing concerts. And there were so many wonderful blessings.
And so, when we got to the airport to fly home, we were so exhausted after all of this time, you know, ministering, and when you’re giving and giving and giving, and the end of the time we get on the plane to go home and… they cancelled our flight. They said we wouldn’t leave til, now, five thirty in the morning. We had to be at the airport for thirteen hours. We had no rand, and we’d given it all away, all the extra rands we’d given away to help the children there, so we had no rands with us. Of course, we thought we were getting on the plane. And our cards wouldn’t work in their ATM machines, so we had no food, we had nothing to get water, we had nothing, thirteen hours in the airport, having to wait there.
Once we get on the plane, we’re supposed to stop in Daccar in western Africa, just for a fuel stop only. Not supposed to get off the plane. We land and the captain says, you know, everyone stay in their seats, don’t get up, we’re here for a fuel stop only. And about five minutes later, he said, “this is not a Delta International decision”, he said, “we’re being told by the airport officials here in Daccar that we must leave the plane, take everything with you.” Now they don’t tell us anything else. We know that we’re all supposed to file and stay with the guards. We’re led and paraded through the airport. At one point I got assaulted in the airport with someone trying to grab my camera. I hadn’t done any research on Daccar since I wasn’t planning on going there. Didn’t know that it’s a highly muslim country, how they cannot stand Americans, and that cameras are offensive to them. Well, we’re supposed to grab everything, my camera’s in my hand, and here’s this lady trying to grab my camera, a policeman’s trying to grab my camera, and he’s trying to take my passport from me, and I’m saying “No! No! No!” And I’m still trying to keep up with everybody else, and it’s just a miracle how God got me out of that situation. And we ended up having to go up to this room, three stories up, and we were all of us here, 300 and some passengers kept up in this room for over five hours. Had no idea why we were there, how long we were going to have to be there, were we going to be hostages for ransom for something. Nobody told us anything. Here we are.
So you know what my sisters and I did? Our friend Sandy Miller was with us. We were all in this lounge and so we just got down on our knees, and we held hands and we began to pray. There were some people that were crying, and there were some people that were fretting, and it was a tense situation. And the man that was setting closest to us, we asked him if he would like to join us in prayer. And he looked up and he said, “I don’t think so.” And then I said, “That’s ok.” So we went to hold hands and he said, “But you can pray for me.”
And God led us out of that situation pretty soon. After five hours we were just told, no explanation, we were told, we were searched three times. Really searched. And then put back on the plane. And when I’d shared with the flight attendant what had happened with me in the airport and how they had grabbed my, tried to grab my passport, and she said, “You didn’t give it to them?!” And I said, “No, no, I didn’t give it to them.” And she said, “Oh”, she said, “last week, this is a very dangerous place to be.” She said, “Last week two women were kept and were assaulted, and something very bad happened to them in the police headquarters.” And she said, “We couldn’t take them with us ‘cause they had kept their passports.” And I was praising our heavenly Father for His love and protection and care.
You know, there’s many times that we know, going forward at the end of time, we’re going to be facing things that we have never had to face before. We’re going to lose freedoms that we have always taken for granted. We get so comfortable in our little worlds around us that we forget that all this is going on. And pretty soon… we’re losing our freedoms daily that we don’t even really know or can appreciate.
But our heavenly Father is there to take care of us. I want my heavenly Father beside me in the time of trouble, don’t you? I want to be holding His hand. I want to be so close to Him that I know His voice. I want to be so in tune to His will for my life. I mean that is so critical that we know God’s will for us. And there’s not anything that’s too little or too big that we can pray for. You can pray and ask God for everything. You know, prayer is not just to make miracles happen. Although that’s a good reason for prayer. And prayer isn’t just to get you out of trouble, although that’s why most people pray.
But the most important reason for prayer is for an intimate relationship with our heavenly Father. It’s to get to know him better as our personal Saviour. So that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt what His will is for our life. Pray about. If you don’t know what God has planned for you. If you think just sitting here in the pew, that coming each Sabbath is going to just get you in heaven, it’s not. There’s going to be people here that aren’t going to be in heaven because they don’t know Jesus. You aren’t going to know Jesus if you don’t spend time with Him. It’s so critical that we spend time with our heavenly Father.
There’s a story that is trivial in some people’s eyes, but in my mind it was a dangerous situation because I was getting ready to speak at a Carolina camp-meeting. And someone said to me, you know, when you go there you’re going to be staying in a nice lodge area over at Oak Island and told me how to get there, and I got my directions and got there and everything, and this is just to show you that there’s nothing too small that you can’t pray for, and God’s going to be with you each step of the way.
But when I got to this lodge and I pulled up, it was kind of like the situation of a Motel 8 where you kind of drive up and your door’s right there. So I drove up and I found my place where I was supposed be. And I had gotten there too late, my plane had gotten there too late to go to the meeting, and I thought, well, I better just go right to my lodge where I’m staying, and get unpacked and get ready for the next day when I would be speaking. And so I got everything all settled in, got my suitcases in, hung all my clothes up, and I put all my toiletries around in the bathroom and I was getting ready to set in bed and just have a little worship before I turned in, and I noticed that there was a door that led, I’m assuming, to the next room. And I thought, oh, I’d better get up there and make sure that door’s locked. And so I tried the door and the door opened. So I thought, oh, ok, so I looked inside, and inside was a kitchenette. And I was like, well isn’t that nice. And there was nice fruit and stuff, a fruit basket in there and a little refrigerator, and I hadn’t had time to eat, and there wasn’t any food on the plane, so I was thankful for that. And then I noticed that the next door lead into a room, so it was a kitchenette that was shared by two rooms. So after I’d helped myself to a little bit of fruit and I closed my door and I was going to go to bed and I turned the lock on the door and the lock was broken. It wouldn’t lock. It just kept turning around and around. And I was like, now what am I going to do? I don’t know who’s in that next room. I can’t sleep in an unlocked room. I said what if there were two men next door. I said they could have access to my room. And even if they were the most Godly men and would never, ever think about coming into my room, daddy always told us to stay away from even the appearance of evil. That’s something I grew up with. And so I knew that I couldn’t put myself in a compromising situation. So I started praying. Now some might think, now why would you bother God with a prayer like that. I’m here to tell you, pray about everything. There’s not anything that you can’t pray about. And so I started praying and pleading that God would help me. I called my husband and he prayed with me, and I said, I kept looking at my watch and it’s getting later, and later, and still nobody’s come in next door. I tried to put a chair under the door knob to see if I could, you know, maybe just bolt it that way. And no, the chair was too thick and there wasn’t anything I could do. And after I’d finished praying again, I thought “ok, I guess I’ll just take my blanket and I’ll go sleep in my car.” And so I had just gathered the quilt off of my bed and I was grabbing my pillow when I heard the noise in the next room, and I went, “Oh! There’s somebody back.” And so I stopped, and I said another prayer and I went to the kitchenette and knocked on their door. And I’m praying the whole time, “Lord, please, please, don’t let it be a man or two men in there, you know.” And I opened the door, and there was Debbie Rapp, the Carolina women’s retreat leader and another woman. And I went, “Praise the Lord”, and I went, I’d never met her before and I went flying into her arms, and I hugged her neck, and I was jumping up and down, and I was like, “I’m so happy to see you.” She thought, “So this is Brenda Walsh.” And then I quickly explained about my prayer and how God had answered my prayer. And how He had placed her in my room next door.
Well we had a good laugh like that, and you know what? We’re best friends to this day. And we ended up staying up a little bit later and sharing some wonderful miracles, and I know you guys have a hard time believing I could talk a little late. But I was praising the Lord because God answered my prayer. And He had a work for me to do that weekend. He had a mission for me to accomplish that weekend. And He was with me every step of the way.
God has a mission for each one of you. He has a purpose for your life. He has a job for you to do. If you have the courage and the strength and the closeness with Him to ask Him what that is. If you are willing to commit to Jesus and surrender everything to Him, I’m talking laying it all out at the cross, saying “Lord, I’m willing to follow you no matter what it is. If you want me to go to Africa, if you want me to go to Daccar, I’m going to Daccar.” I don’t want to. But I’m willing to go Lord because I know that you’ll protect me. I know You’re going to be with me. I’m willing to do whatever it is you want me to do. Because, Lord, I want to surrender all to you. I want you to work through me.
I hope and pray that that is your will as well. That you will go home and you will say, “Lord, what is it that You have for me to do? I want to surrender it all to You.”
Hymn of Praise: #608, Faith Is the Victory Scripture: I Corinthians 15:57 Hymn of Response: #309, I Surrender All
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Sermon at McDonald Road transcribed by Steve Foster 5/25/07