Hallelujah! How many overcomers are in the house? Let somebody shout hallelujah! Father in heaven we thank You, we bless Your holy name; we thank You Lord for Your presence that is heavy already in our midst this morning; we thank You oh Lord because according to Your word we are overcomers; Father thank You for divine victory that You have given unto us, glory be to Your name forevermore.
As we go into Your word, Father Lord God of heaven, speak expressly to us in the name of Jesus. Father let Your word heal, let Your word deliver, let Your word promote in the mighty name of Jesus. And at the end of the day Father, Your name alone will be glorified in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank You blessed Redeemer, in Jesus wonderful name we prayed. Praise the Lord!
I welcome everyone to the presence of the Most High God and I’d also like to thank God Almighty for the gift of life, the privilege of life and I believe it’s the same for you, we are here today only because we have breath in us. I’d also like to acknowledge the Pastor in charge of province, Pastor Tunde Netufo, our father in the Lord for this opportunity that I have to stand here and minister the word this morning. Praise God!
Before we go into today’s message, tomorrow by the grace of God we’ll have another wonderful session of prayer chain, the theme is Divine Providence (Part 2), so we’ll continue from where we stopped last Monday, text is taken from Daniel 3: 12 – 28; please come, and invite as many people as you can, praise God!
1st Corinthians 15: 57 & 58, “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord”. Praise God! The title for this message, if you want to give it a title is in line with our prophetic declaration for the month of April, “Divine Victory”. If you want to qualify it, you can say “Irrevocable Victory”, praise God!
As we know, our father in the Lord gave us prophetic declaration for this month and this is our month of divine victory, and I trust God that because the mouth of His servant has spoken it, the Lord will back it up with power in the name of Jesus and each and every one of us shall be victorious, not only this month, in all the months of this year, in all the years of our lives in the mighty name of Jesus.
So let’s quickly look at Divine; in this assembly we’ve defined Divine so many times that I’ll just put this simply as anything that has to do with God or anything that God is involved with or in, then you say it is Divine. Praise God!
What about Victory? Victory is another word that we are quite familiar with, we use it in our daily activities in different ways, but I’ll try to do a quick definition; victory is to overcome an obstacle or an enemy or an adversary or an antagonist. For example, the Bible tells us that the Philistines at some point in time came to war against the children of Israel and the children of Israel overcame the enemy, that is God gave them victory, hallelujah! The Lord will give somebody victory over every enemy of your life in the name of Jesus.
Victory also can be said to achieve success – success in an endeavor, against all odds, against difficulties. For example, a student who has to face some exams, difficult exams and after the exam you check your result and say oh, I made it, that is victory. I pray that in the examinations of life, we shall be victorious in the mighty name of Jesus.
There are synonyms for the word ‘victory’; triumph, to win, to overcome and have dominion, to have achievement. Yesterday when I came and I saw the choir practicing this song, in my mind I just said oh, the Spirit of God is flowing and say I overcame; if you overcome sickness, if you overcome temptation, it is victory, praise the living Jesus!
Therefore, divine victory is to overcome obstacle or to achieve success by the help of God. There’s no better person that can help us to overcome our obstacles in life brethren, or to achieve success in anything that we lay our hands upon than the Almighty God.
As we know, men can help us, they can aid us, they can support us and help us to achieve victory but you also know the same men as a wish, they can actually take away that victory. It’s like somebody gives you decent clothes in secret and say oh, you can wear these to this and you can go out with this, and then in the open when people begin to acknowledge you and say ah, you are looking good, the same person would say ehn ehn, I could have used it myself and openly will tell you bring my cloth, that’s a man.
But when God gives you victory, not only does He decorate you in the secret, in the open He will continue to lift you, and you know that is the kind of victory that we are talking about this morning.
I’d like us to know a few attributes of that victory before we go into the core of the message;
The divine victory can be partial or total. Let’s look at the example in Luke 17: 11 – 19, we had ten lepers that came to Jesus Christ – leprosy is a disease, after their encounter with Jesus Christ, He sent them to go, go and show yourselves to the Priest and on their way as they were going, they realized that the leprosy had gone, that’s victory over sickness and by the way, God will give someone victory over sickness in the mighty name of Jesus.
So they got healed of leprosy; nine of them, in celebration they forgot to say thank you and went back but only one came back and the one that came back, Jesus said where are the others, he said I can’t find them; He said oh, only you came? A stranger, you are made whole; so nine got partial victory, one got total victory; your victory this day shall be total in the mighty name of Jesus.
Victory can also be revocable and it may be irrevocable. When you get a victory that is revocable you’ll know that you have to start again. For example, in 1st Samuel 13: 12 – 14, the Bible tells us that because of some things that King Saul had done, God then said (13b) for now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever. 14 But now thy kingdom shall not continue”.
God brought Saul from a nobody and made him a king over Israel, the first king of Israel but then God revoked it because of some things that he did. But let’s look at the contrast, another person in the name of David in 2nd Samuel 7: 12 – 15; David also had his issues but God said in your own case, I will not take away the victory that I have given you for certain reasons. One’s victory was revoked, the other one remains irrevocable; I pray for someone here this day that the victory God will give unto you shall be irrevocable in the mighty name of Jesus.
For understanding, the meaning of victory being revoked is that after that time, anyone who saw Saul would say ‘the king of yesterday’, may you never be referred to as a victor of yesterday in the mighty name of Jesus.
When God gives victory, there are some things that manifest in your life when you see victory, and some of these things are the things that we crave for, some of these things are the things that we pray for, some of these things are the things that we fast for and we want in life, we would go through a few of them as time will permit me.
In no particular I’m taking these, so some of these things that come with victory, victory is a package, when somebody is victorious, then you’ll see some of these things manifest in the life of the one that has victory;
One is fame: in 1st Samuel 9: 19 – 21, (going back to the same King Saul), King Saul was saying to Samuel when Samuel wanted to anoint him, he said ah, me? From where? I am from the tribe of Benjamin, my tribe is the least amongst the tribes of Israel and my family is the lowest even in the lowest of the tribes; he’s saying I am the low of the low, who am I to become a king?
Nobody knew me but then he was anointed king and before you know it, everybody was chanting and dancing and clapping and calling the name of Saul. He became famous overnight because victory had come. In the mighty name of Jesus, there is somebody here today, nobody knows you, but before you leave this world, fame will be about you all over in the mighty name of Jesus.
Another thing that comes with victory is wealth, praise the Lord! In Deuteronomy 8: 18, the Bible tells us that it is God that gives power to get wealth, praise the living Jesus!
Let’s look at Abraham, the Bible tells us that God picked Abraham from a cursed background, the family of idol worshippers, God brought him out and after some years, let’s see what happened to him. Genesis 14: 14 – 23, some people came to take Lot and some of the other people in the city and when Abraham heard about it, the Bible says he raised an army of over 300 people, servants in his own house. Somebody who came from a cursed background had 300 soldiers and he went, conquered, brought Lot and the other people and every other thing that they could bring and gave it to the king.
Now this is the interesting part for me, at a point in time the king now said ha, you did the work, take the goods, take them. Abraham said no, let no man say that he made Abraham rich, what was he saying? God has promoted me, God has made me rich, I’m wealthy already, no man can add to what I have, that will be your testimony in the mighty name of Jesus.
Something else that comes with divine victory is comfort. Comfort is defined as a state of physical ease, freedom from pain or absence of stress, hallelujah! To give a good example of comfort, I’ll try to use the story of somebody in the airplane; when you see people saying they are travelling, they are going to the plane, don’t think everybody has the same place, there is a place where people sit down and it’s as if you are in your home, it’s like palace, and there is a place where some of us sit down and you are virtually just squeezing.
There are different levels of comfort; some people have comfort, some people have comfy, hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
In 2nd Samuel 11: 1 & 2, the Bible tells us that at a time when all kings went to war, God had given David so much comfort that he didn’t have to go to war, what was he doing? He was sleeping and he woke up in the evening and said ha, all day I’ve not been doing anything, let me even just look round at the kingdom and see what’s happening, and because he had comfort he was no longer in stress, and in the process of looking around, he saw what he should not see, we’ll come back to that later. May God not give you comfort that will kill you in the mighty name of Jesus. But the Lord will give you comfort from your struggles, from your stress in the mighty name of Jesus.
And another thing that comes with divine victory is peace; peace is different from comfort, it’s another level; peace is the absence of war, that is all around, God has silenced all the enemies and there is nothing else to think about. Peace is defined as freedom from disturbance and tranquility, it’s a state where war has ceased or there’s no more war.
David had comfort in the midst of war, but Solomon had no war to fight and he says in 1st Kings 5: 4, the Lord had given him rest on all sides because there was no war. It is good to battle and overcome, its victory, but there is another level where you don’t even have to battle and that is called peace. You know all these sleepless nights, 21 days fasting, all these rigorous ‘fall down and die’.
I pray for somebody here, a time will come that you will not need to bind and loose, you will not need to do ‘fall down and die’ anymore in the mighty name of Jesus, because you will not just be in comfort, you will live in peace, the Lord will give you rest all around in the mighty name of Jesus.
Proverbs 16: 7 says when a man’s ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him, you will find peace from today in the mighty name of Jesus.
One other thing that comes with divine victory is greatness. When God gives one victory, greatness is associated with that victory. According to 1st Samuel 2: 7 & 8, the Bible says God is the One that can make somebody who is poor to become rich; He can pick someone from the dunghill and go and situate him among princes, that means he will make a nobody to become a somebody.
In Daniel 4: 1 – 4 & 29 – 30, there was a king called Nebuchadnezzar, he was a great king and he confirmed it himself in verses 29 & 30, he said look at this great Babylon that I built with my own might, but the truth of the matter is that all the countries that Babylon conquered, God delivered them to him, God made him great and he became a great man. Brethren, you shall be great; in the mighty name of Jesus, you will be in control, you will have dominion in the mighty name of Jesus.
Then when God gives you divine victory, you would also have public acknowledgement. It’s different from fame, you may be famous and not be acknowledged or not be accepted by the people, but when God gives you divine victory you’ll have public acknowledgement, hallelujah!
In 1st Samuel 18, after a conquest, as David was coming back, the women were clapping and dancing and singing, Saul was the king and he said Saul has won his thousands and David his ten thousand, public acknowledgement. Even though Saul remained the king, people saw David as the king tomorrow. In the mighty name of Jesus, the Lord Almighty will establish you, will establish your purpose, will establish your throne and we shall be well received in the mighty name of Jesus.
We have seen some of the packages that are associated with divine victory – fame, wealth, comfort, peace, greatness, public acknowledgement, health. These are wonderful things brethren, we pray for them, we look forward to them, but it’s important to know that these things come with a lot of challenges that some people are unable to manage.
I’ll go back again to each of those characters, let’s look at some of those, how did they manage, for example the fame? How did they manage the wealth? How did they manage the comfort, the peace that God gave to them? We’ll come back to answer the question – what level of victory is too much or too little? What level of fame is too much that you are unable to cope with? What level of comfort is too much that may kill you if you are not careful? What level of peace is too much that you may become docile and almost lose your salvation? May you not, in the mighty name of Jesus.
Proverbs 30: 7 – 9, “Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die: 8 Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: 9 Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.”; it’s saying don’t give me too much of these so that I don’t come to a point where I’ll say who is God; he’s saying don’t take it away from me so that I don’t be in want and begin to steal and bring disrepute to Your name, praise the Lord!
Now let’s look at King Saul, how did he handle his fame? 1st Samuel 13: 11 – 13, there was a time the Philistines were encompassed around Israel (they were at a war) and he was waiting for Samuel to come that they would make sacrifice and go but the people were saying Saul, let’s go, Saul, let’s go, don’t worry about Samuel, don’t worry about God, you are the king, we love you, you are our king.
And he was listening more to the people than to the voice of God, then he stepped forward to go and make the sacrifice, and the Bible tells us that as soon as he finished the sacrifice, Samuel appeared and then in verse 13 he said what foolishness have you done? You listened to the people, you allowed fame to make you ignore God? And because of that he said to him, God had intended that you and your children after you shall be kings forever over Israel but God says far be it for Me. What fame is too much for you to cope with? May the Lord not give to you in the mighty name of Jesus.
What about riches? In Luke 12: 16 – 21, the Bible tells us that a man came into wealth suddenly; the man planted like every other person, he was waiting for harvest but his harvest brought bumper harvest and he couldn’t cope with it, he said okay, so what I’ll do, in that bank I’ll go and put X amount there, in this one, I’ll go and put that, I will buy this house, I will buy that one and God said hey, this is not the purpose, because you do not know what to do about it, I will take you away from it.
The question that I ask is that harvest, who will take it over? Somebody else who can manage it. I pray for you, may the Lord not give you riches that will make you forget Him, that will make you ignore Him in the mighty name of Jesus, and if God gives you riches, may He not make another person replace you in the mighty name of Jesus.
Now let’s take a bit more of time on David, that’s it for me the central character for this message, what comfort is too much? Let’s go back to 1st Samuel 12, before that time, David was running from cave to cave like many of us, from prayer meeting to prayer meeting, from fasting session to another fasting session and then God answered him, he became king, not long after, he had people that could go to war on his behalf, so he sat back at home when other kings were at war.
God gave him comfort, what was he doing with the comfort? He slept, whiling away time; then he woke up in the evening, out of boredom, he didn’t know what to do then he started going about and went to the roof of the house, he went for an art exhibition, the Bible says he saw a beautiful woman that was taking a bath, she was naked and behold, that comfort that he had troubled him, he began to have desires for the woman, he couldn’t kill the desire, sent for the woman as we know, we know the story too well.
He sent for the woman, before you know it, the woman whose husband was on an assignment for David, he took her in, had carnal knowledge of her and Bible says the woman became pregnant, that tells me immediately that it wasn’t only once, he must have said go and call her again or just say your husband – and then when he realized that she had become pregnant, he started looking at means, what to do, so he went into further depth of sin.
He arranged to kill the husband of the woman, Uriah; he called Joab and said put him at the forefront and back off from him, give him no support so that he would die – wickedness of man. Then he went further after doing that, the man died, within no time he brought the woman home to be his wife, what comfort was too much, did he have too much comfort?
May you not have too much comfort in the mighty name of Jesus. you have been praying for God to answer your prayers and God eventually answers; God, give me this job and God eventually gives you the job, now when it is time to pray, when it is time to meet, when it is time to come for church services you’ll say you know this job, I’ve been tired, I’ve been working Monday to Friday, I want to rest Saturday and then Sunday morning you are watching CNN, what comfort is too much?
God, give me this husband, God give me this child, God eventually answers the prayers and then you have the child and then when it is time to do the bidding of God, you are saying oh you know I need time with these children. When you didn’t have them you were coming for prayer meeting, even the one they didn’t call you, you said Pastor let’s pray. On Wednesday, you forget there are no services, you come and say I think there is prayer meeting today, hallelujah!
You are a young beautiful woman, God gave you the beauty for a purpose, it is not to make men fall, it is not to destroy another person’s marriage, it is to uphold God’s glory. The Bible says I’m fearfully and beautifully made, but for a purpose.
What about Solomon? Solomon had peace all around, he didn’t know how to fight, so guess what he was using his own time to do, women. This one is beautiful, one, two, three, he got to hundred; I’m sure when the rooms in his house became filled he said what would I do? Okay, I know what to do, I’ll create an extension of my house outside and started putting them until they got to 700, 1000, what a man!
And the Bible says that they turned his heart from God, he did not serve God as the father had admonished him to serve God and as God expected him to serve Him. You know what his punishment was? God said I will not take the kingdom from you because I’m already committed to your father, David, but there’s something I will do, when you are handing over to your son, I will take it out of his hands and leave only one out of the twelve tribes of Israel with him, your servant will take the whole. What peace is too much? May God not give you peace that will make you slumber, that will make you fail, that will make you forget Him in the mighty name of Jesus.
Now I look at it and I say to myself, why did these great men and women fail to uphold what was required to maintain the victory that God has given to them? And I see that there’s something called purpose, there’s a purpose for the divine victory that God gave to them and that God has given or that will give to you, there is a purpose for the divine victory and when the purpose of a thing is not known, abuse is inevitable.
One, God gives us victory or God helps us to overcome the issues of life so that He can prove to the world that He is the Lord Almighty, Sovereign God. In Isaiah 45: 1 – 6, it says to us “I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: 6 That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else”. The reason God is giving you this victory we are talking about is so that through you He can prove Himself to the world that He is God.
If you will not allow God to showcase you as His own, then this victory may become too much like it was for those people.
Number two, why God gives this to us, to make it easier for us to believe Him and worship Him. The Bible tells us that if they do not see signs, they will not believe. In Acts 3: 1 – 11, there was a man by the Beautiful Gate who was lame and was there for many years, but one day he received divine victory and what did he do? He went into the church and the Bible tells us I verse 10, “And they knew that it was he which sat for alms at the Beautiful gate of the temple: and they were filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened unto him”. God will do things to you that people will see you and be filled with wonder in the mighty name of Jesus.
Number three is to make evangelism and soul winning easier, because the moment they see things happen, you won’t waste time, you won’t spend too much time having to convince people, they will see that already God is at work, hallelujah!
In Acts 16: 26 – 34, the Bible tells us that Paul and Silas were in a prison and they were kept in the prison but overnight as they were singing praises and dancing, there was an earthquake and the prison chains broke and they were free. When the Keeper of the prison came and he didn’t see them, the first thing he did was he wanted to kill himself and they said no, don’t kill yourself, we are still here, other people who didn’t have God would have run away.
They said we are here, we are children of the Most High God, so when he saw what God had done, he gave his life, he took them to his home, all the family members gave their lives, they had Holy Communion and I believe by extension they also had baptism.
Evangelism and soul winning, brethren, God is going to give you victory but we must know the purpose – first, to showcase God that He’s the King of kings and the Lord of lords; two, it helps us to believe in Him, and the third one is that we don’t just keep it, use it for evangelism, use it for soul winning.
Could David have used his time of comfort to tell the whole world that once upon a time I was going from caves to caves but God has given me comfort; could Solomon have used his peace to tell the whole world that I was nobody, I was a son of a concubine but God gave me the kingdom, He didn’t stop at that, He gave me all peace.
Imagine all those women if they had become Christians through Solomon, brethren, may you never miss the opportunity to showcase God and to evangelize by reason of what He will do with you.
I will share with you quickly, a testimony, and we’ll try to close. Many years ago I had an experience, I was posted to work in a city called Ilorin, (some of us will know it); ten branches were opened in my organization at the time, so I was meant to lead one of them at Ilorin, ten of us, so you can imagine the competition, all managers at Ilorin.
Before then, there were some cities that people rated much higher, if you rank the ten, Ilorin will be amongst the last three – maybe 8th, 9th or even the 10th, so nobody gave any attention to that but somehow, God started moving things around and things started working for us, for me, so much that every now and then my director would call and say ah Tunde, what are you doing this month? I would tell him. By the fifth month, we started making profit, before the end of the year, we became the second best of the ten, something that had been written off.
So one day, something happened; a client gave us an investment in nine digits, 20 years ago, and then my boss called and said Tunde, God is helping you in this Ilorin o; you know what I did, I didn’t let it rest, I said ah, I work hard o, if you know what we did before we got that thing, if you know how we got it overnight and all that, this my boss wasn’t a believer., he was a Christian by name but not a believer; I profess to be a believer, a non- believer saw that God was helping me and I rebuffed it, I showcased myself, guess what happened, by the next month, everything that we had went; the subsequent months, I started struggling, they moved me out of the place to go and start afresh somewhere else, put another person there, in less than three months the person started shining.
Brethren, when you have the opportunity to showcase God, don’t hide it; there’s a reason God gives you victory, it’s so that you can show forth His glory, hallelujah!
Time will not let us go through, but it’s not all about people who lost their victory, there are some people who are able to uphold the goodness of this victory: Naaman, he was not a Christian like that, but even though he was a great man, 2nd Kings 5, he was still humane, he was still able to create an atmosphere for his servants to be able to minister to him and to counsel him and to tell him oga, why don’t you do this? Many of us, they can’t even cross our line, we say we are big, they’ll greet you and you’ll say hmm, who are you?
The Shunamite woman, 2nd Kings 8; she saw a man of God going in the sun and said haha, let us care for this man. The Bible says she was a great woman of Shunem, great woman, she needed nothing, but something she needed that was hidden, God revealed it through her generosity. How many of us will look at people who are downtrodden and be generous without asking us?
As I conclude, God is the Almighty, He can give all His children victory anytime for anything, therefore, the question is that the victory that He has given you already, what have you done with it? The one that He’s going to give you, what would you do with it? At what point is it going to be too much? At what point is it too little? What is just enough? We keep asking for more and more, but some people are asking for more and more, I hope it will not lead to destruction, may it not in the mighty name of Jesus.
What level of comfort, what level of fame, what level of peace is too little or too much? We need this consciousness, brethren, we need the grace to handle it and the Lord will have mercy on us and give us that grace in the mighty name of Jesus.
Before we go to pray, 1st Corinthians 10: 12 tells me let he who stand take heed lest he falls; David was a man after God’s heart, he was already standing but he fell; Solomon was God’s chosen but he fell, if those who were already working with God fell, how much more those who are not working with God,
If you are here this morning, you don’t have a relationship with God, you don’t know Him yet, you’ve never accepted Him as your Lord and Savior, even if he gives you the victory you will fall, it’s not a curse but He will not even give you because God is a God of purpose, He doesn’t waste resources.
You are here this morning, you want God to lift you up, you want God to give you victory in the issues of life, you want God to make you what you have been praying about, you need to first accept Him, come to work with Him.
[Altar call]
Let’s begin to give thanks to God, let us thank Him, let’s thank Him for the gift of life, let’s thank Him for the privilege, let’s thank Him for what He has given to us in the past, the victory He has given us before, let us give Him thanks, let us thank Him for what He is yet to do, what He’s about to do, Father we thank You, glory be to Your name forevermore, in Jesus mighty name we have given thanks.
Let us pray and say Father, please have mercy on me, in every way and in any way that I have abused the victories You have given me in the past, have mercy on me, thank You heavenly Father, in Jesus mighty name we have prayed.
Brethren, whether the victory will come, surely it will, let’s pray to the Lord, say Father, please give me the grace to remain connected to You, to remain relevant in Your kingdom, even when You give me this victory, let me remain connected oh Lord to You, let me remain relevant in Your kingdom, let me remain connected oh Lord to the purpose of the victory in the mighty name of Jesus. Please Father Lord help me, thank You heavenly Father, in Jesus mighty name we have prayed.
We’ll pray again and say Father, please help me to use this victory that You have given me or that You will give me to showcase Your name to the whole world, to prove to the world that You are God in the mighty name of Jesus. I will not take Your glory, I will not take what rightfully belongs to You, help me oh Lord to showcase You to the whole world in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank You my Father, in Jesus wonderful name we’ve prayed.
Finally this one is for you, victory means different things to different people, for some, victory is a new job; for another person, it is healing; for another one, it’s a child; for another person, it is house; it’s whatever, God is here brethren, whatsoever victory means to you, God is able to do it, just talk to Him right now, the Lord is here talk to Him.
