Once again, me and my balancing act of things that I’m holding always. Thanks, babe. That’s great. Sorry. If anybody doesn’t know or if you’re new here, my name is Shelly. My husband Jonathan and I are the pastors here, and we have the honor to pastor together this wonderful house. We are third-generation pastors in this house.

My grandmother was the founding pastor. Yes. And then my parents were the lead pastors here for 20 years. Almost a year ago now, Jonathan and I took the lead position, and my parents, Pastors Pat and Selena, stepped into their next season of apostolic ministry, which is bringing them all over the place more than they would like.

They bring greetings to you from Oklahoma today. They are doing their thing, and God is sending from this house. He’s sending the Word, He’s sending people, and we’re excited to see and continue to journey with Him on what God is doing here. It’s a great thing. I do want to give a little emphasis about our musical.

Every year at Christmas, we do our biggest church outreach—our musical, which will be on December 13th, 14th, and 15th this year. We do three performances, and we bring in well over a thousand people into this building over those three performances. We get to give them the gospel of Jesus Christ and bring them the presence of God, so they can experience not just salvation but the fullness of what Jesus has for them.

It’s always been a huge endeavor for our church, and it continues to be that because it’s an amazing opportunity to reach our community, especially for people who might not step into a church at other times. We do fun Christmas things, with little girls dancing and little boys on drums, and people get to come, watch, and hear about Jesus and His transforming power.

Our choir is amazing, and we’re starting choir practices next Sunday. It’s open if you have friends from another church who sing and want to participate. We’d love to have them join us. There’s more information available through the QR code, which will be posted, and you can also support in other areas like our audio-visual team, lighting, stage crew, welcome team, parking lot, greeters, shuttle drivers, hospitality, and decorating teams. This is a church-wide endeavor to host our community and bring them into the presence of the Lord.

Next week, if you have any more questions, you can talk to Kathy Demetri, who’s in a beautiful yellow dress today. Last week, Jonathan and I shared a little of our hearts about what’s next and what’s coming in this next season for our house. We connected it to some of the things that God’s been doing here in our church and where we see God leading us.

We called it the “new normal.” We talked about being expressions of the Kingdom on earth all the time as a normal part of our lives. Not “normal” as in average, but as something that happens all the time. The power and the expression of Christ should be present everywhere we go. Healings should be normal. Deliverances should be normal. This is what bringing the Kingdom of God to where we are means. Kingdom actions on display. That’s what this is about. Living Kingdom is not average behavior, but it must be normal in our lives.

It must be our expectation, the given. When I say “normal,” I mean, “My normal week looks like this: I get up on Mondays, go to work, do it again through Friday, go to soccer on Saturdays, and come to church on Sundays.” But what else should be part of our normal? The expectation of the power of God moving in and through our lives, through everything we touch, and everywhere we go—in our workplace, home, family, school, soccer field, football field. Wherever we go, we should expect as normal the power and presence of God to be there with us.

Yes, that should be our new normal. Our expectation, which comes from humbly following Christ. I wanted to touch on a couple things we didn’t get to last week before I launch into today’s topic. I believe God was challenging us to understand where we’ve been, the great things we’re doing, and also to recognize the areas we need to grow.

One of the last things Pastor Jonathan briefly said is that we have to have a ready position to step into this next season. When we talk about bringing Kingdom and being Kingdom, we have to be in a ready position. We have to be positioned in alignment with God, under His authority, to bring His Kingdom where we are. Yes, if I’m not aligned and positioned, I can walk into a room and nothing changes.

But when I position my life in the Word and under the authority of God, I can more clearly understand how to bring that authority and power wherever I go. That’s what we’re talking about—being in a ready position. Jonathan said last week, “You have very little to do with what the future will bring.” It’s true, right? Life throws all sorts of curves at us. Most of it we have nothing to do with, though some of it we do, just to say.

But it’s imperative that we know how to be ready for anything. The curveballs thrown at us don’t have to derail us. The big wave doesn’t have to crash over us if we are in position and understand who we are, ready to walk into the places God has called us. That takes discipleship. God is inviting us into a place of discipleship today.

He’s inviting us into a deep, close relationship with Him, where we know Him so well that we can almost predict where He’s going. Have you ever known someone so well that they start a sentence, and you already know what they’re going to say? That’s how God wants us to be with Him—so close that with just a nudge, we know He’s calling us into a deeper relationship, so we can be ready and positioned to step into the things He’s calling us to, individually and corporately as this house, and as the Church of God on earth.

The conference we had last month was a tremendous time that God gave clear direction and empowerment to this house. Clear direction and empowerment. I would encourage you guys, if you missed it, to go back and listen. They’re all on YouTube, on our channel. Pastor Amanda spoke on Friday night, and she talked about seeing in the dark and that not all dark places are of the devil.

God says, “I dwell in thick darkness,” and sometimes we are going through things that are difficult, and we have to find God in it, not try to run away from it, because there’s something in it that He wants to teach us and grow us. We have to find God and trust His timing, His ways in it.

On Saturday, Pastor Pat preached first, laying the foundation of the principles of the doctrine of Christ. This is a huge part of being ready—understanding the Word of God, understanding the doctrines that we believe in because it is the foundation on which we must build our lives. He did a great illustration about being on a couple of different blocks and how you can put a piece of wood on a few blocks. If it’s off-centered and not on the right foundation, it’s difficult to stand on, but when it’s on all of them, we can stand firmly. These are so important in our walk with the Lord.

Pastor Liz challenged us to live out our Christianity with a raw and real faith, passionately following Christ. This world does not need another fake anything. The whole world is fake, everything, and they’re crying out for real, authentic, raw truth. We sometimes are so afraid of being real and authentic for Christ. We try to cover it up and make it look really pretty so that people will receive it. That is not what they want, and it is really not what they need.

They need the passion that is burning on the inside of you to get out of you. They need to see the rawness and realness—that I struggle here and I struggle there. Yes, I proclaim to be a Christian, and all that means is I’m trying to do better. I don’t have it all together, but I am going to pursue Christ passionately, and I’m going to do my best to do better every day because the life of Christ is inside of me, transforming me as I allow Him to. And as He transforms me, everything starts to make sense.

That’s raw. Sometimes we don’t like raw, but it’s real. If we’re going to reach our world right now, we have to be willing to be real. We have to be willing to be raw. We have to be willing to put ourselves out there, say, “God’s brought me out of this mess. I don’t have it all figured out yet, but let me tell you what He has brought me out of, and let’s journey the rest of the way together.” That’s what the world needs.

We also had a time on Saturday of a foot washing that enabled us to grow in unity and love with each other so that we can truly operate in this raw power and presence of God because we can’t do that unless we truly have love one for another. What did Jesus say? “They will know you are my disciples by your love, one for another.” It’s what makes us different. It’s what gives us power.

Pastor Amanda, on the Sunday of our conference, talked about the farmer’s heart. She talked about how we needed to learn how to plant seeds. She gave us directives like planting, uniting, and building. We had to embrace a shovel. We had to understand harvest and what that meant and discerning the process in it. This word was very prophetic in nature and was extremely consistent with what had been previously spoken to our house and what is currently happening in our church now—within individuals and corporately in this house. It was really a propelling of what God is doing into the next.

I believe that it is just the beginning and is going to continue to increase the desire to plant seeds of God’s kingdom in our community, the desire to be planting in everyday ways the love of God, the life of God everywhere we go.

Today, God wants to strengthen our readiness for what He has prepared for us. The desire for readiness is going to direct these next several months of messaging and sermons here at church. So today I’m here to launch our next series, and it is going to be about the overcoming church. See, everything about an overcomer is based on the preparation and readiness to respond to scenarios with victory already in mind.

I’m going to say that again. Everything about an overcomer is based on the preparation and readiness to respond to any scenario, every scenario, with victory already in mind. We have to know the end before we start. We have to understand who wins in the end. Victory in mind. Victorious living is the DNA of an overcoming church.

The overcomer hears what the Spirit is saying and operates in partnership with Jesus and His body, in the authority of God. There is a leading of Holy Spirit to this church to rise to a higher level of victory, a greater measure of overcoming impact that will release His glory. He’s calling us to a greater level of victorious living to bring impact that is going to release His glory.

Now, this theme was decided on before our conference. Then Pastor Amanda gets up there and preaches about beating swords into plowshares, and I’m sitting there like, “This is a great message, but man, what the heck? Am I way off base? We’re going into ‘Overcoming Church’ after this? How is this working?” This is such great direction about what we’re doing, and I’m thinking, “How does this work?” because I believe God really put this series in our hearts for what’s next here.

As I began to study—if you’ve heard me preach more than once, you probably know I love to dig into words and research them, look up definitions, biblical definitions, context, Greek and Hebrew, and lexicons—so I started doing some research on the word “overcoming.” That word means to subdue, to conquer, and to prevail. Those are the basic three definitions: to subdue, to conquer, and to prevail. I’m like, “Okay, let’s go get our swords, let’s go subdue, conquer, and prevail.” Then I thought, “Wait, beating our swords into plowshares? What the heck does this mean?”

The word “subdue” means to conquer and to bring into subjection and to bring the land under cultivation. I just had to laugh. Subdue means to conquer and bring the land under cultivation. There’s more to overcoming than the actual warfare. To take the territory, overcoming includes the cultivation of what God has given us—the cultivation of the land and the place that God has given us, the place that He has given victory in. We don’t go just parade around with our swords.We have to plant seeds, and we have to cultivate the ground. We have to bring forth harvest for life. Because in order for life to happen in the place that is conquered, you must do this. You have to build buildings. You have to plant seeds. You have to produce crops and make food. This is what an overcoming church is.

They take territory and then they plant. They take territory. Then they cultivate the land that God has given them. God has given it to us not to parade around and have parties. God has given it to us to do something with it, to bring forth fruit in the places that He is calling us to.

That is what overcoming is. The other word, overcoming, is to prevail: to prove more powerful than the opposing forces.

To be widespread or current. To exist everywhere.

To appear or occur as the more important or frequent feature.

To be predominant. To operate with effect.

You see, if we will truly be overcomers, then the Kingdom of God will be the widespread prevailing culture. It will be what is effective in the place where we’ve already conquered. It is the culture that now takes preeminence. That is what we’re called to do as overcomers: to prevail. To be the most frequent. The most widespread.

The message of life. To be the most frequent. The most widespread. That is what overcoming looks like. That is what He’s calling us to in this next season. So it does not contradict the direction that the Lord gave us through Pastor Amanda, or what we’re going to be doing and accomplishing in this next season. And the challenge is to be doing it in this next season, because we plant because God’s authority has been established.

We will only plant… Let me just say this: people only plant crops when there is a sense of security. People only plant crops when there is a sense of protection and longevity. You don’t plant something somewhere where you do not plan to be there when it is harvest time.

We plant because we understand the King. We plant because we understand the authority that we walk in. We plant because we understand the assignment that has been given to us in this place, in this community. And we will reap the harvest that God is calling. You don’t plant if you don’t understand the reward of the planting.

Planting is hard work. Farming is not easy. But we do it because of the harvest. So does our call to plant and harvest mean that we ignore the struggle? The other thing that I heard a couple of people say after Pastor Amanda’s message was, “Yeah, but the Lord just keeps talking to me about warfare, and God is challenging us about putting on the armor of God and understanding what is happening in the spiritual realm.”

It does not mean that we ignore the spiritual battle. Planting in the season that we’re in does not mean that we ignore the spiritual battle. We must understand that the struggle in Ephesians 6 is on a spiritual level. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities.” This is the struggle. It is a spiritual struggle.

And let me tell you that the battle is for us to be properly aligned with God’s authority. The enemy does not want us to understand who we are. The enemy does not want us to be properly aligned in the authority of God. And that is where the battle is. The battle is for our identity in Him. The struggle is for our faith, and that is going to be a continuous thing.

But we are going to overcome when we understand who we are. We put on the armor of God, and it will propel us forward into these things. And when we do, we can begin to plant. We can begin to plant. I also believe that there are going to be times, like in Nehemiah, when the rebuilding of the wall happened, that they were building with one hand and had a sword in the other.

There are times that we have to build, plow forward, and show things, but we have to be ready with the Word of God in our hand. Ready, ready, ready. Because the enemy is going to come, and he’s going to come back at us in our minds. He’s going to come back at us facing our identity issues, and he’s going to come back around with all sorts of tactics. We’re not to be deceived.

We have to know how he works. We’ve spent many messages, even this last year, about the armor of God and being victorious in our own lives. So I challenge you in this season that we’re coming into, that God is putting us into places where we need to plant seeds. We cannot abandon that. We cannot abandon that. We cannot be ignorant that he is still going to be there, and we still have to be on guard.

We still have to have our helmet. We still have to be clothed in these things, because it is how we will continue to be victorious. It’s a continuous work, but I believe that there are places that God has already given us that we’re fighting for instead of occupying.

Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s a battle.

Like I said, farming is really hard. It’s hard work.

Every day, we must walk and live in the victory that we have obtained.

It doesn’t stay without effort.

See, when God has given us something, we are supposed to occupy it. If we do not actually occupy it, it is left open for another to come in. And then we have to battle for it again. I believe that that’s part of what God is speaking to us in this season, and what Pastor Amanda was saying and how we’re walking into this series about an overcoming church, is that overcomers…

They take territory, and they establish land. They establish the kingdom in that territory. They plant and they occupy it, giving no space and no room. That is not done passively. We must be careful not to give up ground that has already been won.So the overcomer, the overcomer. Here’s what the spirit is saying and operates in partnership with Christ in the authority of God. First John five verses four through five says, for everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that overcomes the world: our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world, except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

I want to also read in the Passion Translation: you see, every child of God overcomes the world. For our faith is the victorious power that triumphs over the world. So who are the world’s conquerors, defeating its power? Those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God. So before we can really dive into the series about an overcoming church, we must understand that our faith is the victorious power that triumphs. Our faith.

Hebrews 11 defines faith for us, right? Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. The Dictionary of Bible Languages says that faith is a state of certainty, of belief.

Certainty. Belief. A complete trust. Now, my word document kept telling me that “complete trust” was incorrect grammar, wanting me to change it to “belief in a complete trust.” No. A belief to a complete trust. There is a growth that we can have and that we need to have in our faith. There is growth. There is a measure that we have. And then God gives us another measure. And how does faith come? The Bible tells us that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. So if we want to increase our faith so that we can really say that we believe to complete trust—complete trust, this state of complete dependency—then we must be in the Word of God to build our faith, because it is only through the Word of God that we grow in our faith, that it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger until we have this complete reliance, this complete reliance.

I also believe that we have faith that grows in different measures because I have full faith in my salvation. I have complete and full trust that I know that when I die, I am going to heaven and I am not going to hell. And I know without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus did that on the cross for me. And he died, and he was buried, and he rose again for me. I have complete and utter faith in that. But you know where my faith does need to grow? A lot of other places. Do I have faith in him as my Lord? Fully and completely, my Lord? That’s a concept we, as Americans, don’t understand very well, but he’s calling us to that.

Because here, even in First John, it says, who are these world conquerors? Those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God. The Son of God. Lord. Authority. My faith needs to grow into this understanding of him as my Lord. Faith is defined in Strong’s as conviction, reliance, constancy in profession. Constancy in profession. Man, I’m not there. Anybody else? I’m sure there’s a few that are, but I don’t know, like, constancy in profession.

The pocket lexicon defines it as the leaning of the entire human personality upon God. The leaning of the entire human personality on God. That’s what faith is—the entire human personality. Not this part here, not leaning, not this part here, not this area here I have faith in. But not in this area, because I just haven’t seen it yet, God.

The substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things not seen. It is the absolute trust and confidence in his power, his wisdom, and his goodness. That is the faith that we need: our certainty in who we are as sons and daughters, and our absolute confidence in the authority of Christ and the reliance on him as Lord of our lives, is what will produce victory.

This is who overcomes the world. Even our faith, our complete reliance. Our complete trust.

When we truly grasp the authority of God, we can subdue and cultivate and prevail in the places that God has assigned to us. And that is what being an overcoming church is: complete reliance, knowing that he is the victor and I am victorious only through him, and that I can start from a place of victory because of who he is and what he did for me.

So we’re going to be spending the next several months on the overcoming church. And this is both a corporate word and an individual word. Hear me. This is both corporate and individual. We’re going to be talking about the qualities of an overcomer. We’re going to be gleaning from the seven churches in Revelation what we can learn from them—their strengths and weaknesses. Love, sin, and immorality. Trials and persecution. These are real things. But God says, don’t consider it strange when trials come. Yet, in our American Christianity, we think we must be doing something wrong. We have to understand it—it’s so important to understand it. We need to. We’re going to talk about lordship and authority. We’re going to talk about kingdom and planting.

So we’re going to be doing a lot out of the book of Revelation. It’s not scary. Not all of it.

There’s a lot that we don’t know in Revelation, but man, we cannot be afraid of it because there’s a lot in there for us today, and it’s not something we should shy away from. In Revelation, over and over again, you hear Jesus saying, “He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”

And that is our cry for this season. God, we want to be a people that have an ear to hear what you are saying.

We want to know where you are going. We want to understand and know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the Spirit is leading us into victory, into planting, into occupying, into Kingdom. So that is our cry. Let us be a church that hears what the Spirit is saying. Amen.

Amen.

Let’s pray, and then we’ll head to something we call fellowship, where we eat food together and get to know each other more. Father, we thank you for this word. We thank you for your lead, your guide, and God, that our hearts would be open to what you’re saying. Lord, just help us as we go about this day. Continue to bring to us what we need, and we praise you and thank you for all things, in Jesus’ name.