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Coronavirus Bible Study Series: October 14, 2020

Winning At Warfare

 The Battle For Destiny Part 5

 Synopsis of Bible Study October 14, 2020

Delivered By Pastor Lee Bynum, MDiv.

 Family of Overcomers we are ready to go into part 5 of this series. It has been amazing, and I have enjoyed it. So, I want to close this series out by talking about the battle for destiny. We have dealt with the mind; fear, flesh, family and now we want to look at destiny. So, I want to focus in on destiny and what does that look like. Well all of us have a destiny the destiny is the end game, the end result. We hear a lot about destiny, people talk about destiny on my life, but destiny is achieved when we persevere when go through the process and understand the promise. I can never get through the process without the promise of God. So, let look at Isaiah 55:11

 Isaiah 55:11 NKJV

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

 I.  INTRODUCTION

As a Christian in this life I must know it’s a battle and if you’ve been following the Lord for a long time you understand and can testify that there have been many blessings, many challenges and many obstacles in your life. So, even in the midst of great loss, lost of sleep lost of finances loss of work you realize that all these things are nothing but opposition to you fulfilling the destiny God has for your life. At some point you must, muster up the strength to move on and move forward in spite of the weights that are upon your life. That is what separates extraordinary people from average people your ability to keep pushing forward fighting the battle against the world, which is enmity around us. Secondly fighting the battle against the flesh, which is the enemy within us thirdly fighting the battle above us. All that plays a part in your future of your destiny.

The key to winning the battle for your destiny is moving forward never giving up spiritual resolve never letting anything hinder or derail the plan of God for your life, because if you not know how to overcome the stuff that’s coming at you its going to over come you. Do not argue with your destiny.

 II. DO NOT ARGUE WITH YOUR DESTINY:

Do not argue with your destiny because child of God you will not win. Destiny is a process you cannot say that you do not want to do, or I am done. There is not needed to argue with it because its already pre-set by God and Gods not going to repent of his word. He spoke over your life. Therefore, getting the destiny is a process.

 A. The Destiny Process

 Case Study: Joshua Facing The High Priest: 

 Zechariah 3:1-5 NKJV

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?” 3 Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and was standing before the Angel. 4 Then He answered and spoke to those who stood before Him, saying, “Take away the filthy garments from him.” And to him He said, “See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes.” 5 And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.” So, they put a clean turban on his head, and they put the clothes on him. And the Angel of the Lord stood by.

 

The following words were applied to the situation facing Joshua the high priest who labored with Zerubbabel and Haggai in the rebuilding of the Temple. Now from this passage we learn four distinct things.

1. God Has His Hand On Your Life: Just think about that for a moment. I don’t care what happens in your life, Gods got his hand in your life and in verse 5 the angel of the Lord and the angel of the Lord of the Old Testament scholars agree that this term is usually used for Jesus standing by but God has His eye on us watching over our destiny. Here is the reason why a lot of bad stuff never happened to you because God has His hand on your life. How did you get out of that? God has His hand on you. 

2. We Sometimes Fail And Falter: You’re not perfect, and just because there’s destiny in your life does not mean that you got it all together. Verse 3 states that Joshua was standing before the Lord with filthy clothes and this symbolizes the sin that trips us up as we try to walk things out through life.

3. Satan Also Has His Eye On Us: Verse 1 states that Satan was standing by waiting to oppose it. You do know that the devil is studying you; he has his eye on everything that you are doing. He is your accuser and wherever God is taking you Satan is always watching, always looking always trying to get into it to try to figure out how to derail the destiny on your life.

4. God Renews Us In Our Calling: The clean robe and turban placed on Joshua in verse 4 and 5 mirrors the truth of 1 John 1:9.

1 John 1:9 NKJV If We Confess Our Sins, He Is Faithful And Just To Forgive Us Our Sins And To Cleanse Us From All Unrighteousness.

These are the words quoted from Zechariah and it reminds us that coming into our destiny in God does not happen without struggle. Sometimes you’re going to have to fight your way to the victory and it is not going to be easy. If it were easy anybody could do it. The destiny in your life is so amazing so extraordinary that you are going to have to work harder than ever before if you are going to see it come to pass. However, you must know there is always help in your struggle.

B. There Is Help For Your Struggle: Has failure or opposition caused you to give up the pursuit of Gods will for your life? Have you ever been to a place where you just say I cannot do this anymore? I am done, I am tired, does this story in Zechariah 3 inspire you to renew your quest to fulfill your destiny in God? I hope so because our calling depends upon God’s grace not our ability.  It is not your ability, we are not doing this because we have got it all together, we are doing it because of the grace of God. Paul says I am what I am because of the grace of God. The calling and the grace given to us in Christ was given before we even arrived here. God foreknew you and God still chose you. God knew all your weaknesses, your hang-ups He knew everything about you and yet He chose you in spite of you. Once you understand that you can proclaim your purpose.

C. Proclaim Your Purpose: Just think about that for a moment. You are not an accident looking for something to happen. You were born on purpose with the purpose and God has great things He is going to do in your life. Proclaim it because proclamation is on the mightiest weapons using the Bible for destiny. Your destiny is tied to your identity.

III. YOUR DESTINY IS TIED TO YOUR IDENTITY:

When you declare something when you proclaim something, you are basically saying I know who I am, and I know what God’s word said I am. So, if I know who I am and I know what God’s word said I can have. I believe what it says I can do and be who it says I can be, and I can have what it says I can have.

Case Study: Moses

Moses was rescued by the river by Pharaoh’s daughter. He was called a basket case. He was raised by his Hebrew mother and given a place of honor in Pharaoh’s palace. He was positioned perfectly to understand and relieve the persecution and affliction of his people. He was a Hebrew, but he was brought up in an Egyptian world and the result was that he did not quite fit in either world. Moses was raised among judges and rulers of the land but sought to identify with his people who were a little better than slaves. It was his goal to fulfill the purpose for which God rescued him out of and now and he knew what that purpose was but failed the application.

How many of us have the same issue? We know there is a calling on our life we know there is something great but when it comes to the application of it, we just do not know how to move in it. How do I move into the application of the vision that on my life? How do I make this happen? I know the purpose, but I just cannot seem to make this happen in my life. Fulfilling the application and purpose means that you come to a place that you realize there is something I’m called to be doing. I need strategy on how to do it. I must work through sometimes my own frustrations of not being equipped for it but let me say that you will miss the mark if you don’t walk out the way God has called you to do it.

Destiny is waiting on you; your destiny is waiting on you. Moses was in the wilderness when destiny called him. He was out attending to sheep why is that important? Because God uses this season of isolation as preparation because he is tending sheep and God calls him preparing him to lead His sheep. God always puts us in seasons of preparation. Remember many years after Moses lived Mordecai told his cousin Esther that God brought her to the kingdom for such a time as this. God always has a time for destiny to manifest but it always happens through process. In the process its preparation, persecution but you can overcome it with promise because of the conflict within.

IV. THE CONFLICT WITHIN:

A. Don’t Be A Public Success And A Private Failure: We often win battles externally without doing the work internally. Hw many people do you know that have done extraordinary things externally but internally they keep losing, keep taking loses? It makes no sense to be amazing publicly but a mess privately. This is not a season for private failures. Your public success reflects your private prayers.

B. Your Public Success Is A Reflection Of Your Private Prayers:  When people try to calculate what you are doing and how you are doing it, they forget you got a prayer life. People wonder how you got certain things and they will ask you how you got it, but they do not usually ask you about your prayer life. Those things that God provided for you came through prayer. There is always a spiritual component to it. It not just about having a brand or just a great market strategy only, its about a prayer life. The secret weapon is prayer. You must do both stay on my knees talking to God. I will never come to full fruition until I talk to God about it, and there are many who seek God but few who obey. See our problem is we try to control how the story ends when we should join in what God is doing and allow His will to play out for our destiny. However, you want this to happen God I am cool with it. How long will it take for you to fully submit to God, how long will it take you to finally say Lord I submit to the process I am fighting for my destiny and I am going to win this battle because the devil is like a roaring lion and he is trying to devour you?

C. Feed The Spirit And Not The Eye: Now this is the elephant in the room. Lets just call it out. How many of us miss out on the right person all because they do not have what you want? They do not have the look that you deserve fit the eye and then feed the soul. The eye is deceiving, the eye tells two lies. We are to small; we are to big the Bible speaks of examples of how the eye is so deceiving.  In Genesis 3 Eve saw that the fruit was good even after God told her do not touch it. It was the lie of the eye she saw it and she took it to her husband and he never questioned once he saw it, he ate it. Samson had eye trouble, when he saw the daughter of a Philistine and wanted to marry her and he also saw a harlot from Gaza, which led to his fate with Delilah and the Philistines. The Philistines put out Samson’s eye only after that did God use him again. Jesus teaches us in Matthew 5:29.

 Matthew 5:29 NKJV If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

Now do not take that literal, don’t go plucking your eye out for real. He is talking about how its important to understand how what we look at and how to say I’m letting that go so that I don’t lose my whole life based on my insatiable desire of what I see.  One of Israel and Judah’s problems prior to the exile is that they trusted too much in what they saw. They saw their Temples, their walls, their chariots, their alliances instead of their relationship with God, and God had to show the nation that their eyes were deceiving them and leading them away from Him. So, God began to destroy everything around them, and God put them out of their land so they could no longer trust their surroundings and what they saw. Now does that sound familiar. This world put confidence in all its creation all around technology and the world forgot about God and now God has us in a situation now where we must trust Him. Sometimes you must get over yourself you must understand that your destiny is bigger than you. You must realize that God is doing something so amazing so powerful that He could get this done without you. We are learning in this season what is essential and what’s not. The church belongs to Him, we belong to Him, it is he that has made us and not we ourselves. Do not get so caught up in yourself that you miss out on what God has for your life.

Before the foundations of the world God established for you, God had it set for you. So, in order to walk into purpose and you must deal with the process the challenges but you can’t do it in the flesh. You must overcome the mental challenges we talked about flesh and spirit studies. You must get to a place in your life where you begin to see where you are going and begin to realize that God has chosen somebody like me to fulfill a destiny as great as that and how amazing in the fact that before Moses would be Moses and before David would be who David was and before Jeremiah would become who he would become before the Apostle Paul would be the Apostle Paul God took them through a process and God knew exactly what that destiny would be and that destiny would never be easy to fulfill. Even Jesus himself in the garden of Gethsemane comes to a crossroads and Jesus says Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me if this is what it means to fulfill destiny give me a way out, but he overcomes. Watch this the flesh he overcomes the battle of his mind the battle over fear and guess what happens? Nevertheless, not my will but thy will be done.

When we are walking in destiny, we do not necessarily get to choose it, it chooses us. I did not choose to be called. God called me If I had my way, I would have been in the military or hopefully had a career in the NBA, but God choose me for something bigger than me.

When I look over my life today, I am grateful that God did but I think about the lives that have impacted by what God has done through our ministry for Him to get glory. When you really understand what that is about you will fight for it. You have no idea the lives that your destiny has touched in your family and with others. A few weeks ago, an Assistant Pastor of church in Charlotte called me to tell me how a devotional we put out quarterly led a young man to Christ just days before he was gunned down. The Pastor told me that since I did not live in that area, I would have never met the man. However, the book that my church and I put out made a difference.

I want to tell you in closing, get up and go fight for your destiny. Get back up and go get it, lets make it happen. God wants to do something amazing and extraordinary in your life and its time to go get it time to declare I am fighting for mine. This entire series was all about us understanding that we experienced some challenges these are five battles that believers face. We all have issues, but we all have the power to overcome them and ultimately when you are chasing destiny. We know that God is at work in all things for our good. If God allowed it, its going to bless you keep going after destiny the best is yet to come. 

Stay Informed.

Stay Safe. 

Be Encouraged!