Things moved well at first, but then it began to slow down. Had so many things coming at you that you got sidetracked. Before you knew it, you weren't accomplishing anything anymore.

You been there? Consider your life right now and answer these questions. Do you feel that you are winning the battle? Do you feel that you've done enough? Or do you face the following instead? You're feeling overwhelmed and incapable. It looks like everyone else around you is winning and it feels like you're always failing.

Well, here's the good news. If it helps, you're not alone. You're not alone.

Most people in this life, especially believers, are facing this exact scenario. But here's the good news. You don't need to feel this way, because there's always a way to win.

And that's what I'd like to share with you tonight. I'd like to show you how you can always win. Have you ever noticed that life is a competition? From the moment we're born, we're competing against something.

The whole of life seems to be like a competition. And the first thing that we have against us that we got to compete with from the moment we're born in this world is what is known as the curse. What's the curse? That's what came into this earth when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and sinned.

And a curse was pronounced upon the creation. What are the effects of the curse in your life? Very simply this, nothing comes easy. Adam and Eve had a wonderful time in the garden.

Everything fell into place for them. There was no struggle, no suffering, no striving until after the fall and the curse came. And now suddenly everything was hard.

Adam had to work against the ground to try and get what he wanted. These are the effects of the curse. Have you noticed the curse in your life? Have you noticed that nothing comes easy? You notice that you've got to fight your way to try and get what you want in this life? Well, that's the curse.

And then you have the devil against you too. Yes, the devil and all of his angels and there's quite a few of them. They're against you all the time.

And what is the main thing that Satan does to try and discourage you and to stop you from accomplishing and achieving in this world and in this life? What's his main weapon? Accusation, condemnation. So you want to rise up and be a hotshot, do you? You can't do that, you're too useless. You were born with the wrong talents, you come from the wrong end of town, you're incapable, you're stupid, you're ugly.

Just look what you just did this last week. You opened your big mouth and you put your foot here and you messed it up. Who would ever listen to you? Who would ever follow you? Have you heard these voices? This is what the enemy does to us all the time, especially as believers, because he wants to make sure that we do not rise up and win.

He wants us to lose and he will accuse you and he will tell you how useless you are and what a failure you are and how incapable you are and if you believe his lies you become exactly what he says. Now he doesn't have the power to make you a failure, he doesn't have the power to take away your ability, he only has the power of suggestion and if you will believe his suggestions, if you will entertain the ideas of weakness and failure and I'm just useless and I'm just a mess up, you're going to lose. Then you have the world against you.

This whole world, it's a little expression you may have heard. Out in this world it's dog eat dog. Well you know, put a couple of dogs together and see how quickly they get into a fight.

You give them the same piece of meat and this world is just like that. In this world we are in competition all the time. Each person is vying with the other one, competing with the other one, putting one another down.

The scripture calls strife and vainglory, tearing people down and then exalting themselves in its place. This is the way of the world. This is the pressure of the system that we grow up in and live in, in this world.

All of that is designed to make sure that you lose and somebody else wins. Ultimately that you do not win. Well we have quite an array of enemies, don't we? We've got the curse, we've got the devil, we've got the world and then we've got people.

Do you think that's enough? You have one more enemy that's a bit closer to home that you're probably not even identifying and this one is actually probably the biggest enemy of all. If you want to find out who this big enemy is, who you are competing with more than anybody else and the one who causes you to have the greatest sense of failure in your life, go and find a mirror. It's you.

You are against yourself. You are condemning yourself. You are putting yourself down and self-condemnation and inferiority and insecurity are one of the biggest enemies of success in this life and in the spiritual life.

So this is the competition that you're in. What chance do you have of winning? Everybody knows that only the beautiful ones win, don't they? And so your own insecurity causes you to see yourself as being less than one of the beautiful people. As you look at yourself and you compare yourself with others, you don't show up.

You're not good enough. Everybody else is out there making success, rising up and changing this world and having an impact on this world and there's little old you sitting at home doing nothing because you are not capable of being like that person. You are not one of the beautiful people.

So what do you do? You strive to conform, to try and become like everybody else because after all, if that's what it takes to win and to be a success, perhaps if I could find somebody who has this success, who seems to be winning in life and perhaps if I begin to control, adjust my life to conform to the same way that they live, maybe I'll get the same results. In fact, they even teach you this in the world. Go and find somebody who's successful and do the same thing as them and you will get the same results.

Well, I believed that lie for a while and I gave it a try and it didn't work. I was confused. There were so many people giving their testimonials of how they tried these methods and it worked for them.

Why didn't it work for me? Because you are in this world but you are not of this world. The scripture says, you stand out as something unique and different as a child of God. You are not to conform to the world.

You are not to conform to the standards that this world sets. You ought to set new standards. You to rise up and be the champion and other people will follow.

We all suffer the pain of losing, don't we? Are you a good loser? If you were to play a sport and your team lost, how happy would you feel? If you're playing a single-handed sport like say tennis or squash and you lost the game, how do you feel when you are the loser and somebody else is the winner? It's a painful experience, isn't it? It's a painful experience. How do you feel when you stand up behind the pulpit to preach and somebody else stands after you and preaches better than you and everybody says what a wonderful preacher that person is and how terrible you were. The pain of losing, it's a terrible thing.

Have you faced it? Are you facing it right now? Have you tried with great enthusiasm to do all the right things but instead of winning, you lost? Well, what's the first thing that you're going to do to get over this? You know you've got to do something. You can't just stand there and let this happen. Obviously, if you lost, you must have done something wrong, right? You must have done something wrong.

So what are you going to do now to overcome this problem? What are you going to do now to change your circumstances? What are you going to do to move from being a loser to a winner? Well, let me tell you what most of us are going to do. We're going to firstly examine ourselves to see where we failed. I'm going to have a very good scrutiny of myself, look deep down inside myself to see where all my weaknesses are and where I did it wrong.

And I'm going to think what it is that I should do to make myself more successful, to make myself look better in the sight of others and to rise up and to change my status. Did you notice a word I kept repeating there? Me and my self. And all the success philosophies of this world, that's exactly what they're going to teach you to do, to take self and exalt it and lift it up.

Probably the most common teaching in this world created by taking a little scripture out of context and twisting it is the idea that you must love yourself before you can love other people. And psychology majors on this. Your way of overcoming insecurity is to stop putting yourself down and to love yourself.

You say, well, isn't that what you said shortly, a little while ago, when you spoke about self-condemnation and putting yourself down? Now, I said that was the problem. I didn't say that the solution was exalting yourself, did I? And that's the mistake that so many people make. And it's the mistake that we as believers make as well.

We think, if I failed, obviously I didn't work hard enough. I must put in more hours in a day. I must pay more attention.

I must study harder. I must apply myself more. I must do, do, do, do something to improve my status.

Come on, anybody out there? You've been trying to do that and it seems the more you fail, the harder you try. And the harder you try, the more you fail. Do you know why? Because you're missing the most important and valuable ingredient that is the key to success for a believer.

And it's the one thing that this world has too little of. You know what that is? It's love. You see, love is not self-seeking.

Love actually looks to others. And instead of looking at yourself and saying, what can I do to make myself more successful, to make me win and beat others? You should be saying, what can I do to help other people win? And we'll get to that in more detail shortly. And I'll show you the key to rising up and winning in life.

But let's look at some of the other things that are against us. I call this luck, fate, and providence. Well, as believers, we don't believe in luck, do we? Because that's demonic.

And fate, well, fate is kind of like fortune telling. And that's also demonic. So we take this nice little spiritual word.

We call it providence, which actually means the same thing. But it means we now blame God for it. Providence means that it's just my bad luck that God decided to do that for me.

But instead of making it luck, which is what the devil did, we call it providence, which says God did it. Sounds very spiritual, doesn't it? Some people are born into the right family. I wasn't.

In fact, most people find that they aren't born into the right family. Some people are born rich kids, and they grow up wealthy. Me, I was born in a poor home.

And actually, so were most people. It's my luck. It's my fate.

It's my providence. It's what God ordained for me. So I got a bad start in life, which made it more difficult for me to win, and for the guy who was born into a good family.

Now, some people, they're born intelligent. Man, they've got brilliant brains. You know, some of them are child prodigies.

They just rise up, and they have this inborn intelligence and ability to use their intellectual powers. Well, they didn't even have to work at it. It just came naturally.

Did it? Didn't for me. And I dare say, if you're honest, it didn't come easily for you either. And some people, well, you know, they're born with the good looks.

You know, you look at a baby, and I know everybody says all babies are beautiful, and every mother thinks her baby is the most beautiful creature in this world. But as an outsider, you look at the baby, and you can see all the features that came from the mother and came from the father. And if the mother and father were not such pretty people, you can see that same thing in the child.

And you know, that child is going to grow up with some of those features of its parents that just are not naturally beautiful and attractive. They were born that way. They were given the genes from mom and dad.

And some people, well, they win all the baby competitions because they're just beautiful, beautiful babies. And everybody loves them. Were you one of those? Probably not.

I wasn't. Some people just land in the right place at the right time. And when they're there, everything is arranged and sitting and waiting for them.

And all they do is just step into it. How often have you heard these testimonials of people who rose up and succeeded in business by accident? They just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Well, I don't know about you, but I always seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I just never kind of got there. I was at the wrong place at the wrong time, or I was in the wrong place at the right time. Or I was in the right place at the wrong time.

None of them ever worked. So what are you supposed to do when all of these things are against you? How can you expect a person to win and to succeed in this life when all of these things are counting against them? Well, you know, in the Bible days, there were two main categories you could be born into. You could be born a Jew, in which case you were naturally an inheritor of the blessing of God that came upon the Jewish people who were in covenant with Almighty God.

Or you could be born a Gentile, and you were outside of the covenant, and you weren't entitled to the blessings that God had given to the Jewish people through the covenant that he made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And then, if you were born a man, you had certain privileges which women don't have. And in this world for so many years, women were always pushed down and suppressed.

And men rose up. You may have been born into a racial group that was considered a minority group or an inferior to other races group. Now you're pushed down and you were suppressed.

These are your providence in life. This is the start that you had in life. You had a far less chance of winning and succeeding than others.

But you see, it all changed when you became a believer. None of that applies anymore. How do I know that? Because the scripture says so.

Galatians 3.28, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. All of that has been done away now that you have become a believer. You no longer have to be subject to what was handed to you in life.

Instead, what you've done is you've tapped into something brand new, something far more powerful. Now we come to the most important part of this teaching, the key to victory, the key to winning. Well, what is the greatest weapon that destroys you and causes you to fail? It is condemnation and a sense of failure.

And the first thing the scripture tells us is that in Christ Jesus, there is therefore now no condemnation. We have been delivered from all condemnation. In Christ, there will never ever be an accusation or a condemnation.

Oh, the enemy will try, but he has no legal right to do it. Because you have now been made into something new and something beautiful and something perfect. In Christ, you are a winner.

You are a winner. The scripture we read at the beginning said, in him, we are more than conquerors. I had an illustration years ago that I thought was beautiful.

Somebody mentioned a prize fighter, a guy who just won the heavyweight champion of the world. And the story went like this. He got home after the fight and his wife was waiting for him.

And she said, hey, I see you won the fight. That was awesome. He said, yes.

She said, how much did we get paid for the fight? He said, well, it was so many million dollars. She said, did you get the check? He said, yes, here it is. She said, thank you very much.

I'll take that. And the illustration is, he was a conqueror. He'd won the fight.

She was more than a conqueror. She walked into the benefits of it without having to lift a finger. You see, Jesus is the conqueror and he won the battle for us on Calvary.

And now as we step into him, all the benefits of his victory are handed to us on a platter. In Christ, you are a winner. Not because of what you've done, not because of what you haven't done, not because of how you feel, not because of how you see yourself, not because of what other people think about you, but because you are in him.

And you're in him. You see, when you're in him, whatever happens to him, wherever he goes, that's where you are. And where is he right now? He's seated in the heavenly realm at the right hand of the father.

So where are you right now? You are seated in the heavenly realm at the right hand of the father. You are more than a conqueror. You are reigning now in life through him.

You say, yes, well, that's great. But you know, practically in my everyday life, how do I make this work? Well, here's the beautiful opposite end of the picture. Not only are you in him, but he's in you.

Kind of like two snakes eating each other. You and me and I and you together. We are not only in Christ, Christ is also living inside of you.

And the scripture says that Christ in you is your hope of being glorified, of being lifted up. So the key to overcoming practically in this life, positionally in him, yes, we are winners. Now, how do I make that work in my life? All I need to do is to take his power and ability instead of mine.

Instead of sitting down and striving and thinking what I must do, how much harder I must work, how much better I must become. All I do is tap into what he has put in me and let it out. How do I do that? My vision has to become other oriented.

I've got to let it out in love. I've got to start flowing outwards because the power is within me. So as I let that divine ability that's in me flow out, my actions change.

And when I let it flow out in love, his power is released to go out of me. How do I make it work? Firstly, admit that you can't do this. Oh dear, but I've been trying so hard.

I've been gritting my teeth and I'm saying I'll make this thing work if it kills me. And it is. It is killing you.

I'll work harder even if I go without sleep. And you are going without sleep. Your circumstances aren't changing, are they? You're just getting ulcers and stress is overwhelming you and causing all sorts of other problems in your life until you come to the place where you admit, you know, I can't do this.

I wasn't born to be one of the beautiful people. It wasn't handed to me on a platter. I wasn't in the right place at the right time.

I can't do this. I'm incapable. I don't have what it takes.

That is 90% of your victory. And if you'll finally come to that place, you will say, okay, I'm going to stop trying in my strengths to do this. And the next step is, although I am incapable of doing it, I know somebody who is.

I know somebody who's totally capable of doing it because he's done it already. And because he created me and he knows how to make me do it. He is the only one in this universe who is able to do what I cannot do.

And you know, the wonderful thing is, he's right here inside of me. So what do we do? Do I sit and do nothing and say, okay, Lord, you go and do it all. I will sit at home.

You can go out and make the sales and bring the money in. No. Now I didn't say you must be passive.

What you've got to do is to let that power that is within you, let it go out into action. But before you can do that, you need a very important force that comes from deep within your spirit. It's a force that the Bible says is the only thing that will please God.

Hebrews 11, 6, without faith, it is impossible to please him. See, faith is the key. Faith is actually even more important than what you do.

What you believe, what you believe is more important than what you do. And while you believe you are a failure, while you believe God doesn't want to bless you, while you believe that you're incapable of rising up and that the Lord doesn't want you to rise up, while you believe that, you will remain exactly where you are. You need to find out what he intends for you.

And he's told that very clearly in the word, what he intends for you, because he's made you to be a winner. He's made you to be a succeeder. He has not made you to be a failure.

And as your faith rises up and you say, okay, I know, I know now what he wants me to be. Now from that heart of faith, you begin to flow out in loving action. And the first thing you do is look around to see how you can pour out in love to somebody else.

You say, we're battling financially. We really need financial independence. We need a financial income.

Why don't you look around you and see if you can find somebody that you can help to accumulate wealth? I really need some friends. I'm so lonely. Why don't you look around to see somebody who needs a friend and be a friend to that person and meet their needs? You see, no longer inward orientation, but outward orientation.

No longer working hard and striving to make yourself look better, but seeking instead to build up others and to build up the kingdom of God in the power of his love. You see, love energizes faith. And when you add that loving other oriented action to your faith, his power goes out.

Winning becomes a natural thing without you even thinking about trying to make it happen. So in conclusion, you were born to be a winner and not a loser. Jesus has already won the battle for you.

So why don't you just start by resting in him? Stop all the striving. No more tossing and turning at night and thinking, oh, I didn't do enough today. I really should have worked hard.

I shouldn't have taken a break. I shouldn't have taken the day off. Now I'm behind.

Learn to rest in him. And while you're spending that time resting in him, listen to his voice. He'll tell you exactly what to do.

And as you go out and you do it with his ability, with his power, you can't help but win. Winning comes naturally. If you do this on a consistent daily basis, you'll always win.

Amen.

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