How to Be an Overcomer

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
Welcome to the City Lights Church Podcast. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing today, we hope this message inspires you to follow Jesus. You can find out more about City Lights Church at city-lights.church.

**John Scott** (0:22)
All of us, Pastor Andrew and Bec, are on holidays visiting Bec's parents in Sydney, and we pray for them. And we welcome all of those people online, particularly Noel and Esme, watching us from India, as they do, and a whole lot of other people as well. Great to have you here. And so many guests as well. Please hang around afterwards. We have morning tea, hang around, and introduce yourselves to us, and let us hear your story, and if you don't get prayer at the end, you can get prayer out there as well, whatever it might be. Let's pray. Father in heaven, you're incredibly kind to us.
You invite us to come to you. You say, he that has ears.
Listen to what the Spirit says. And so, Father, I pray that you would cut through our natural minds and touch our hearts and inspire us to follow Jesus. In his name, we pray. Amen. We're doing a series called How to Overcome. And about six weeks ago, I said to Pastor Andrew, I said, if you want me to preach in the future somewhere, and I get a chance, would you let me preach on how to overcome? And the reason for that is that I meet so many believers who exist but don't overcome, who are doing the journey but have not yet succeeded in their Christian life. And Catherine and I are just absolutely driven to passion that you might succeed. If you see us meeting with people, encouraging people and doing coffee or lunch or something, and if you never got invited, invite yourself.
John, can you come and encourage me? Sure. Absolutely. Invite yourself. And we're passionate that you might be encouraged in the things of God, that you might grow up into Christ and become a mature believer. And as I was meditating on this about six weeks ago, it's like the Holy Spirit said to me to say to you, it's like the Holy Spirit said to me to say to you, you are allowed to overcome. Now, why would he say that to me to tell you that you are allowed to overcome? Because for some people, you've been told you cannot overcome. You've been told that you will never succeed. You've been told that you will amount to nothing. Don't even try. But the Holy Spirit says, by the Spirit, to my heart and by the Word of God, to our hearts, that we were born to overcome. And so, let me let you into three secrets. Number one, you're allowed to overcome. Number two, you were born to overcome. And number three, there is something about overcoming that implies that you must have a problem to overcome. If you haven't got a problem, come and see me afterwards, we can make them up for you.
And there are guys who talk about this, to say that we're praying that you might know that that problem you have is an opportunity for your next testimony. You're like, I wish I had a big testimony, do you? Have you thought this through? Because the reason for the size of the testimony is because of the power of God manifested in the size of the problem that with his help, you overcame. And so keep listening because I might be able to give you a problem by the end of the morning.
One focus, this is the menu. The focus is overcoming circumstances.
Do you have circumstances at the moment that maybe possibly you'd like to overcome?
And so the menu is this, various promises which the apostles and the disciples of Jesus wrote, preached, spoke about, that would be worth while us knowing what these exceedingly great and precious promises are. Because let me say at the beginning, I'm not a product of my socio-economic background. I'm not a product of what happened to me in the past, or happened to my runaway Irish dad, who had been a POW and we were quite poor. I'm not a product of that. And neither are you a product of what happened to you or what's happening to you. You are a product of the Word of God, the Word of God and the Spirit. That's who you are. That's who you become. And so it's really important to know the promises which I'll give you in a minute. We're gonna do one major Bible passage. You will hear one personal story, another bit of John and Catherine weirdness, which you'll love. And then I'll leave you with a memorable, pivotal scripture, otherwise known as Pivotal Scripture.