Are You a Victim or a Conqueror?

We are more than conquerors through him that loved us.' (Rom. 8:37 That's a powerful declaration! Let me ask you again: are you the victim of circumstances beyond your control? Do you blame others maybe even God for your fate? Or can you laugh despite all the turmoil inside?

The Lord reminded me of a young girl from Ethiopia whom I saw interviewed on Oprah a few months ago. Maybe you did, too. She was filmed by a Canadian television correspondent during the Ethiopian famine a number of years ago as she lay dying. She, a child of about 3 years, was a mere bag of bones, slumped limply in her mother's arms. The doctor in the refugee camp told the reporter that she would be dead by nightfall.

But... she miraculously survived against all odds, was sponsored to study abroad, and got to tell her amazing story to millions thanks to the press and Oprah. She was then studying to become a nurse as she wanted to help her people and be a witness for God.

Yes, she publicly gave God the glory for her miraculous healing and everything that followed. She was glowing, happy, seemingly well adjusted and self assured. That story made me sit up and exclaim: Wow, could I be as serene and full of praise to God if I had been in her shoes? Er... I should say barefoot, as she had been, with a constantly gnawing, empty stomach with misery and death all around her for agonizing years.

She had the 'right' to blame her circumstances, her government, the rest of the world who stood idly by, and God for her plight. She could also have accepted her lot and lived in desperation with no hope, believing that it was god's (yes, god with a small 'g') will, according to some beliefs.

This gal (and I wish I remembered her name but God knows her intimately!) knew that she had a heavenly Father who would take care of her! Whether or not she had heard of Jesus at that tender age, she had a hunger inside of her that was even more intense than the physical starvation that tried to take her life!

The Lord rewarded that yearning, the groaning of the Spirit, her reaching out to Him until she truly found Him. He took her, fed her, preserved her, elevated her, and will be using her tremendously to further His Kingdom so that many more like her will become conquerors.

Romans 8: 35-36 asks the question: 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.'

Then the Apostle Paul answers in the next two verses: 'Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us, for I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.'

My prayer is that you, too, regardless of your past or what you're going through right now, will be a conqueror through the awesome power of His Love. After all, you can do all things through Christ, who strengthens you!' (Phil. 4: 13)

Ann Stewart


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