Welcome to the Victory Blog

Recently, I’ve been sensing the Lord encouraging me to talk about some of the foundational truths that every Christian needs to have as a part of their lives in order to weather the storms of life. Way too many of God’s people do not have a good foundation in who He is. They may have started a journey with Jesus, but rather than making Him the foundation of their lives, they only added Him on top of their old life. Then, when the storms come, they can’t withstand the onslaught. They end up washed away, just like the man in Jesus’ parable who built his house on the sand. In order to withstand the storms of life, we really have to start over – to be born again – and let Christ rebuild our lives on a new foundation – His truth.

These days, there are a lot of things coming against us, trying to rock our lives. If we’re not built on the Rock, we will not withstand them. My hope is that through this series, BRICKS, we will be able to let go of those things that keep us from being grounded in Jesus and replace them with the foundational truths of the Gospel.

Love is the first and foremost foundation stone. Love flows from knowing that you are loved by God. God wants us to understand that no matter how bad we’ve been…He never, ever stops loving us! He doesn’t want us to work for His love, but to work from His love. There’s nothing we can do to earn His love. The more we know this, the more we will walk out our lives from this position of love. Our ability to love is only limited by our understanding of God’s love for us.

Our lives need to be rooted and grounded in love – first for God; second for others. Now, way too many people think love is a feeling. It’s not. It’s a decision. It’s a choice to love, regardless of how you feel, in every situation – no matter what comes against us.

In closing, I’d like to share the top four dimensions of love for those who want to be a Christ follower:

1. Loving the hurting. The more we are surrendered to God, the more compassion we’ll have for others, for those who are hurting and suffering in this world.
2. Loving people of a different culture. It’s about reaching out to other people and other cultures in ways that may not be comfortable to me so that they can receive the Gospel without hindrance.
3. Loving the lost. People come to our church all the time who are lost. Their first encounter of Christ is each one of us, and it’s not our job to start pointing out all the things that they’re doing wrong. Rather, our job is to love them and clear whatever obstacles we can from the road to salvation – especially those put up by religious people.
4. Loving your enemies. We cannot afford to let ourselves get offended. We have to walk in love and forgiveness. The trap of offense is huge – that is how the enemy gets us to break our relationships. Bitterness is the number one thing that takes Christians down. We’ve got to mature above offense and stay humble.

(If you want to hear more of this teaching, you can watch, listen to or download last weekend’s message here.)