Welcome to the Victory Blog

Whenever we hear the word “NEW” it kind of elicits a sense of excitement in us. Commercial advertisers have known this for years. Next time you go to the grocery story, pay attention to how many products try to catch your attention with the word “NEW.” It’s everywhere. Yet, whatever it is that makes these things “new” will rarely make much difference in our lives, and they certainly won’t impact eternity!

God wants to do something new that is quite different. He’s taking us on a journey into something new, and it will make a huge difference in our lives, both in the present and for eternity. Now, a lot of people are going to get shaken up, because even though we say we like the new, we really prefer the old – those things which are familiar and comfortable.

When the new comes, we often look back longingly at the old and fail to embrace the new. But I want to tell you today that God is starting to do something new and we need to embrace it, move with it and live in it! Let’s not be like Israel of old. God told them through the prophets that he was getting ready to do a new thing. But when Jesus came, most of the traditionalists couldn’t embrace him. They were stuck in their old ways of thinking – their old revelation of God.

Now, as he did to Israel, God is saying to us, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:18-19 NIV) God is telling us to get ready for a new thing that he wants to do in the church and in the world.

Here’s a critical truth: Church is supposed to be a movement not a monument – a lifestyle we live out, not a place we go to. If we think of church as a place, we’ve missed the point of what church is all about. This is an old way of thinking. If we’re going to embrace the new, fresh thing God is releasing in the earth, we’re going to have to let go of “old wineskin” ways of thinking, even though we like the old better. I want to challenge you to be a new wineskin. (cf. Luke 5:36-39)

Quite often, when we’re struggling to hear God’s voice and know his will, it’s because there’s at least a part of us that won’t let go of the old. This may be in the form of a tradition, a part of our routine that we don’t want to change, something we fear or just plain old stubbornness on our part. If you’re stuck in any of these things, it’s time to surrender them to God. Don’t let them keep you from what he’s doing.

New is God’s goal for our lives. Every day, he wants to give us a new revelation of who his is for our lives. We need to position ourselves for the new by staying pliable, hungry and yielded to God – like children. It’s no wonder that God often starts new moves in the children, youth and young adults – they tend to have far less that stands in the way of it than do the older generations.

So, let me ask you, do you want all that God has promised to do in and through you? Are you ready to let go of the old and welcome the new? Don’t reject it. Embrace it! Move with it! Live in it!

(Download, watch or listen to this message in its entirety here.)

As we conclude our 20th anniversary celebration, we thought it fitting to welcome our good friend, Dr. Samuel R. Chand, President Emeritus of Beulah Heights Bible College and member of our Executive Board, to come and speak to us out of his passion to help others succeed. His message was, as always, exuberant, hilarious, poignant and exactly what we needed to hear as we move forward into the new things God is doing in and through Victory. I’ll go ahead and write a brief synopsis here, but it’s going to be a teaser only. I really want you to listen to or watch this message…again and again, if necessary, until it sinks into your spirit. So here’s the teaser…

God is calling us to some amazing things. 2010 is OUR year.  In fact, despite what the media prognosticators are saying, 2010 is going to be our best year! This is true for Victory as a church and for us as individuals. But in order for this to happen, we need to Grow It! We are going to experience these things only to the extent that we have the capacity for it. The fulfillment of whatever God has called us to comes down to the issue of capacity.

We need to make up our minds to grow our…

1. Pain capacity, – There is no growth without pain.
2. Relational capacity – There are two kinds of people in this world – people who make deposits and people who make withdrawals. We have to be able to relate to both.
3. Exposure capacity – The more we’re exposed, the more we’re willing to do things.
4. Identity capacity – Our identities are shifting all the time – we’re not the same people we were ten years ago…at least we shouldn’t be.
5. Crisis capacity – Don’t waste your crisis, learn from it.
6. Character capacity – Character is what you do and who you are when no one is watching.
7. Risk capacity – When you’re 100% sure, you’re too late. “Jump out and play in the traffic.”

Now, go listen to the whole message. It will change your life!

We’ve been looking back at the Foundational Stones, or principles, that Victory has been founded on, those things that make the church what it is, and how we can learn from those principles as individual believers.

Years ago, I heard a minister talking about three words that are essential to living like Christ: Simplicity, Sincerity and Sacrifice. These principles really impacted me, and I told Colleen that I wanted our lives and our church to be based on those principles. Since then, we have intentionally made them a part of everything we do as this church has grown.

In Acts 2:41-47, we see a description of the early church that is the prototype of what the church is supposed to look like even still today. There are five basic aspects – doctrine, fellowship, experiencing God, social justice and soul winning. Unfortunately, most churches in America today only focus on one or two of these aspects. Naturally, I wondered what would happen if all five were in place in one church. And, as I thought about this, the Lord showed me three principles that must be in place in order for all five aspects to work together:

1. Simplicity – To reduce to basic essentials. The state of being simple. Uncompounded. Jesus and the disciples lived a different kind of life than everyone else in the world. Our lives are often so cluttered. If we’re not careful, we can get so overwhelmed that it draws our heart away from God. Our lives can get so complicated that we can no longer hear the voice of the Lord. We need to simplify our lives. Jesus was a simple man. He didn’t live a complicated life. He lived a regular life, regular clothes, regular family, regular job…but he kept himself uncluttered. We need to be like him, both in our lifestyle (relationships, possessions and spirituality), and in our theology (major on majors, minor on minors). Neither of these should be complicated.
2. Sincerity – The state of being free from hypocrisy. Sincere people are:
   • Credible – You can trust them.
   • Responsible – You can count on them.
   • Vulnerable – You can know them.
   • Humble – You can teach them.
   • Correctable – You can change them.
   • Incorruptible – You can test them.
3. Sacrifice – To surrender loss of, or give up for and ideal or belief. We cannot live the Christian life without sacrifice. We will not make a difference without it. Just as those in the early church “sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need,” so must we be willing to sacrifice our own comfort to help meet the needs of others. Consider Jesus’ words in Matthew 16:24-25, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (NKJ)

If we want to look and live like Christ and have a tremendous impact on our world, then these counter-cultural principles must be foundational stones upon which we build our lives.

To download, watch or listen to this message in its entirety, click here.

Twenty years ago, as we were starting this church, we were faced with a challenge: Where do we locate it? Out in the suburbs? In the city? Then, as it is for the most part now, the Body of Christ (and the nation as a whole) was divided between those who focus on moral issues/righteousness and social issues/justice. Churches located in urban areas have typically been great champions of justice issues, but many have ignored moral issues. Conversely, churches in the suburbs have typically placed a heavy emphasis on issues of righteousness, but ignored pressing social issues. And rather than working together, these two factions, if you will, have often worked to invalidate and tear each other down.

This is NOT what God intended for his Church!  It is supposed to be a positive influence in BOTH of these areas. And so, we decided to locate Victory somewhere in between the urban and suburban areas of Metro Atlanta. This was a risky move; many said this location would be death to the church. But God wanted us to be a bridge between the two groups of people and the two types of churches and the two focuses. He put a vision and passion in our hearts to work toward reconciliation between the races and cultures…and that can only happen when we are founded on both righteousness AND justice.

Righteousness = living right; conforming to a moral code of conduct prescribed by God’s Word.

Justice = doing right; doing the right thing for other people; correcting the injustices of society; defending the poor and marginalized; caring about and for people who’ve had injustice done in their lives.

We need a church that is based on righteousness AND justice. It’s when these two things are working together that the throne of God is established. Every church should champion BOTH.

In order to illustrate this, let me mention two particularly hot topics on which much of the church in America is divided today:

1. Homosexuality
2. Immigration

What kind of thoughts did those two words stir up in you? Judgment? Compassion? I’ve preached whole sermons on both of these topics previously, so I’m not going to get into them here. Listen to what I said about them in my message this past weekend, or listen those messages in the HOT TOPICS series and you’ll get the point. We need to interact with these issues (and many others like them) from the standpoints of both righteousness and justice.

We as a church have been strategically placed right on the dividing line between urban and suburban, righteousness and justice, placing us in a unique position to address some of the key issues in our city and people’s lives.  But, in order to make it work, each of us must:

• Seek to understand rather than be understood.
• Let the Word be our standard for living and loving.
• Treat others the way we would want to be treated.

It was such a pleasure and a privilege to have John Maxwell, one of our dearest friends and long-term mentors, speak this past weekend as we continue our 20th Anniversary celebrations. The word he brought was, not surprisingly, excellent. I’m not going to repeat it all here, beyond the few key points which follow, so I strongly encourage you to watch it, listen to it and/or download it from our website. If you were there this weekend, you know this message is worth hearing again, and if you weren’t there… well… what are you waiting for?! You don’t want to miss this!

For now, here’s a small sample of his challenging, yet uplifting message:

• What we do on the outside is a result of who we are on the inside. Everything happens from the inside out
• When you’re better on the inside than you are on the outside, and when you’re bigger on the inside than you are on the outside, over time, your influence will be greater on the outside.
• Conversely, if we’re bigger and better on the outside than we are on the inside, our influence will become less on the outside.
• The first person you lead is not someone else, it’s yourself. If you wouldn’t follow yourself, why should anyone else?
• There are four basic levels of getting better on the inside than on the outside:
  1. The Give Me Stage
  2. The Use Me Stage
  3. The Search Me
  4. The Make Me Stage

If you want yourself as an individual, and Victory as a church body, to have increasing influence in our world, you need to get the truth of this message embedded in your spirit. Listen to it and meditate on it. And as John said in his message, if we’ll continue in this path, over the next 5-10 years, it’s going to be unbelievable what God is going to do through Victory. We haven’t seen anything yet!

• Watch the Flag Ceremony

It’s really an honor to be celebrating our 20th Anniversary as a church this month. It’s been quite a journey and God has done some amazing things, and continues to do so. We’ve learned a lot over the years. And one of the key things is that God wants his church to be built to last. He wants us to stay relevant, connected and ministering in the community. Yet, most of the top ten churches of the 1980’s no longer exist. Why? More often than not, it’s because they weren’t built on the right foundation – things like the personality of the pastor or popular teaching rather than solid biblical truth. You see, the foundation upon which a church (or anything else for that matter) is built is crucial to its ability to endure the test of time.

Early on in the history of building this church, God began to show us some key foundation stones, or principles, without which the church would crumble. And we worked diligently to put these in place. And, just as these principles must be in place to build a lasting church, the same is also true if we want the kind of life that lasts.

Foundational Stone # 1: Principle of First – Who is going to be first in this church and in our lives. A lot of people want themselves to be first, rather than God. If we cater to people first, it may make them feel good, but it will never change them, never challenge them or make them go deeper with God. Is God first in everything that we do – in our time, relationships, activities, finances, etc.? Biblically, this is one of the key principles from the very beginning of time that God implemented in his children.

The principle of first operates in every facet of our lives. Our hearts fashion after what we worship first.  As soon as I put God first, over and above dating, finding my wife, etc, along came Colleen. We have to put EVERYTHING in line after God first. As long as we put God first, it doesn’t matter what’s wrong with the economy, God will take care of us. If God isn’t first in our lives, we’ve got a weak foundation. It doesn’t take much to rock us. Let’s put God first this year!

Foundational Stone # 2: Principle of Others – From the very beginning of our church, we realized that there’s a purpose that every church has beyond itself, beyond the group of people who make up that church body. “Others” means a whole lot more than just the others in our close circle of family and friends. If we don’t get this vision, we’ll get all religious and inward focused and miss out on the wonderful things God wants to do through you in this world.

Do you love people of other cultures and races as much as you love yourself? This is not an easy thing to do. Most of us aren’t raised to love like that. Most of us don’t “hang” with people who aren’t just like us. But, if we do love others the way God wants us to, it will show in who we hang out with in our private life. Years ago, Colleen and I were told that incorporating mixed cultures in our church would kill our church, but we believed that there is a culture that supersedes human culture – kingdom culture. We have committed to loving other people and God has blessed us.

We’ve got to break this “me” mentality that is so prevalent in our culture and replace it with an “others” mentality – serving one another. What would life be like if we all began living land doing church like it wasn’t all about us, but about others?

I want to build a lasting life and be a part of a lasting church, don’t you? If so, we’ve got to start by putting God first in everything and loving others as much as ourselves. As we go forward in this year, let’s renew our commitment to these things and watch as God does amazing things both in and through us during the next twenty years because of it!

Want to be challenged and encouraged? Listen to, watch or download this message.

In Philippians 3:12-14, Paul writes, “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (emphasis added, NKJ)

We all have an upward call on our lives…there’s something that God wants us to dream about, something big, something significant, something that makes a difference in this world. He wants us to be functioning in his purpose for our lives. We need to keep moving forward toward this calling. Although, we all have times when we stop looking forward and start looking backwards along the way, at some point in our lives, each of us has to make a decision whether we’re going to follow God’s call or go our own way.

Unfortunately, most people don’t even know that this calling even exists, or if they do, they have no idea how to get there. But the key to moving forward is to have something in our lives that we’re shooting for, something that we’re going after. We need a goal…it keeps us motivated. Our upward call is the goal. So, how do we move forward toward the goal of our upward calling? We have to ask these questions:

1. What does God want from my life?The simple answer is that he wants our whole life. Unfortunately, a lot of people pick and choose certain parts of their lives to give to God and keep the rest for themselves. But, we cannot hear God or move forward if we’re not completely surrendered to him. We’ve got to give EVERYTHING over to him. Wherever we’re saying “me first” to God we’re not moving forward.
2. What does it take? What makes the difference between those who make it and those who don’t? One simple word: Discipline. Discipline means: “Achieving what you really want by doing the things you don’t really want to do.” We’ve got to build certain habits in our lives that move us closer to the heart and purposes of God. As John Maxwell has said, “In order to change your life you have to change something you do daily.” There’s no better time than now to start making those changes.
3. Why Should I do it? The people that get the answer to this question are the ones who make it to the upward call. The answer is Eternity. We are only here in this world for a very short time, but the things we do here can have eternal significance. Simply accepting Jesus is not the same as moving towards the upward call. It’s only the starting point. How much of your life is dedicated to something that’s eternal?

Are we going to give everything to Jesus? Are we willing to do the things we need to do but don’t want to do? Are we willing to let eternity be our motivation? Are we going to be a Moses generation that perishes in the wilderness or a Joshua generation that moves forward into the Promised Land? We may be entering a time of real testing and trial, but if we’ll connect ourselves with the will of God, we will move forward into our upward calling and change the world!

If you missed this timely and challenging conclusion to the FORWARD series, watch or listen to it here.

You know how you have to take and pass tests in school in order to keep moving forward from grade to grade? Well, the rest of life is just like that; we have to keep passing tests in order to keep moving forward. We really don’t know how much we’re learning until we take the test. If we don’t pass the test of life, we just have to keep doing it over and over again until we do.

So, the question is, are we going to move forward in the calling of God? God’s called every one of us to do something. If we’re going to keep moving forward, we’re going to have to get through some tests in life…we have to learn how to deal with them. In fact, there are three main areas of our lives that we will be tested on and have to pass in order to keep moving forward:

1. Purity Test – God has called us to live a life of purity. Holiness. It is not easy to live holy…inevitably, we’re going to be tempted in our flesh – lust of the flesh. Many of us, before we gave our hearts to Christ, spent a lot of time and energy feeding the lust of our flesh. And, even after accepting Christ, our flesh will fight hard to keep getting fed. Now, our bodies have three primary natural desires: food, sex and amusement/entertainment. God put these desires in us, but he also set up boundaries to keep us from being ruled by these desires. Most people are ruled by at least one of these…they may overcome one or two, but fall into the other. These things, if they rule us, will keep us from moving forward…even cause us to fall backwards. How do we gain victory over these things and keep moving forward? Go after God, fasting and prayer, turn our hunger towards him and be filled by him. If we’re going to keep moving forward, we’ve got to be hungry for God.
2. Possession Test – “Mammon” has tremendous power and rules over people’s lives until they learn how to overcome these things. In order to move forward, we have to pass this test. If our goal is to get rich for ourselves, we’re setting ourselves up for misery. We have to recognize that EVERYTHING belongs to God…we have to put him first. If our heart is all about things, we’ve fallen for another god and will not move forward. If we’re going to rule over money, we have to learn that it doesn’t belong to us – we have to do what God wants us to do with it. We have to be good stewards. It starts with tithing…giving God the first 10% and trusting Him to take care of all your needs with the rest. Whose kingdom are we building here on earth?
3. Pride Test – Whenever I get before the Lord and start examining myself, there’s not a day goes by that I don’t find that I have pride issues to deal with. I think most of us are that way. The number one virtue that we should be pursuing as Christians is humility. With pride, we are guaranteed to fall. If we humble ourselves, God will lift us up. If you want to know what humility looks like, read the Gospels; Jesus gives us the best picture of humility. We should ask ourselves these questions:
   • Do I esteem others better than myself?
   • Do I have a servant leader mentality?
   • Am I overly concerned about my reputation?
   • How much am I losing myself for the sake of others?

Listen to, watch or download this message in its entirety here.

In this series, we’re trying to find and identify anything that’s keeping us from going forward in this new year. We want to address these things. This week, I’m asking, “How do we move forward in the midst of crisis?” I mean, terrible things happen in life. Anybody who’s seen the news about the devastation in Haiti can have no question about this. And, the truth is that no matter who we are, we all experience crisis at one point or another in our lives. It can be relational, physical, financial or otherwise. It can be large or small. But the question is: how do we get ourselves in a position such that no matter what comes our way, we are able to keep moving forward?

The answer, of course, lies in Jesus. Only through him can we find the strength and peace that we need. Then, with this understanding in place, we start moving forward by doing the following:

1. Evaluate – to Appraise or assess something. To think it over, to ponder it, to consider the situation. Ask why these things are happening, even before you start moving forward. There may be a real reason for the crisis. How did I get here? If you don’t evaluate, you’re going to go out and do the same thing all over again.
   • Evaluate the past in what you want to change.
   • Evaluate the present in what you can do.
   • Evaluate the future in what is God calling you to.
2. Plan – everyone needs to plan. A person without a plan is at the mercy of someone who does. If you don’t have a plan for your life, someone else does, and it’s probably not a good one. It’s a whole lot better to go into a crisis with a plan than to wait until you’re in the midst of crisis to try to come up with a plan.
3. Act – too often, when we get in crisis, rather than continuing to move forward, we get paralyzed by things like fear, anger, unforgiveness, discouragement or disillusionment. But we can’t let these things stop us. We’ve got to keep acting on God’s Word…keep moving forward.
4. Focus – how do we stay focused in the midst of a crisis? It’s not very easy, but that’s exactly what we need to do. We mustn’t look left, right or back, but look forward. We have to keep our gaze on what God’s Word says; above and beyond what our circumstances say. Focus on where God is taking us, not where we’ve been. Focus on the answer, not the problem.
5. Trust – every single outstanding character of the Bible is known for their trust in the Lord. We can find trust over and over and over again throughout the Bible. Unfortunately, whenever we face a crisis, we have a tendency to forget how essential trust is. We will be severely tempted to stop trusting God by the circumstances in our crises. But remember this: we go through tests to learn about trust. Every test has a trust issue involved.

Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows what we have become. ~ B.F. Westcott

(To listen to or watch this message in its entirety, click here.)

We serve a God who is always moving forward – He’s not stagnant. Yet, at times, we find ourselves getting stagnant…some area or thing in our lives is keeping us from moving forward. While other things may come into play, the number one thing that keeps us from moving forward is our failures. Our failures usually (though not always) go hand in hand with sin, which is designed by the enemy to stop us from moving forward, but only has that power as long as we agree with it.

So, we need to ask ourselves often, “Is there anything in my life that I’ve agreed with that keeps me from moving forward? Most people don’t know how to live a life that keeps moving forward. One thing or another will often keep us in bondage. (On a side note, this is why doing this 21-day fast at the beginning of each year is such a great idea…it helps to break such bondages.) If we want to keep moving forward, at some point, we’re going to have to deal with whatever is holding us back.

Paul teaches us that we have to put our failures behind us. Yes, I know that’s much easier said than done, but we can do it if we remember that we’re not the only ones in the world who make mistakes. Every one of us has fallen short of the glory of God. That’s why we need Jesus. Through him, we can continue moving forward even after we’ve failed! Also, every single Bible character except Jesus failed (and even Jesus appeared to have failed to some), but those we admire as heroes of the faith, such as Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, Paul, etc., are those who kept moving forward.

How did they do it? How did they move forward from failure? They did so through the following process, which, if we will follow, will keep us moving forward as well:

1. Responsibility – Although it’s often very hard, we must accept our responsibility for our failures. Unfortunately, we’re very quick to blame other people or things, but as long as it’s always another person’s or thing’s fault, we’ll be stuck. However, when we start taking responsibility, it opens the door for God to move in. What’s in your life for which you have yet to take responsibility?
2. Repentance – This is not the same as being sorry or remorseful. Rather it means having a change of mind, emotion and action in regard to sin. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, no one moves forward without repentance. Is there any sin in your life that you haven’t repented of?
3. Restoration – When we accept responsibility and repent, restoration comes. God doesn’t see us through the lens of our failures, but through His Son. God is in the restoring business. Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world, but to restore it. Knowing this, we can overcome guilt and shame, which hold us back, and learn how to receive forgiveness…as the free gift that it is…no penance required.

Friends, we’ve got to get this truth in our hearts. In order to help, let me encourage you to listen to or watch the message I gave about this last weekend, over and over if you have to. Don’t stay bound up in your failures. Take responsibility, repent and move forward into the amazing restoration that God has for you!