“We Are More than Conquerors” By Ken Avellino November 26th, 2017
Shall we bow
our heads in prayer to God? God, we thank You for this Thanksgiving
weekend,
God. It’s up front in our minds that we are thankful for all your
goodness.
God, I pray that we would be here today and understand and listen to
the
message, let it soak in. God, let us use it, we want to be used of You,
God. We
thank You, and let your anointing be upon the message, upon the ears of
the
people, in Jesus name, amen. My brother
always said, “Every good man needs a good woman behind him to tell him
what to
do.” 2
Corinthians
2:14
Now thanks be
unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in
Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every
place. You know,
somewhere in the 70’s—I know, talking about us old people—the 70’s, my
dad was
a carpenter, and he made this picnic table on our back porch. I grew up
in
Sleepy Hollow, New York. It was very close to the banks of the Hudson
River,
and we had a beautiful view of the Hudson River. Our house was on a
decline
hill. My dad made this picnic table. My brother and I would,
constantly, in the
summer time—school was out—we would play monopoly, and I would get
crushed. He
would always have the properties Boardwalk and Park Place, and I would
always
land there, he had hotels. I got crushed; I would lose. And, then, he
would
flip the game over, and the mess would be over, and the money would be
over,
everything would be all over, and he would say, “You lose; you clean it
up.” So,
if you're like me, you hate losing. You know, what line is the longest
checkout
line is whatever line I'm in. I hate losing. I don't watch much sports,
because
I just don't want to see my team lose. But in Christ, in Christ, it's
not that
way. We triumph in Christ. And how do we do that? We triumph in Christ
by
letting God work in us. We give our lives to God, we get baptized in
Jesus name,
baptized in Jesus name. We have the Word, we have pastors, we have
teachers,
look what we have, the blessings that we have, that we can reflect
upon: We have
sermons. We have the Word of God. We could always look back at the
sermons, and
rejoice, and learn something. Not once have I ever read a Scripture and
after I
read that said, “That has no meaning, no value, no purpose, no
nothing.” It may
not mean anything in that moment, but sooner or later, it will. Every
sermon—the
savor of God's presence in our
lives—it's
just fantastic. I want to
share a little testimony here: October, for us in the boat biz, is haul
out
season. In haul out season, we take all the boats out of the water, we
winterize, and everything else. So I had an appointment on Saturday to
meet a
couple of guys that I have stored their boats for years; one is an
attorney,
one works on the Chicago Board of trade. And, I went down there, and I
met
these guys, and, one of the things that I said, something was a little
bit
different, a little bit mysterious about one of the guys. And, I said,
“What's going
on, Jeff? How's the family?” And he said, “Well, we're not doing too
good.
Marriage is falling apart. And, it's not looking good.” And I said,
“Well, what's
going on?” and he proceeded to tell me. I didn't really ask much, I
didn't want
to pry in, but... He said, “Well, I met my old high school girlfriend
on
Facebook.” And I said, “Jeff, you know, this is a familiar story. I've
heard
this many times.” I said, “You know, I
call Facebook ‘fornication book.’” This is not about condemning
Facebook,
because there's a lot of good practical purposes behind it. And, after
he went
on, and the other guy was the attorney, and Craig was going to
represent Jeff
in the divorce. And, I said, “You know what? You know, there's gonna be
a lot
of collateral damage here.” But, the first thing I said, I said, “I'm
going to
tell you something, Jeff: the Bible says, ‘He that committeth
fornication,
sinneth against his own soul.’ And I can see that your whole life is
falling
apart; you're rotting from within. I can see this. Jeff, there's gonna
be a lot
of collateral damage. You always talk about your kids. Are you sure
that this
is really what you want to do? Because you are about to cross a line
that you
are not going to be able to return from, to recover from,” and I said,
“You need
godly counsel. You need to find—I don't know what church you attend,
but you
need to find a pastor, a counsellor, and you need to work this out.
Because
you're going to make a mistake, the devil is going to present this, and
he
already has, as it being so grand and glorious, and you're not going to
be able
to go back. So, you better make sure that this is exactly what you want
to do,
because it's for the rest of your life.” Now, I said
all that to really say he's got the lawyer, he's got it all figured
out, but in
this world, you may triumph in the world. I would always lose at that
game of
monopoly with my brother. And, you know, even a couple of months ago, I
shared
this with Parrish. My brother calls me, he says, “Hey, I've got your
F-150,
it's in my garage. If you ever come down to visit, I'll let you use
it.” I said,
“Thanks a lot, I really appreciate that.” But my triumph in this life
is in
Christ. I gave my life to God; you all gave your lives to God. There
are some
things in life that you just cannot win, you cannot change. And, nobody
can; I
don't care how rich, how famous you are, how good things are going
today; something
is going to change somewhere along the line, and, you know, the joy
comes from
within. It comes from what God does for us. We have His Holy Ghost; we
have that
power to conquer the things that we couldn't conquer before. I tried
quitting
many devices of life. You know, I had a lot of friends that were going
into
college and some were going in the military. I was joining the navy.
And, I had
one friend, that we were sitting around one night, and we were talking,
and this
one guy didn't have any direction. And my friend said, “We're going
here. We're
going there. Ken’s going in the Navy.” And he says, "You're not going
anywhere.” And he said that, and I thought, “Just because I'm going in
the navy,
that's not really—there's something else. There's a reason here.
There's
something else that I'm still void of.” Though it may look, on the
outward
appearance, that you've got it all together, something's missing if you
don't
have God. You've got to have that Holy Ghost in your life, if you are
going to
triumph in this life. I'm going to
read another Scripture, and here's how, here’s how we get to that point
in
life: Matthew
6:33 But
seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these
things
shall be added unto you. You know we
have jobs. We have careers. We have destinies; a lot of dreams and
goals. I
remember my dad said one time, “God put me on this earth to work.” I
never
forgot that, and maybe I'm a chip off the old block because I think the
same
thing sometimes. But, when I seek God first for the things in my life,
those
things work out. When I don't—and it doesn't mean I like it all, it
doesn't
mean that everything is gonna be perfect. But, when I do God's will and
I
receive that peace in my life and that understanding, and, then, I go
to make a
decision based on that, then I have direction, I have a starting point
and
God's love, His mercy and His forgiveness and His direction. It's
unbelievable.
It's unbeatable. Because my reward is to hear Him say, “Well done.” Ed Howes is
going to come read a Scripture for us, and it’s Romans, eight,
thirty-seven
through thirty-nine. Romans
8:37-39
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. More than
conquerors; that's because God conquered sin. We can’t, we don't have
this
power to do it ourselves. God has to do this for us, but we have to
allow Him. We
have to give God the opportunity. I'm a take-action-guy and my wife was
talking
about how different we are. I'm a real take-action-guy. I want to fix
things,
everything. I was sitting here, a couple of minutes ago, there was a
bug
crawling on the floor, and I picked it up and I put it outside the
door. I
didn't want to crush it, you know? That's my way of doing things. My
wife would
probably say, “Step on that thing. Get rid of it. Get
it outta here.” Everybody is different in
their own way, but we have to allow God to work in our lives. And it
may not
work the same way for everybody. You know, with my daughters, my
daughters, my
wife and I handle them quite differently. And, a lot of times, I opened
my big
mouth and it got me in a lot of trouble. And, it even got to the point
that my
whole family was against me. But I had to allow God to say, “Let me do
it. Give
this to me.” Because there are things that we just cannot conquer in
this life.
We can't fix it. God has to fix it. God has the power. He fixed us, so
why
couldn't He fix someone else, especially someone else in our family
that we
love? You know,
you're never going to get the world's approval on things. We need to
seek God's
will, God's approval. Because when God says well done, and that maybe
pertaining to the end of the journey, but right now, when God says,
well done,
every time I read a Scripture, and I apply it, it works. And, any time
I try to
take charge and do it my way, there's a lot of failure there. So, we
are to be
thankful, and I was thinking about thankfulness, you know, I was
sharing with
Parrish last night, and Arman, well, maybe—Arman and Virgie, maybe
you've seen
this billboard, because it's on the way to Kenosha on Green Bay Road,
and it
was a while back, and it said, “Complaining stops where thankfulness
begins.”
Anybody ever see that? It was on a billboard on the way up to Kenosha,
and I
never forgot that. You know, one
time I mentioned to Pastor Paine, and it was a time in the ministry
when he was
getting criticized for quite a bit of things, and I said, “You know,
Pastor
Paine, I think sometimes you get criticism because you make it look
easy, not
that your walk with God is easy, or your life is easy, but you receive
criticism, because you make it look easy, because you're thankful.” And
I've
learned to be thankful in any situation, because during the day, when
I'm
thankful, when I get up in the morning, and I'm thankful, and I'm
getting ready
for work, and I'm talking with God, and I'm saying, “God if you take
control of
this day it doesn't mess we mean everything's going to work out
perfect, but it
is going to be a lot more manageable when things do go wrong.” Somebody told
me one time, about, “Oh, being in business is about doing this and
this,” and I
said, “You know, it's not about doing all the right things, it's about
how well
you recover from the things that go wrong.” And when you've got God
running
your life, your family, your business, your personal things, your
finances;
your life is going to be a lot better. It's going to work out much,
much better
for you. It doesn't mean it's going to work out perfect and always be
smooth,
but you're going to have someone to go to. We have that mediator,
forgiveness of
your sins, when you do make a mistake and do it wrong. So, I'm very
thankful,
you know, for God's love in my life. Without God's love, I wouldn't
know how to
love. I wouldn't know how to love my wife, my kids, my friends. You
know, I
thought of something last week, and, when God says, “You do this, I
will bless
you.” And He makes promises, and He’s promised us eternal life, and He
talked
about making it into the Promised Land with Moses. But God never said,
“If you
do this or don't do this, I will love you more or will love you less.”
He did
say you would be blessed, I will pour you out a blessing that it's not
enough
to receive it, you won't be able to contain it, the promises. But God's
love is
unconditional, always there. He never says I’ll love you less, I'll
love you
more. If your mistakes—David said, “If you would count sin, who could
stand?”
Where God's love is so unconditional for all of us, and it's available
for
anybody. No matter how greatly you sinned in this world, God's love—I
guess
that was a little continuation of my two weeks or three weeks ago
sermon, but I
just happen to think about that—how unconditional God's love is. And,
I'm very
grateful, very thankful. You know, this
was a great weekend, I had a lot of time: Friday felt like Saturday,
Saturday
felt like another Saturday or a Sunday, it was just a lot of great
times this
weekend to be together with family and friends. I've been really
blessed and
thankful for everybody here, for your faith in God. Just your very
presence
sometimes encourages me. So, I know we have a lot of people that have
need of a
lot of prayer; let us keep them all in prayer. So, God bless you, and I
thank
you very much for your time. And, I'm looking forward to the next
sermon. It's
amazing what God can do.
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