The Triumphant Church, Part 6

I’ve been asked before, “What has been your most frustrating experience in over twenty-five years of pastoring?” I can tell you exactly what that is. There have been so many times that I felt like I needed to shake people and convince them that God wanted to bless them! God wants you to prosper  . . . to be healed . . .to be well. “God always wants me to be well?” Yes, according to His Word! You cannot give me one passage of Scripture that would convince me that God wants you to be sick. I challenge you to show me one from the Word. 

You might say, “What about Paul’s thorn?” What about his thorn? What do you think it was? I don’t have to think; it’s not left for me to guess. The Word says that the thorn in the flesh was a messenger from Satan. That’s very clear. It was some sort of spiritual, demonic attack sent to buffet him. “Buffet” means to punch or to beat him up! It doesn’t say anything about Paul being sick. 

Oftentimes what we have is bad teaching gone to seed, and it just gets propagated over and over and over, and we believe what we’re taught. We need to be careful and study the Scriptures for ourselves and not simply take for granted that everything a person teaches is accurate. I’m telling you right now, don’t believe something simply because I said it; you go home and search the Scriptures. If you think that I am wrong about it, then come and talk to me, and respectfully we’ll go to the Word of God. 

There is nothing in Scripture that will convince me that God wants us to be defeated! If I am defeated, it’s because I’ve done something on my own. The only time Joshua and his army suffered defeat was at Ai. We know that there was sin in the camp, but there was another reason. When they were going up against Ai, they immediately came up with their own plan. After they were defeated in the first confrontation, the Bible says that Joshua then consulted the Lord. Possibly if he would have done that the first time . . . I’m just saying! I’m not judging. Maybe if we consulted the Lord before we acted, we could get His mind, strategy, and plan and do it the way He wants from the very beginning. Then we would not spend so much time spinning our wheels, getting beat up, becoming frustrated, and losing sleep. 

We’ll continue looking at the Triumphant Church in the next blog. Thank you for joining me on this journey!

Grace and peace,

Pastor Emory