At one time or another, all of us have had dreams that we desperately wanted to come true. It was the longing of our hearts, and we believed it to be the thing to make us fulfilled, deliriously happy and contented with life. So much so that we set our dials to “go-getter” and haphazardly or strategically laid out a course to accomplish our goals. No one told us that it could be like pushing a 500lb boulder uphill, with hardly any of the people we counted on for support actually showing up to help. And we certainly weren’t prepared for those we didn’t see behind the boulder that were pushing against us. You think to yourself, “What the heck?!!! I’m just trying to be happy here! Why does life have to be so hard?” Not understanding the resistance, and exhausted from trying, many of us give up. We label ourselves the underdog that has no chance of ever truly winning.
There’s an old saying that everyone roots for the underdog, but no one ever quite believes he or she will actually walk away with the prize. It’s perfectly okay for them to believe this, but it’s disastrous if we start to believe it about ourselves. Most of us realize our shoulders are not broad or strong enough to whip that boulder into shape, but we should realize that God can do anything and through Him anything is possible.
God intended life to be our greatest adventure. Jesus Christ affirms this in John 10:10(NKJV) when he tells us, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” In this verse, we see the reality of both the entitlement of our birthright through Christ and the instrument of evil that will try to work against it. We must be careful to thoroughly comprehend the distinction that Christ has set forth. He came only to do the Will of the Father, which is to give us a life that is more than abundant; and the devil came only to steal, kill, and destroy.
From haphazard to strategic
This is the piece of information we need to keep in our minds as we move forward to capture our destinies. Within the realm of Christ, there are no underdogs. Romans 8:37(NKJV) tells us, “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” This verse declares that overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who loves us, but this victory that he’s won requires us to have a particular mind-and-heart-set. We have to seek the wisdom of God, so that we dispense with the haphazard approach to pushing obstacles out of our way, and we allow God to do all the heavy lifting.
God tells us in Isaiah 55:8-9(NLT), ““My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”” You and I couldn’t possibly outthink God or know all the intricacies of His incredibly intelligent thought process, but we can know His Word and promises. We can know that through faith, He will give us His divine strategies, and they will help us accomplish the goals that please Him and are in alignment with His purposes, will, and plan.
Canceling the consciousness of defeat
In John 15:19(NLT), Jesus Christ said, “The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.” Hate is a very strong word, but those of us that have been on this journey a while understand the reality of the truth in John 15:19. The world, in the context of our Savior’s words, is comprised of those in power and authority that dominate and govern its systems; and all of these worldly systems are under the rulership and dominion of satan. When we become born again spiritually, we choose to place our lives under the government of Jesus Christ, which is God’s Kingdom. Love then becomes the governing ethos of our existence. The pressure that we experience is because we have transferred out of satan’s kingdom and through Christ, we have become powerful and now work against darkness and evil. But we must be smart. We must work in the way that God instructs and downloads into our hearts.
We might have experienced this pressure from the very beginning of our lives as the enemy’s way of keeping us from discovering who we really are. You may have experienced incidents where just by walking into a room, you’ve felt a hate-filled energy against you. It is because darkness hates the light. It doesn’t want to be exposed, and the light we carry will do just that. So believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are hated by the world, but the Lord assures us in 1John 4:4(KJV), “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”
Through Christ, we have the victory. The world may label us an underdog, but we can never be defeated as long as we remain in Christ. He said in John 15:7(NLT), “But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted!” This is the truth, and God commands us to renew our minds to it. This means we must cancel out the consciousness of defeat that we might have cultivated through all the disappointments we’ve faced in life. We are released and delivered from defeat through Christ, because he has already won our victory and the devil has no power over us.
Receiving God’s Strategy
God releases strategies to accomplish His objectives. As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we should never give everything we’ve got to an objective that God hasn’t purposed for our lives. The most devastating hiccups occur when we don’t know what God requires of us, we’re not patient, and we try to take matters into our own hands. Jesus Christ said in John 16:13 that the Holy Spirit will guide us into ALL truth. He’s not going to speak of himself, but he will only speak what he hears from Jesus, and then he will communicate this information to our spirits.
Problems are exacerbated exponentially when our souls are so out of whack that the Holy Spirit can’t get a message through to us. Our spirit was recreated when we made Jesus Christ the Lord of our lives. As purpose-seekers and God-pleasers, we must make the decision to bring our soul under the submission of our spirit, because our spirit is in constant communication and communion with Holy Spirit. We can’t get the strategy twisted here; we don’t lead the Holy Spirit, He leads us. He tells us exactly what God wants us to do, and it is only when we hear from Holy Spirit that we should begin action steps.
A more than abundant life in Christ is a life lived through the purpose and Will of God. If we want our lives to really take off and be the adventure He’s destined them to be, this is the way to do it. God wants us blessed beyond measure, and through Him, disappointment fades away, defeat is demolished, and sadness gives way to joy. This may be what the world calls an underdog, but we can’t let that slow us down. Everything we could possibly need for success is in Christ, and we can have it if we remain faithful to God’s Word.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“The Victorious Adventures of the Underdog”, by Alexandra Copeland. Springfield Fellowship. Copyright© 2020. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.