More Than Conquerors
MARCH 6, 2024

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
Romans 8:37

Recommended Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:57
El Capitan is the famous rock formation that rises three thousand feet from the floor of Yosemite National Park in California. From the ground, the granite face of the formation looks smooth and nearly vertical. But it is the bumps, cracks, and small ledges that provide handholds and footholds for climbers as they ascend to the top. In fact, it is the bumps on the surface that make conquering El Capitan possible.

When Paul says Christians are “more than conquerors,” he uses a form of the Greek word nike—a word we associate with a brand of sportswear. In ancient Greece, Nike was the winged goddess of victory, thus an appropriate image to associate with athletic victory. Greek nike gave rise to nikao which meant “to conquer or prevail.” The prefix huper (“more than”) produced hupernikao—the word Paul used in Romans 8:37, “more than conquerors.” We don’t just overcome or prevail in life through Christ—we “hyper-prevail.” Bumps don’t defeat us; they provide a path to victory.

Life can look like El Capitan at times. Rather than being defeated by bumps and cracks, we use them as footholds and handholds from the Lord to conquer in Christ.

Mountains can only be climbed with the knees bent.
Unknown

Troubles
MARCH 5, 2024

If children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.
Romans 8:17

Recommended Reading: Romans 8:31-35
Salesmen speak about the features and benefits of a product. What if one of the features described was suffering that resulted from using the product? Sometimes new Christians are surprised to discover that they still have troubles in life after becoming a follower of Jesus. They feel the “product” wasn’t presented fairly.

Jesus told His disciples that “in the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). That was not to scare them but to prepare them. Paul explained further: In Christ, we are “joint heirs” with Him. As “joint heirs,” one of the things we inherit is to “suffer with Him” that we might also share in His glory (Romans 8:17). Paul then spent the next 22 verses of Romans 8 (verses 18-39) explaining the suffering we may experience in this world but that in Christ we are “more than conquerors” (verse 37). God uses everything we experience—even our troubles—to conform us to the image of Christ (verses 28-29). Nothing in this world—not even our sins—can separate us from the love of God (verses 34-39).

Whether our troubles are from the world or of our own making, God is faithful. Give Him thanks today for His faithful love.

Shall light troubles make you forget weighty mercies?
John Flavel

The Twenty-Fourth Psalm: The Lord Mighty in Battle!
JANUARY 27, 2024

Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.
Psalm 24:8

Recommended Reading: 1 Samuel 17:45-47
Life is a warzone, and it’s full of battles. What battles are you facing right now? A conflict with another person? A legal challenge? A financial worry? A loved one who is breaking your heart? Why not lean on some of the Bible’s military language. Exodus 14:14 says, “The Lord will fight for you.” Nehemiah 4:20 says, “Our God will fight for us.” When young David faced Goliath, he said, “For the battle is the Lord’s” (1 Samuel 17:47).

The apostle Paul said, “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57). The apostle John added, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4).

Don’t feel helpless and hopeless. You have a Savior who will fight for you, who will oversee the battle, and who will gain the victory. Trust Him as the King of glory, the Lord strong and mighty, for we are more than conquerors through Him who loves us.

You are not fighting for victory—you are fighting from victory. The battle has already been won!
Tony Evans

January 8

More than Conquerors
Bible in a Year:
Genesis 20–22
Matthew 6:19–34
In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Today's Scripture & Insight:

Romans 8:31–39
When my husband coached our son’s Little League baseball team, he rewarded the players with an end-of-year party and acknowledged their improvement over the season. One of our youngest players, Dustin, approached me during the event. “Didn’t we lose the game today?”

“Yes,” I said. “But we’re proud of you for doing your best.”

“I know,” he said. “But we lost. Right?”

I nodded.

“Then why do I feel like a winner?” Dustin asked.

Smiling, I said, “Because you are a winner.”

Dustin had thought that losing a game meant he was a failure even when he’d done his best. As believers in Jesus, our battle is not confined to a sports field. Still, it’s often tempting to view a tough season of life as a reflection of our worth.

The apostle Paul affirmed the connection between our present suffering and our future glory as God’s children. Having given Himself for us, Jesus continues to work on our behalf during our ongoing battle with sin and transforms us into His likeness (Romans 8:31–32). Though we’ll all experience hardship and persecution, God’s unwavering love helps us persevere (vv. 33–34).

As His children, we may be tempted to allow struggles to define our worth. However, our ultimate victory is guaranteed. We may stumble along the way, but we’ll always be “more than conquerors” (vv. 35–39).

By: Xochitl Dixon

Father, thank You for helping me rise up through trials in victorious praise. Amen.

"Rand On The Middle East"
retrieved from The Libertarian Forum VOLUME V, NO. 12 DECEMBER, 1973

The neo-Randian weekly newspaper Ergo has given us a detailed account of Miss Rand's answers during a question period following her annual Ford Hall Forum speech in Boston (Ergo, Oct. 31) Rand's remarks on the Middle East are a chilling revelation of her lack of knowledge of the concrete facts of reality, as well as a grievous betrayal of her own oft-proclaimed libertarian moral principles.

Asked what the American people and the government should do about the Middle East war, Rand answered unhesitatingly: "Give every help possible to Israel." Not American soldiers, she conceded; but military weapons. We need not stress here the assault on liberty involved when the U.S. government taxes Americans in order to send arms abroad; surely, this is as statist and immoral, though not to the same degree, as sending American soldiers to the Middle East. As for the American people, Miss Rand sounds for all the world like the United Jewish Appeal: "Give everything you can" (Give till it hurts?). Reaffirming her supposed and longtime opposition to altruism. Rand added that "this is the first time I have contributed" to public causes, but now apparently we have a vital exception.

Why? What is the overriding cause for which we must set aside libertarian principle. isolationist principle. and opposition to altruism; why is Israel's "emergency" to be a claim on our hearts and pockets? Given Miss Rand's militant atheism, it surely could not be the necessity for the reestablishment of the Temple, or the fulfillment of the old prayer, "next year in Jerusalem"; given her professed individualism, it surely could not be (one hopes) the Zionist call to blood, race, and soil. So what is it? Russia is of course dragged in, but even Miss Rand concedes that the Russian Threat is not the real issue here.

The real issue? Because "civilized men" are "fighting against savages", and when that happens, says Rand, "then you have to be on the side of that civilized man no matter what he is." The fact that Israel is socialistic, she adds, pales into insignificance before this great imperative.

There are two grave problems here: of the facts of reality, and of moral principle. Factually, what does Miss Rand mean by "savages"? Once work through the emotional connotations of the term, and the concept becomes a vague one. She explains that the Arabs are "primitive" and "nomads." Here she betrays total ignorance of Palestine and its history. The only "nomads" in the region are not the Palestinian Arabs, who were driven out of their lands and homes by the Zionists, but the Jordanian Bedouins, who as hirelings of King Hussein are in effect anti-Palestinian and pro-Israel. Palestinian Arabs were not nomads but agriculturists; long before Israel, they "made the desert bloom." The "nomad" theory was convenient Zionist propaganda, and nothing more. Perhaps the Palestinian Arabs are "savages" because they live miserable lives in hovels on the desert: but they do so because – one and a half million of them – they were driven out of their homes and properties by the Zionists, and they remain in dire poverty as refugees. Miss Rand's strictures are chillingly reminiscent of the English who drove the Irish out of their farms and lands by force, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and then looked down their noses at the "wild, savage" Irishmen who unaccountably spent their lives wandering around the forests.

Miss Rand asks herself the question: why are the Arabs against Israel? Unbelievably, she answers that they resent Israel because they are "savages" who "just do not want to use their minds"; deliberately choosing not to use their minds, they resent the superior technology and civilization of the Zionists. Surely this is the oddest explanation for Arab resentment ever penned. For what Miss Rand omits from the discussion is the one-and-half million Palestinian Arabs driven out of their homes and lands by force, to which were later added another half-million ruled by Zionist conquerors. A crucial omission indeed! Where is the Palestinian refugee problem in Miss Rand's attempt at explanation? Blankout!

This brings us to the even more important moral question: namely, assuming that one can really define "savagery", what's wrong with being a "savage"? Isn't a nomad or a savage, a person? Doesn't he therefore possess inalienable rights? Isn't he to be allowed to own his own person and his property? What happened to the great libertarian principle, to which Miss Rand presumably adheres, of no initiation of force against another person? If savages are people, what is the justification for initiating force against them? Or are we to amend the great libertarian axiom to read: No one is allowed to initiate force against the person or property of another, except if he be civilized and the other a savage? But then we are on murky and dangerous ground. What if Group A is a bit more "civilized", and Group B a bit more "savage"; is it therefore legitimate and moral for A to attack and rob B? I am sorry to say that this is fascist ethical theory, and that therefore in this respect the many charges about Randianism being "fascist" seems to have a certain core of truth.

And yet Miss Rand says it; without going into the rights or wrongs of the case, of the aggression or the property rights or the liberty involved, she states flatly: "When you have civilized man fighting against savages, then you have to be on the side of that civilized man no matter what he is." But surely, on any of her own apparent criteria, Soviet Russia, highly technically developed, is then far more "civilized" than, say, Mongolia. Does that mean that if Russia were to attack and sweep into Mongolia that we would all be honor bound to cheer for the Russians, and even to kick in our dollars for the great cause? And if not, why not?