separate

How is it possible to be more than a conqueror when you are out of a job?  How can you be more than a conqueror when you’ve been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease?  Being more than a conqueror seems like a strange way to describe someone who has been abandoned.  Are you still considered to be more than an conqueror if your teenager is hooked on drugs?  I would dare to say that most people don’t feel like they are more than a conqueror most of the time.  How could you tell someone they are more than a conqueror when they are in the middle of a difficult circumstance in life?  

The apostle Paul said, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  As it is written: For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.  Yet in all these things we are more than a conquerors through Him who loved us.”  Romans 8:35-37

Those are Holy Spirit-inspired words of God through someone who understood tribulation, distress, persecution, and more.  The reason Paul could say that we are more than conquerors even in times of great difficulty was because he had a very different take on trials than most Christians do today.  Paul understood the sufferings of this life as personal invitations to get closer to God.  Being more than a conqueror has nothing to do with the way you feel, but it has everything to do with who you are in Christ Jesus.  You are more than a conqueror because of God’s Spirit living inside of you.  You are more than a conqueror because Jesus is at the right hand of the Father praying for you.  You are more than a conqueror because God the Father, Creator of Heaven and earth, is 100% for you.  Praise God you don’t have to achieve some spiritual summit to be called more than a conqueror.  Praise God being more than a conqueror is not depending on how many verses you have memorized or how many people you have witnessed to or how often you make it to the Lord’s house.  Praise God that every single person filled with the Spirit of God is more than a conqueror!