God Is Our Overcomer

God is our overcomer.This is the O of "Now Faith." Without it, we might not ever pass notable because we’re too busy arguing with God about our shortcomings and the reasons why we can’t go through with His vision, just like Moses.As soon as God reveals His plan to Moses from the burning bush, that He’s going to use Moses to deliver the Israelites from bondage and into a land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 3:8-10), Moses immediately objects. Not just once, but repeatedly.First, he questions God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” (3:11).When God assures him He will certainly be with him (verse 12), Moses protests, “When I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” (verse 13).And God answers, “’I AM WHO I AM.’ And He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you”’” (verse 14).You would think that would have shut Moses up, kind of like when a parent reaches the end of an argument and finalizes it with “because I said so,” but Moses persists, "But suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice; suppose they say, 'The LORD has not appeared to you'" (4:1).At this point, the Lord counters by demonstrating the reality of His power – He turns Moses’ rod into a snake and back again. He turns his hand instantly leprous and restores it again. He explains to Moses that by these signs the people will believe, and if not, then Moses will take water from the river and it will become blood when he pours it on dry land (4:2-9).Moses still objects!He continues to tell God he just isn’t His man: "O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue" (4:10).So the Lord challenges him, "Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD? Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say" (4:11-12).God isn’t letting him off the hook because God knows He can do what He plans to do using Moses to do it.Finally, Moses meekly begs God, “O my Lord, please send by the hand of whomever else You may send” (4:13).At this point, the Lord is angry, but look what He does. God tells Moses, “Now you shall speak to (Aaron) and put the words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you what you shall do” (4:15).He doesn’t reject Moses; He makes a way for Moses to see how he can obey Him by making his brother his spokesman.Aren’t we often just like Moses? When God reveals His vision to us and explains what He wants us to do, our immediate response is argument and negotiation, right? We persuade ourselves that God picked the wrong person because of our weaknesses and obstacles when God simply wants us to respond with Now Faith because we are convinced of His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Because we believe He is our overcomer.After my notable encounter with the lady who grabbed my arm after James and I shared our testimony in church thirteen years ago, I had no idea what God had in store even as He gave me additional shutter glimpses of His vision (see God’s Vision Comes with His Provision). I was selling Mary Kay at the time, and I was convinced He would fulfill His vision by making me a national sales director, and that would be the public speaking platform He would give me. I couldn’t have been more wrong and never could have imagined the platform would be the result of authoring a book and writing a blog.God will always make a way for us to do what He has for us to do. God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present everywhere all the time. When He gives us vision, “He’s got this!” He already has the answer for how He is going to make things happen despite and through us.We are going to have shortcomings. There will be obstacles in our way.God may take us into occupied territory where He will defeat our enemies to bring about His vision like He did with the Israelites. No matter what, we can know He is our overcomer.We don’t have to be able to see how God’s going to do something all the way to the end. We just have to see God, and know that He has it figured out and will teach us what we need to know according to His divine wisdom, which leads us to the W of "Now Faith": God is wise.See below for all the blogs in this series.