Word of the Year for 2009: Victory

I've gotten more confirmations in the last 12 hours, the word for 2009 is: Victory.

I was just watching a prior taped watch night service from this New Years Eve from Kingsway International Christian Centre in London, England, and their entire stage was decorated like a battle field and their worshipers and dancers were all dressed in camouflage. I saw the military stance in full force. But there was no somberness, they were dancing and celebrating having the victory. I just think the military imagery is really interesting. It's just further confirmation of what I have been hearing, and the impressions I've been getting from the Lord about the body of Christ rising up as the Army of God this year more than ever. With the result of that being walking in total victory, wholeness, health and strength.

I have gotten my scripture for this year as well. I was brooding over the scriptures, and asking for the scripture to back up this sense I was getting, and when this happens, I pray and open my Bible randomly and ask God to lead me to a passage, but my Bible is so marked up with highlighter and post it tabs that it often flips to key passages that have been important for me in the past, or in recent times, so I have to close it again, and try and try again. Finally last night it happened, and I was blown away.

Here it is: 1 Corinthians 15: 50-58

Our Final Victory

50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption.
51 Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—
52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
54 So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
55 “ O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?”

56 The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.
57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

Now, while the primary meaning of this passage refers to the last victory over death, we see in verse 56 that we can have victory over death now by defeating sin, because sin is death, and the strength of sin is the law, but Christ has come to free us from the law, and hence, to free us from the power of sin and of death. We are now under Grace, not law, so we are free, and have victory over death, and victory over sin, which brings death. Original sin brought physical death into human reality, but it also brought spiritual death, which Christ, the second Adam, has now freed us from. We have been given the power of having an incorruptible spirit through Christ. We have victory over spiritual death in the here and now, not just later, in the rapture, or when our mortal bodies are traded for immortal ones upon physical death. This victory spoken of has more than one dimension. Victory can be claimed now.

This victory can also be claimed in the body. Death also speaks to decay, disease, destruction; also brought on by original sin, and by the attacks of the enemy. As John 10-11 says: 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. 11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.comes to steal, kill and destroy. So we know, the enemy only brings death, God gives Life.

So, when it gets difficult, our exhortation here is that our labor is not in vain, victory is already ours!

Originally posted to Facebook - Friday, January 2, 2009 at 3:20pm