Keep a Winning List: Dream Bigger Because You Are God's Best
Dr RJ Sing, 23 min
Originally recorded as “You Being God's Best”
Sermon outline
You are God's best: made in his image, bought at a priceless cost and written as his poem, so value yourself, dream bigger and celebrate what God has done.
Main text
- 1 John 4:16
- Genesis 1:26-27
- Ephesians 2:10
Opening
He says he wants to speak 'briefly about you being God's best' and reads 1 John 4:16. His aim is to help people focus on their value 'in the economy of God', because circumstances, upbringing and religion lead us to debase ourselves when God values us highly. He refers back to what he has already explained, what 'image' means and how God breathed himself into man, so this message follows on from an earlier one.
Made in God's image and likeness
God made human beings in his image and his likeness. He explains 'image' from the Hebrew as God taking a photograph of himself, and 'likeness' as the inner likeness of God. You may not have realised your full potential yet, but the potential is there: when people tell him it is hard to forgive or to love someone unlovely, his answer is that they have the potential because of whose image they carry. God formed man and breathed himself into him.
Illustration: God took a photograph of himself, 'and that's you'.
“You are highly valuable in the economy of God.”
- 1 John 4:16
- Genesis 1:26-27
- Genesis 2:7
What was lost in Eden, the second Adam restored
What man lost through Satan's deception in the garden, Jesus Christ, the second Adam, restored; that is what being born again means. In Christ you are a new creation, 'a new species of being', and your words carry creative force. So esteem yourself highly, accept yourself and be comfortable in your own skin. Go by the Word of God and not by the name tags people put on you, because God paid a high price for you: the precious blood of Jesus.
Illustration: A car or a house has a price tag, and you call it valuable because of what you paid. How valuable, then, is your life, which was bought with something priceless?
“You don't go by the opinions of others about you.”
- 1 Corinthians 15:45
- 2 Corinthians 5:17
- 1 Peter 1:18-19
- 1 Peter 1:23
You have authority, and a hedge of protection around you
From the creation passage he highlights the word authority: a born-again Christian has high authority in this life. You have an assignment, and the enemy cannot touch you before it is completed. As God placed a hedge around Job, so that Satan needed permission to touch him, that hedge is around you wherever you go. All things work together for good, so even a retrenchment or a dismissal has God's plan behind it.
Illustration: Colonel Sanders, as he tells it, was put out of the army and went on to fry chicken the way his mother had taught him; now KFC is all over the world. Being put out was part of God's plan and purpose for him.
“God has got you covered all around.”
- Genesis 1:26-27
- Job 1:6-12
- Job 2:6
- Romans 8:28
You are his workmanship: God's poem
The Greek word for workmanship is poiema, which he explains as poetry. Each day your life unfolds you are God's poem being written and sung to him. The word also means a manufactured product: among the billions of people on earth you are not just one of the crowd but specially designed, whatever your culture, genealogy, looks, sex, background or education. Your life was carefully planned and orchestrated.
Illustration: Looking at Adrian as he sang that morning, he saw 'a page, a poem being written to God'.
“You are special, one-of-the-kind designer made.”
- Ephesians 2:10
Made with intelligence, and made to agree
Adam gave names to all the livestock, the birds and the wild beasts, which shows the high intelligence God gave man. For Adam there was no suitable helper, so God made the woman to come alongside him; a husband and wife complete each other. From this he teaches the power of agreement: one puts a thousand to flight and two put ten thousand to flight, so when a husband and wife, two brothers, two sisters or a family pray together, tremendous power is made available.
“When two people get together and pray, you make tremendous power available.”
- Genesis 2:20
- Deuteronomy 32:30
Dream bigger and keep a winning list
Since you are God's best, dream bigger. Write your dreams and goals down and tick them off one by one as God answers. Most of us keep a long 'losing list', memorising every loss in life, and never a winning list, so we feel the pain of losing and never celebrate the winning. Keep a celebration list. Joseph was a dreamer who dreamed another dream, and you are not too old or too tired to dream.
Illustration: Two lists side by side: the losses we memorise and the wins we forget. Walking with God, the winning list always outweighs the losing list.
“In God, you're a winner.”
- Genesis 37:9
Three things you must get out of your life
He asks note-takers to write them down: number one, doubt; number two, disbelief; and then disobedience. When the Holy Spirit leads and prompts you, follow him, and he will give you great things, as he gave dreams and visions to inventors who leaned on God. God is with you wherever you travel and multiplies what you have. Like David facing Goliath, you are in covenant with God.
Illustration: David met Goliath knowing, at the back of his mind, that he had a covenant with God.
“People believe in addition, and addition is good. But Christians, born-again Christians, must believe in multiplication.”
Love yourself, because God loves you
It is right to love yourself. With a healthy self-esteem you can embrace, respect and esteem other people, and let go of your insecurities. People who carry a lot of insecurity end up hurting others.
Illustration: The saying 'Hurting people hurt people.'
“When you love yourself and you have a healthy self-esteem of yourself, you'll be able to embrace others.”
Putting it into practice
- Stop debasing yourself; go by what the Word of God says about you and not by other people's labels.
- Pray in agreement with your spouse, your family or another believer.
- Write down your dreams and goals, and keep a celebration list of what God has done.
- Get doubt, disbelief and disobedience out of your life and follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
- Keep saying what you are believing for until it happens.
Closing
He has the people stand, clap and say aloud that they are God's best, then prays over them 'as a priest', blessing their coming in and going out and asking above all for the wisdom of God, dreams and visions and prosperity. Before he lets them go he leads the confession over the tithes and offerings, line by line. He explains it from Mark 11:23-24, that you will have whatever you say, with his own story: as a poor young man he kept saying 'one day I'll be a millionaire', though at first he was ashamed to, until it happened.
Declarations he led
- I am God's best.
- Father, as we bring our tithes and offerings, we believe you for jobs, better jobs, promotion, raises, bonuses, benefits, sales, commissions, favorable settlements, estates and inheritances, blessed investments and income, checks in the mail, gifts and surprises, finding money, bills paid off and supernatural debt cancellation.
- We claim restoration of all that has been lost, stolen or delayed from our families, all overcharges by clerks or companies, all promises made that were not kept, double for our trouble, all real estate owned by our ancestors and the benefit of it.
- Wealth of the sinners, be released to us the righteous. Mountains, be removed, cast into the sea. Giants, get out of our land. Devil, let go of our harvest. Money, come into our hands. Prosperity, come forth in Jesus' name.
- Thank you, Lord, for meeting all of our needs according to your riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
In his words
- “God took a photograph of Himself, and that's you.”
- “You are God's poem written.”
- “The winning list always outweighs the losing list.”
- “It doesn't cost you anything to dream.”
- “You will never have beyond what you say.”
Every scripture in this message
- 1 John 4:16
- Genesis 1:26-27
- Genesis 2:7
- 1 Corinthians 15:45
- 2 Corinthians 5:17
- 1 Peter 1:18-19
- 1 Peter 1:23
- Job 1:6-12
- Job 2:6
- Romans 8:28
- Ephesians 2:10
- Genesis 2:20
- Deuteronomy 32:30
- Genesis 37:9
- Proverbs 13:22
- Philippians 4:19
- Mark 11:23-24