Touré Roberts - Giants and Promises

I want to talk today about giants and promises. It’s interesting that throughout Scripture, God made many promises, but there was always a giant in front of each promise. Interestingly enough, God doesn’t even talk about the giants; He talks about the promise. I believe that God doesn’t place emphasis on the giant because, in relation to the promise, the giant is irrelevant. I want to draw your attention to something I started on Wednesday night, but the Lord told me I wasn’t done with it. Let’s look at the passage we examined last week: 1 John, chapter 4, the first four verses. The first word that comes from the mouth of the writer of this exhortation is «beloved.» It’s almost as if he believes that we ought to view ourselves and God in a particular way. If we understand or are reminded of how God feels about us, we realize we are the beloved; we are not random dots in God’s universe. We aren’t people whom God doesn’t care about or isn’t acutely interested in. We are the beloved of God. There is no depth you can sink to, and no low you can reach, where God’s love, concern, and compassion are not present. You can run away from God as much as you want, but you can’t escape His love and concern. He is always going to be thinking of you; He is always going to care about you; He is always going to want the best for you; and He is always going to be for you. You have to know that it’s His pursuit of you that ultimately leads you to surrender. So, what do you do with a God whom you keep running away from and against whom you continue to rebel? When you would have cast yourself aside, He is still there, calling you. What do you do with a God who serenades you on your worst day? He begins His exhortation by saying, «Beloved, God loves you.» You will never cease to be the beloved. I don’t care how low you get; I don’t care how high you go. God will always be very interested in you because He loves you. He has an investment in you, and as long as you are breathing, He will be believing in you, for He knows that one touch from Him can change your life and will change your life. Thus, He speaks to the beloved, just as I am speaking to the beloved. I am saying right now: you are loved by God. You might as well embrace it. This also means that the bets are still on concerning your life. I don’t care what you’ve been through; I don’t care what you’ve lost. The bets are still on, and the promises are still there. As long as you have breath, it is still on concerning your life. Oh, I feel Heaven in that! We are so quick to throw ourselves away; we are so quick to put a period where God has placed a comma. I’m telling you right now, it’s still on. If you muster the strength to believe it and the faith to press toward it, like the promise, you will look up and find yourself in the promise. However, the text says, «Beloved, do not believe every spirit.» Now we get really super-spiritual; we become very hyper-spiritual about this. When it says, «Beloved, do not believe every spirit,» we automatically think of demons. Okay, that’s applicable, and it works, but not every spirit is a demon. A spirit can be a disposition. Have you ever met someone with a jealous spirit? That’s not a demon; that’s a disposition. Hello, somebody! Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about. A spirit is not merely a demon; it can also be a disposition, a thought, or an idea. So, it says, «Beloved, do not believe every spirit.» You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to read it all, and then I’ll come back to that. «Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.» By this, you know the spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. Of course, it is, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist. I’m going to talk about that because it’s not what you think. You have heard that it was coming, and now it is already in the world. But then it says, «You are of God, little children, and have overcome them because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.» So, He is ultimately trying to get you to this point, but He starts here: in order for you to understand who you are, how great you are, and how powerful you are in the context of the world around you. Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. In other words, you are bigger than your circumstance; you are bigger than the world around you. Often, giants show up to prove that you are greater than what you think you are. Let me just make that point and then I will return to the first verse. When giants show up in your life, the giant is there because it’s time for…