Hope Alive: Applying God's Word to Your Daily Life
Hope Alive: Applying God's Word to Your Daily Life
The Revelation 12:11-12 | Episode # 1083
December 3, 2025
Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life
The Revelation 12:11-12
I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.
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This is Chad Harrison and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.
Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years.
I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.
I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day,
especially today.
In Jesus name.
He said. And they overcame him. Now I want you to hear me. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their.
Testimony.
And they did not love their lives to the death. All right, I got another verse, but.
This is going to take a little while. What time is it? Okay, good.
All right.
They overcame him,
meaning they moved forward by the blood of the lamb.
Blood stands for life.
Okay,
so the life of Jesus,
which involves his resurrection power.
Okay,
so I want you to hear me.
What's the process for being saved?
Now listen to me. That doesn't mean being born again.
Okay? Trying to get you out of your mainline denominational traditions. Let's go. Traditions.
Let's go. Mainline denominational traditions. All right.
Don't you hear me?
What's the verse that tells us how we're saved?
If we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we shall be saved. And then you need to come down front,
right?
Huh?
And tell the preacher.
Right.
All right, now listen to me. Remember, saved salvation is sozo. It is the sanctification process.
And remember, the apostle Paul described sanctification as far as it has to do with him in the New Testament in three tenses,
past, present and future.
Meaning?
In some places in the New Testament, Paul says I'm saved.
Then other places he says I was saved.
Then other places he says I shall be saved.
Which means that salvation can't be a what an event.
It's a process.
What he's telling you is salvation is a process in my life. It's the word sozo. It also can be translated and understood as sanctification,
justification, sanctification,
glorification.
Sanctification is a work of God.
It is a. It is a long term work in your life getting your mind and heart.
In line with God's will.
Okay, so how am I saved?
Well, I confess with my mouth the Lord Jesus,
meaning I say that he is Lord of my life.
Remember, it's not confess with my mouth that Jesus exists.
Why?
Who else believes Jesus exists?
The devil believes Jesus.
Don't confess with your mouth that Jesus exists. That's not what it says.
It says, confess with my mouth the Lord Jesus,
meaning He's my Lord and believe in my heart that he raised Jesus from the dead and I will be saved.
So I got to confess his lordship and believe his resurrection power.
Make sense?
If I do those things,
then I'm saved.
All right? Now, confessing means to say it,
okay?
So if I'm wanting to be saved in this situation,
I need to confess that He's Lord of this situation and that he has resurrection power over this situation.
So in every situation where I was being saved, I am saved, I shall be saved. Whatever it is, I He's got to. I got to confess his lordship and I got to believe in his resurrection power.
Makes sense right now, does that have anything to do with being justified and born again?
No.
What do you do to be born again?
Nothing.
What did you do to be born the first time?
Just a question.
Nothing.
You do nothing. Now, to be converted, you do have to turn.
But conversion is the first step.
Repentance.
Conversion under repentance under conversion is the first step in the salvific process.
Why?
Let me give you something else.
Y' all know the passage that has divided Christendom?
Well, the Protestants.
All right, so if you're Catholic still, you're good to go. Just not a fight for you.
All right?
I've had people say y' all got some Catholics up in there. Yeah, and we got Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostals, Catholics. Ain't no telling where they lied to come from.
All right, this is weird because I just figured it out about a year.
About maybe six months ago.
Because I, I, I memorized it, so I never looked at it. You know, you ever memorize something and then you just never look at it again and just work on your memory.
Are you following me?
Yeah.
You just memorize it, and then you know, you know, you know, you know it, right?
Romans says this for those he pre. Knew pre.
For those he foreknew,
he predestined.
Those he predestined,
he called.
Those he called,
he justified.
Those he justified,
he sanctified. Those he sanctified, he glorified.
That's how I remember it.
But it's wrong.
Because I added one,
and in my mind, it seemed reasonable to add it.
You Know what I'm saying?
It seemed real reasonable.
I added the sanctified.
It's not in there.
And I was getting ready to read it, teach it. I think it was back last year when I was.
Anyway, I was getting ready to teach it.
I don't even know why I looked it up. I think I want to look up a Greek word that I knew was.
In there, and I want to make sure it's the same Greek word.
And as I'm reading, I'm going, hold on.
This is the wrong version.
I know it says sanctified in there, but it don't.
It says, those he foreknew, he predestined, Those he predestined, he called. Those he called, he justified. Those he justify, he glorified.
Sanctified ain't in there.
And I thought,
that is weird.
I am adding to Scripture.
But the, the, the. The bad part is if you add to the revelation.
Okay, that's really bad.
What starts with, okay, go back to chapter one. Read first couple of verses.
I. And so I'm thinking about it. Why did not. Did.
God must have forgot sanctified.
How many of y' all think that's the answer? God forgot? Okay, Paul didn't hear it.
He just didn't write it down right?
Is that it?
No,
I. And then I had to go, okay, what is about sanctified that ain't about all the others?
Why isn't it in there?
Because all the others God does on his own.
The only one he does in conjunction with us is sanctified.
For those he fornew,
he foreknew them,
he predestined.
He predestined them. He called them. He called them.
He justified them.
He justified them,
he glorified them.
But he didn't all by himself, sanctify.
Because sanctification involves you choosing to walk with him.
You,
although you bring no power to it,
no direction to it. Let's just face it, you don't know what you're doing,
okay?
You get to join God in that process. And that's why you were made.
To prove that God could take something broken and messed up and not only fix it, but that thing that he could fix would actually worship him and trust him and walk in faith, even though it didn't know how to do it at all.
And that's what he said to Job.
I mean, Satan, about Job, have you considered my man Job?
He didn't say he was perfect.
He didn't say he. He did it all. He.
He.
He foreknew himself and predestined him. He didn't say that. He just said he's faithful in my whole house,
which means when I tell him something, he trusts me.
All right,
so when we get to the passage that talks about being saved and it says that you're to confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus,
that means I'm to. I'm to confess His Lordship,
which means I'm to say it.
Well, you go, why you got to say it, Chad?
I mean, come on.
Why don't we got to say it?
Well,
if you'll notice,
there's this fellow named James who was bad at faith.
In fact,
he grew up with somebody he should have been trusting the whole time and didn't. His oldest brother.
And then his oldest brother did everything he said he was going to do, including raise himself up from the dead.
And he realized he should have been trusting him the whole time.
And so he writes a book to the church.
And that book has a lot of.
Great things in it, but one of the great things it has in it is it talks about faith.
And he says there's two barometers to faith.
He says one of them is what you do.
Now, he didn't say doing something makes you faithful. He says if you have faith, you'll do something.
You'll act.
In fact, if you've got faith and you're not acting, that faith is not.
Real faith, it's dead.
Okay, but there's something else that he gets focused on.
What you say.
What you say indicates your faith.
How many times y' all been around something that happened that God did, It was obvious God did, and you go, that is unbelievable.
It is.
Oh, no.
Unbelievable means believe, meaning faith. That means I can't faith it. Oh, no,
that's terrible.
Am I right?
Is there anything with God that's unbelievable?
No. Everything that's of God is believable.
Why? Cause I faith him.
I shouldn't say unbelievable, should I? I could say spectacular. I could say magnificent. I can say glory to God, but.
I can't say unbelievable because he wouldn't.
Have done it if I couldn't have believed it, right? So it's important that I confess, right, and believe in my heart that God.
Raised him from the dead.
So I place him Lord over that. I believe in the heart.
Now, look.
Now look.
He says here that the way they overcame Satan, who is the accuser of the Brethren,
He's. He's a liar from.
From ancient times.
Are you following me? He's the prince of the power of the Air.
He knows everything that's possible to be known from the day he was made to today.
Everything.
Which means everything about you and everything about everybody else.
Okay? Now, he doesn't know everything.
He knows everything that's been done or said since he was made.
He doesn't know everything that God knows.
But he knows a lot.
How did they overcome him? By the blood of the Lamb.
The.
Resurrection power of the Lamb, the redemptive power of the Lamb, and the word of their testimony, meaning telling what God has done.
All right, now that's a great theological treatise. What time is it?
Okay, I think I broke that down.
Pretty good, don't y'?
All? All right, now, how do I do it?
How do I confess with my mouth the Lord Jesus? How to overcome with the word of my testimony?
Well, you got to say what God.
Has revealed to you.
Okay? Now, that doesn't mean like we do.
We teach children, you know, you need.
To pray and ask Jesus to forgive you for everything, or you're going to hell if you don't ask him for everything.
Now, by the way, that's just terrible theology.
Okay,
all right. You know why?
Because there's no way you could possibly know all the sin that you do.
You. You are so eat up with it. You don't even know you eat up with it.
Okay? Now, we do confess our sins to.
God when he convicts me of them.
Which means he convicts me of them.
I realize that's a problem.
I confess it. There's a lot of things he doesn't convict me of, by the way.
If he convicted you of them, he'd.
Be what we call metaphorically throwing the book at you. Well, remember, that's a big old book.
And it would crush you and then you wouldn't sin anymore. Right? You did it. No more sin.
God didn't convict you everything. Now, he put everything on Jesus.
He convicted him of it.
But he didn't convict you of everything. Not yet. Not yet. It's a process. Salvation's a process. Thank goodness it's not a. He justified and he sanctified you all.
At once, and then you glorify. You'd be dead.
Right. You'd need to be glorified immediately. So how do we do that? How do I overcome him by the.
Word of my testimony?
Well, when God tells you something, you must tell it. When God speaks to something, you need to speak it.
Okay,
now, how do we do that?
Well,
you might tell your wife or husband on the way home.
Don't start out with, God told me something about you.
Okay? They're not going to believe that you.
Were listening to God. Okay? All right? This is not confess what God said about, you know, somebody else.
This is confessing what God said about you.
Right?
But you need a time to confess. All right? Now, if I. If it's about sin, you got to.
Come up in front of the church and tell everybody you're sin, right?
No, no, we don't.
Been dealing with that a lot lately with,
with some women who got pregnant before they were out of high school.
For some reason they're coming in, they've been kind of thrown my way,
you know,
and, and, and horribly,
most of them tell a story because they grew up in church, they got pregnant in high school, and they had to go up in front of the church and confess in front of everybody.
Now, if you didn't come from that, you just didn't grow up in the South. Okay?
All right?
Because I remember happening twice when I was in high school, all right? I was sitting there thinking, the last lad. I'm not a girl. You know.
God didn't have to come up at all. You know, just a girl.
All right,
you go, Pastor. That's what we're supposed to do, is confess.
Yeah. The Bible says, this is James again, okay?
Confess your sins. Now listen to this, because you got.
To read the whole thing, one to.
Another one.
Not another congregation.
Okay?
All right.
And why do we do that?
So that we can be healed. He says, confess your sins one to another, that you may be healed.
So public confession is reserved exclusively for.
Public sin, especially that which was unrepentant.
Okay, all right, I would say.
And you go, what, what, What?
How do we.
How does that look?
Well, I would say to you, Jimmy.
Swaggart.
But then I'd say to you.
That that wasn't done right either. Okay? Are you with me?
Because in fact, I don't think that.
Was scriptural the way it was done. I really don't think that was scriptural either. Okay, I remember it, too.
All right, so I'm telling you that for a reason. Confession, if it's going to be something.
You struggle with, needs to be one to another one.
Prayers offered and an opportunity for. Because by confessing,
you are. You are removing the.
The infection.
And by the other one praying for you, you're healing it.
All right? Does that make sense? But confession of what God says is highly important. How many times have you heard God.
Say something to you?
And then you are so fired up and so convicted and so,
you know,
so ready to jump on what God told you.
And then we had the service and you at the end of the service and you.
I probably need to go up there and tell God I heard him,
you know,
But I, you know, I ain't never been up there and you know, all them up sinners up there, he got problems. I mean, I'm sure God, you know I'm talking about Jesus, you know,
you ain't got time for me. I mean, you know, I can tell some of them got some bad problems. They up there crying, you know what I'm talking about.
So.
So, you know, just leave me. Just let me sit here and just, you know,
let me worship you a little bit. Look, look, look, I'm going to help it out here, all right? I'm going to lift my hand up just a little bit while we're singing,
and then that'll be good between me and you, right?
The reason you're laughing is because all of y' all have felt that way every cotton picking one of you.
Am I right?
I mean, ain't no doubt about it.
I mean, listen, we'll deal with it next week, Jesus. You'll be. Same time, same place. You know what I'm talking about?
Too many people. I don't even. Look, I'm going to have to get down on my knee. That's hard floor,
you know,
look, we'll deal with it next week.
And then what happens?
You leave?
Yeah,
man, you don't get it and you go. And then you might spend a couple weeks kind of spinning out of control, not doing what God told you to do. You come back in, I need a.
Fresh word from God.
Oh, how many of y' all come in for a fresh word from Jesus? I need a fresh word.
You get in there and go, jesus, come on, give me a fresh word.
And he gives you the same word.
He gave you about three months ago, and you're on Jesus. That stay a word.
You told me that three months ago. Right?
And you leave and he goes, well, I mean, that's where we left off, right?
I didn't change and I didn't move. You the one didn't do. So you need to confess it now.
I have always struggled with that.
Okay. As a pastor, how do I give.
People a chance to confess?
Because it doesn't need to be like a one time, you know.
One time service.
It's hard to make that happen in.
In this context, in the modern Western church context. All right.
So how do you do it?
Well. Well, you got to do it with some other people.
Because you got to have a one.
To another one right.
As you go today.
I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.