Hi! My name is Justin. I am 29 years old and know a thing or two about struggle. So, what did I have to do? I had to hit the reset-button on my life and turn to the one and only one I know I can always turn to and talk to. Guess who that was and is? My Dear Lord God Jesus Christ, Amen!

He wants you free to laugh. He wants you free to leap and praise and sing. He wants you free to rejoice. He wants you so free that other people won’t understand it – they’ll just want it! Never underestimate the drawing power of joy. It’s like a blazing fire that captures attention of people in darkness. In fact, in a dream I had many years ago, God called it “Spontaneous Combustion.” I didn’t even know what the term meant until the next day when I looked it up in a dictionary. Here’s what I found: “Spontaneous combustion: the process of catching fire and burning as a result of heat generated by an internal chemical reaction.”

That’s it! Joy – the process of catching fire and burning as a result of heat which comes from the Holy Ghost. It’s time to rejoice, to rise up out of our exhaustion and implement the power of praise. When you do, you’ll enter a domain of power, freedom, and the Joy of the Lord. A domain that’s alive and shining with the presence of God. So, throw off those old inhibitions. Take God at His Word. Leap, shout, sing, and let yourself catch fire in the Spirit and never stop burning.

Do you know what it’s like to be in a losing battle with your own body? I do…and I can tell you, it’s miserable. There have been times in my life as a believer when I wanted with all my heart to behave one way, but my body seemed absolutely intent on doing exactly the opposite.

There were times I desperately wanted to stop doing drugs and things got difficult and I would get sick, and fall right back into it, and my old thoughts. Times, years ago when I so longed to quit smoking that I threw my cigarettes out the car window…then turned the car to go back and get them when I realized I didn’t have the money for another pack. You know what I’m talking about. You’ve been there, too. Every Christian has in one way or another. We call it the battle of the flesh. The crucial element in having victory is making a quality decision, one from which there is no retreat and about which there is no argument. It is the one thing God will not do for you. He has set before us Life and Death, but the actual choosing, the quality decision – is up to you. But once you’ve made that quality decision, how do you stand when your flesh moans and groans and kicks and fusses? When you feel torn-in-two? When you’re tempted to condemn yourself? You take authority over your flesh – in Jesus name - and you win!!

To fully understand what I’m saying, there are some things you need to understand about your physical body. # 1 is the fact that it has no nature of its own. It’s just flesh that does what it’s been trained to do. For example, if you decide to stand-up, your body stands-up, right? Has your body ever just jumped-up and ran all around on its own without consulting you? Of course not! It’s not made to do that.

Once you train your body and teach it to do certain things and act in certain ways, it will expand and develop in those abilities. It will actually begin to do those things without conscious thought on your part. If it weren’t that way, you’d still be struggling to button your shirt for 20-minutes like you did when you were 4-years old. You’d never be able to expand in any direction if your body couldn’t accept training.

Living a life of faith takes courage. Most people don’t realize it, but it does! It takes courage to stand-up in the face of sickness and declare you’re healed by the stripes of Jesus. It takes courage to believe for prosperity and put your last dime in the offering plate when poverty is staring you in the face.

There will be days when you’d rather pull the covers over your head and hide than take another Faith-Stand against the devil. But, you can’t because the battle of Faith isn’t fought and then forgotten. If you want to keep living victory, you have to fight it again and again. Justin.

I was honored to sit down and talk, yesterday, with Justin and that conversation will be in next week’s column. Thank You, Justin!!

Until next time, remember, Jesus Loves You, and JESUS IS LORD!