Gregory Dickow - You Have the Victory! Let No One Take Your Crown
Well, I want to pick up where we left off last time we were together. We broke the power of insecurity in our lives and today we're going to break the power of inferiority in our lives. And I want to start with a verse that you probably are very familiar with in Romans chapter three, verse 23, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Now, that word short means. It comes from the word which means inferior, or for all have sinned and fallen inferior to the glory of God and the glory of God there is defined as to be all that God created us to be. So the result of sin from Adam and Eve all the way down to us is that each and every one of us has fallen short or have become inferior to the full version of who God created us to be. When Adam and Eve sinned, they spun into existence an inferiority complex that has been passed down from generation to generation to generation.
And today we are going to experience victory over that inferiority complex. Jesus paid for our victory, and now we are going to enforce our victory in our lives over that sense of inferiority, that sense of being less than that sense of always coming up short. That sense of failure, that sense of defeat, that sense of being smaller than what God created us to be. If we go back to the Garden of Eden for a moment, having fallen short of God's intention, Adam and Eve felt rejected, ashamed, naked and exposed, and their natural inclination was to cover over their inferiority.
Now, if we flash forward, we learn from this that every negative emotion we feel today, every impulse we have to dominate or subjugate others, every impulse we have to look down at others is rooted in that same sense of powerlessness. You might wonder how to end this cycle. Well, here's how to end it. We're going to take and adopt a mentality that we are victims no more. How do we do that? How do we turn this around? How do we break the power? Snap the neck of the devil of inferiority? Romans Chapter 11, verse 16 says, If the root is holy, then all the branches will be holy as well. In other words, the branches of inferiority in our life come from a root system. The branches of inferiority come from a root system that must be cut off. And that root system is our belief system. Our healing begins in our thinking.
We have about 65,000 thoughts a day and often the same ones and their negative most of them. We need to start telling a new story about who we are, a new story about God's crowning us with victory, a new story about our worth and our value. So we're going to shift our thoughts to a resolution of confidence in God's love, and we're going to stop telling ourselves a sob story. We're going to stop blaming others for our condition, and we're going to exert our power and authority over the spirit of inferiority. Amen.
Let's do this and will pray as we go along as well. But there's so many negative forces and so many voices trying to rob us of our royal mindset. Jesus said in Revelation chapter three, verse 11 Let no one take your crown. Let no one take your crown. Let no one take your crown. That means guess what? You have been recreated and born again with a crown. What is your crown Is the crown of victory. Because of what Jesus did. It's the crown of authority. Because of what Jesus did. It's the crown of royalty. Did you hear me? It's the crown of victory. It's the crown of authority. It's the crown of royalty. And Jesus gave us that crown.
And the Bible says and Jesus said, Let no one take it from me. That means that there are going to be people that are going to try to take that. There's going to be demonic forces trying to take that crown and try to lie to you and trick you into thinking that you don't have that crown. Discouragement is going to knock on your door and fear is going to knock on your door and failure is going to knock on your door and it's going to knock your crown a little bit. And the crown is going to sometimes almost fall off. But you just got to straighten that baby out and realize, God put it on you. Let no one take it from you.
I hear so many stories of people that talk about how they hear voices or people have told them they'll never make it. They'll never amount to anything. Listen, no matter what voices, no matter what self-limiting predictions people have shared with you or told you or whatever you've told yourself or what the devil's told you, you need to know something. Your destiny is greater than your history. Your destiny is greater than your history. And we need to rule over the kingdom of our own mind. We need to rule over the... Somebody needs to hear this today. We need to rule over the kingdom of our own mind. In your mind is a kingdom. And you must rule over it. You must rule over these thoughts that try to control you and limit you.
You remember one of our president's wives, Eleanor Roosevelt, wisely said, No one can make you feel inferior without your permission. I love that. You see, it all starts in your thinking about how you view yourself. Sure, at some point in life, whether it's children as kids, teenagers, adults, we've all been victimized. We've all suffered some kind of emotional or physical pain. But we don't have to carry that anymore. In fact, carrying that victim mentality forces us to filter our entire existence through a very narrow lens. We end up seeing life through fear, through sadness, through anger. You know, in Genesis chapter four, Cain felt like a victim, feeling like God respected his brother Abel, but not him.
So he thought... Let's think about this for a moment. In Genesis chapter four. So he he thought, I'll get rid of my brother, and then those feelings will go away. But by killing his brother, he only further imprisoned himself into an existence of inferiority, banishment, wilderness, isolation, wandering around without purpose. Because when we think somebody else is the reason why we feel inferior, we extinguish them in our minds. We. We murder them in our thought life. We try to eliminate them so that we eliminate the feelings of feeling less than. But getting rid of another human being will never make you feel more than it'll make you feel even more, less that we don't have to wander like this.
Romans 8:37 says, In all these things, we are more than conquerors. Through Jesus Christ who loved us. Today is your day to step out of the victim role and step into the victor role. You're more than a copper. You can throw off all those limiting mentalities of failure. Let no one take your crown. Let no one take your crown. Today we're going to silence the voices that are still trying to tell us. You'll never break away from your past. You're not strong enough. You'll never recover from that addiction. You can't bounce back from that financial mess. It's going to be tough to get that a better job or to damage your too broken your too far gone. You're too old. You're too this. You're too that.
Why are we listening to these broken records that continually so bad seeds into our lives? It's a voice is in our heads that we need to silence. A voice trying to rob us of our crown. Jesus said, Let no one take your crown. That means you've got one. What is that crown? It's the crown of victory. It's the crown of authority. Is the crown of royalty. It's crown of victory. Because Jesus has given us victory over our past. Victory over the devil. Victory over fear, worry. It's the crown of authority. We can exert our authority with our words. We can speak life rather than death. We can declare and rule the kingdom of our minds. The kingdom of our bodies, the kingdom of our families, the Kingdom of our churches. The Kingdom of this world. By ruling our minds, by ruling our thought life. It's the crown of victory. It's the crown of authority. And it's the crown of royalty.
You see, God is the greatest, and He is the King. But he's made us a part of his royal family. Your destiny is greater than your history. And in order to seize your destiny, you got to remember you have a crown. Crown of authority. Crown of victory. Crown of royalty. How do we walk in this victory? Well, first we've got to know that Jesus did it. Second, we've got to embrace the mantle as sons and daughters of God. Take our place and our power and realize how much power we have. We have the power to forgive. We have the power to dream. We have the power to get up when we've fallen. We have the power to live forward. To go forward to fail forward. If you've ever felt defeated or you can't make it or you've reached your limit, that is in that moment, you've got to stop.
And remember, you have been crowned by God. I know the voices that you hear. We all hear these condemning voices in our head that say you're not worthy, you're not deserving. Voices that attempt to beat us up and for us to beat ourselves up, we hear these voices. So first, we've got to determine that our destiny is greater than our history. Second, we've got to embrace the mantle sons and daughters of God. And third, we need to talk back to the voices of inferiority that are talking to us. We need to talk back to these voices. We need to talk back to the inferiority complex with a royalty mentality. We need to say, No, you're not taking my crown. I'm entitled to it. I'm a child of the king. I'm the head and not the tail. I'm more than enough. I believe that God is the God of breakthrough.
So I will break out of my limitations because I have royal DNA running through my veins. That's how you talk back to this inferiority complex. God didn't crown you because you're deserving. God didn't crown me because I'm deserving. He crowned us because he has made us a part of his royal family. The Royal family of heaven through the blood of Jesus. You know, people that are kings on this earth. They don't have an inferiority complex. They know they are the king. They know they are the queen. They know they are the rulers. There's a few countries in this world, in many tribes, where there are kings still in this earth. And those men and women do not have an inferiority complex when they realize they are a king or queen or in the royal family.
As soon as you realize you are a part of this heavenly royal family and we live on earth as it is in heaven, we've got to live like we've got this thing you say, If I have this crown. Why do I keep getting crowned? Why do I feel like I keep getting conquered and keep getting defeated? Why do I feel victimized by the things that happened in my life? Well, the answer is simple. It is that this mindset of royalty, this this concept of royalty has not permeated your head where the crown has to rule. I want you to think about this. Jesus took a crown of thorns, and all those thorns pierced his head. He took the crown of thorns so that he could give you the crown of victory. The crown of blessing, the crown of authority, the crown of royalty, the crown of destiny.
And see in the same way that the crown of thorns penetrated into Jesus skull, into the places where his precious brain existed. We must realize that this crown of royalty, this crown of authority, this crown of victory, must permeate and penetrate our skull until it is possessed. Till it has possessed our brains and our hearts and our minds. Take a look at God's word about your destiny to reign in life with a crown mindset rather than rather than being reigned over with a fear and failure and inferiority mindset. Look at what God says about this.
Deuteronomy Chapter 20. You shall be the head and not the tail. Ephesians two six You've been raised up and seated with Christ in heavenly places. Psalm 103, verse four He redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with loving kindness and compassion. Isaiah 62, verse three You are a crown of beauty in the hand of God. And here's my favorite from Romans Chapter five, verse 17 through the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, you reign, we reign as kings in life. There, there's so much more. But we don't need more. There's so much more scriptures that prove our royalty mindset. The proof that we have, we've been crowned and we need to make that our mindset. We need to let that penetrate our brain, penetrate our thinking, penetrate every fiber of our being.
And when we do, the case is closed. You are the son or daughter of a king, and it's your job to remember it and it's your job to not let any thoughts steal that mindset that you are the son or daughter of a king. You are a part of the royal family. And pay special attention to this phrase In Romans chapter five, verse 17, he said, Through the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, that's the gift of God's approval. We talked about God's approval last week. It's the gift of God's approval. What is this gift? Righteousness is the gift of God's approval. The ability to stand in the presence of God without a sense of guilt or inferiority or condemnation or shame.
You say, Yeah, but I've done a lot of shameful things. I've done a lot of things that I should condemn myself about. You're right. So have I, we've all done those things, but God. But God has, through the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness. It is a gift of righteousness. We we can't think that the way out of condemnation is to be perfect. We got to realize the way out of condemnation is to adapt and adopt and recognize the gift of righteousness that has been given to us that we've been crowned with. And it needs to penetrate our mind so that no longer will would be conquered by condemnation. No longer will we be conquered by discouragement. No longer will we be emotionally ruled. People conquered by inferiority complex. There will be no more failure mindedness. There will be no more less than mindedness. There will be no more shame. No more inferiority. You are the righteousness of God. You've been born again and you have it within you.
Now, to stand with God, to stand in His presence, to stand as his son or daughter in his presence, and to stand in the face of all your problems and declare I'm the head and not the tail. To stand in the face of every demon trying to rob you. Every demon trying to try to destroy you, every demon trying to defeat you and say in the name of Jesus, I have authority over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means injure me, hurt me or harm me. This is a mentality that's got to penetrate your brain. It is already a crown that God put on your head, but you're not letting it penetrate.
You've got to tighten that thing. Send those thorns of authority into your brain. Send that crown of authority into your head. Send that pierce your head pierced your brain. Pierce your mind. Pierce your heart with this mentality until it bleeds the red blood of Jesus giving you the right to be the son or daughter of God, to be a king and a queen in God's kingdom, to be a prince and a princess in God's kingdom. This is not some fairy tale. This is not some fantasy. This is the way God made it. This is the way God planned it. This is the way God said it. This is who you are. Know your rights, know your royalty. Recognize, acknowledge your royalty, acknowledge that you're the righteousness of God and acknowledge or know your rights. And our mission to awaken.
One translation says in the Bible In First Corinthians chapter 15, Awake to Righteousness. You know, when you awake to the sunlight coming into your bedroom, the sun is already up. You waking up doesn't make the sun come up, the sun is already up. And that woke you up. We need to wake up to righteousness. The righteousness is a gift. It's already in you. God's already crowned you with it. We need to wake up to recognize it's already on us. It's already in us. It's already the crown we wear. You see, inferiority is a demonic force that tries to limit you and shame you and make you feel less than who God intended you to be. But the opposite of inferiority. Many people think the opposite of inferiority is superior authority. But it's not because God didn't create us to be superior over others. We are not better than others or higher than anybody else. We're all equal in Christ.
So the opposite of inferiority is not superiority, the opposite of inferiority is royalty. You see, the solution to inferiority is not superiority. The cure to inferiority, which makes you feel less than is not superiority over somebody else, so that you feel more than the cure to inferiority is royalty. Royalty. We just got done sharing that verse. Romans 5:17 Through the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, we reign as kings in this life that's royalty, a sense of truly knowing who you are and what you have the rights to. As a child of God. It's a healthy sense of freedom, and our royal rights is the cure to feeling inferior while still being able to maintain a humble attitude about ourselves. You see, inferiority and humility are not the same. You can be humble and have humility by embracing your royalty. Embracing inferiority is not humble. Embracing inferiority is a lie. Embracing inferiority is not humility. Embracing inferiority is to reject what Jesus has done for you.
Listen, so often we allow ourselves to be browbeaten by religious notions that tell us we're lonely. I wonder how many of us have heard preaching growing up. You're a lowly, inferior creature. You should just be grateful that you're going to make it into heaven. That mindset is completely a slap in the face of what Jesus did on the cross. He didn't have to take the crown of thorns. He could have died on the cross for our sins without having a crown of thorns. But he took the crown of thorns so that he could give you the crown of victory. He took the crown of thorns so he could give you the crown of authority. He took the crown of thorns so he could give you the crown of royalty. Took the crown of thorns. So he can give you the crown of your destiny. This settle for little mentality is not God's way.
The real Jesus longs for you to know who you are. The real Jesus longs for you to discover your worth. Your royal position as a child of God, as a king, as a prince. He didn't die for trash. He died for what He treasured you. I love how plain Revelation Chapter one puts it. I love this scripture. It's one of my favorites. I'll read it to you from the I believe the new King James Bible unto Jesus Christ, the Firstborn from the Dead. Revelation. Chapter one, verse five and six The Prince of the Kings of the Earth under him that loved us and washed us from our own sins in his own blood and has made us kings and priests under God. Our Father. I want you to hear this. This says it all. This is the Gospel. This is the message. This is our theme. This is our anthem. This is our banner. This is our message. This is our this is our mandate to tell the world he loved us.
Number one, it says he loved us. Number two, it says he washed us. Number three, it says he made us kings and priests. Whew. He felt something for you, love. He did something for you. Washed away your sins in his own blood. And he made something of you. A king and a priest before God. Whoa. You are a king and a priest. But I fail. But I discover who you are. The more you discover who you are in Christ, the more of that will start to manifest in your life. And we will together cover this earth with the love of God, with the revelation of what He has done for us. He loved us. Then he washed off and he made us kings and priests. Once you know this, you will never buy into a mistaken identity ever again. You will never feel inferior. You'll never feel like you got to grovel before God for a morsel of bread in your time of need.
No. You will realize the whole. The whole cabinet, the whole kitchen, the whole pantry belongs to you. You're a part of the royal family. We need to take the power of mission back. I want you to declare this today. I want you to say this out loud. Say I refuse to give anyone the permission to make me feel inferior. I will let no one take my crown. Say that out loud. I will let no one take my crown. I am crowned by Jesus with victory. Come on. Say that I'm crowned by Jesus with victory, with authority, with royalty. So I can fulfill my destiny. Say this out loud. I will no longer be dominated by my past. I will no longer be dominated by the devil. I will no longer be dominated by my limitations or fears. No longer say this. I'll no longer will I allow my mistakes to sabotage or disqualify me from the crown of royalty. The crown of victory. Say it. The crown of royalty. The crown of victory. The crown of authority.
Say this out loud. Say after all. Say that. After all, God knew about my mistakes before I made them say that God knew about my mistakes before I made them, and still chose to crown me with glory. Not shame. Simply put, my brothers and sisters, no matter what your troubles, fears, brokenness, or mental limitations you've had. You no longer have to give in to the feelings of oppression, feeling overpowered or dominated by any of those things. Today, you're taking your future back by refusing to let anyone take your crown. You move from loser lane to conquerors court. You are a masterpiece in process. God's got you. He's working on you. And he always finishes what he starts in you. According to Philippians chapter one, verse six.
So the next time a voice tells you you'll never recover from what has been lost or burned in your life, reject it. Since God's promises in Joel 2:25 I will restore the years that have been devoured. And the next time you find yourself gripped with a people pleasing mentality, giving other people permission to make you feel inferior, let that go straight in that crown in your head and know that you are son or daughter of God. You're more than a conqueror. Keep this crown on your head. Keep letting it penetrate your brain. Some of you, it's going deeper today than it's ever gone before. Some of you, it's just hasn't scratched the surface yet. But it will. You just stay with it and we'll stay together.
Let's stay in this focus on who God made you. Focus on what God says about you. Focus on the crown that God put on your head. Yes, We don't deserve it, but Jesus deserves it. He deserves it, and he wants you to wear it. Well, perhaps for time's sake, pray right now. In fact, the first thing we're going to pray is if you've never received Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, if you've never put your faith in the blood of Jesus, if you've never known that, not only does God love you, but he already washed you, there's nothing you can do to get him to love you more. And there's nothing you can do to get him to wash you more. He already chose to love you and he already washed you in his own blood. He's already made you a king and a priest, so you might as well embrace who he said you are. Say this. Say:
In the name of Jesus, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe Jesus is risen from the dead. I believe the blood of Jesus has washed away all my sins, past, present and future. Already washed away, in Jesus name. Amen.