The Four Word Formula For Victory & Success
by Wayne Huntley
January 2, 2022 · Centerpointe Apostolic Church (Murfreesboro, TN)
Kind: sermon
Scripture: Genesis 1:1, Matthew 6:33, Judges 1:1-2, 1 Timothy 2:1, Mark 4:38, John 5:4

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/wayne-huntley--the-four-word-formula-for-victory-success
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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There is much that I could preach today. I have a portfolio of past experiences, pulpit material, you know, that I could rely upon today. But in my privileged opportunity to stand before you these few brief moments, I really wanted to exaggerate, emphasize, and also be able to execute the mind of the Spirit at this particular moment of unprecedented opportunity. There is only one Sunday in the new year, the first Sunday of the new year, and here we are right now. This is our very first Sunday of 2022. And so what would we, what would we need, what could we hear, what could we receive that would set a pattern, that would set a direction, that would set a course of spiritual pursuit for us into the things of the Lord, so that 2022 will be a blessed year like we have never known?

I wonder how many folks in this room this morning are ready for an unprecedented blessing from God in 2022. You really want the blessing of the Lord in 2022. With that in mind, I want to preach to you a principle from the word of the Lord.

Uh, I, I, I never liked cotton candy when I was a kid. I don't mean to, uh, offend anybody, but I never like cotton candy, because you pack your jaws with that stuff like a chipmunk, and when you're ready to enjoy it you bite your tongue, because there is absolutely nothing there. It's just, where'd it go? You know, as in my maturity I'd rather chew on a nice steak, you know, something of substance. Can I get a witness up in here this morning? I could chew on a steak a little while. Well, I don't like cotton candy church, and I don't like cotton candy sermons, that when you fill your mouth with it it's all sweet and it's wonderful, and come Monday you don't have anything to give your strength, to give you direction. I'm preaching to you today about your tomorrow. I'm preaching about your next week. I'm preaching about your next month. I'm going to preach about the rest of this year, and it starts right now.

So I want to preach to you today on the subject: The Four-Word Formula for Victory and Success. The four-word formula for victory and success.

I guess it would be rudimentary and fundamental that first of all, before I endeavor to inspire you, excite you, or ignite you about victory and success, I, I guess I should ask you: am I preaching to people today who are interested in spiritual victory, and being blessed of God, and being a spiritual success in 2022? I want to know, are you in this room this morning? Do you really want to know what we need and what we must have to be a success and to have victory? Somebody shout yes. With that in mind, we shall enter into the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

To many, the Bible is a book of deep, dark, difficult, dis-, undiscernable discourses. The thing that keeps many from the Scriptures is not the part that they don't understand, but the parts they do understand. The Bible is a documentary of the history of man, coursing 6,000 plus years, launching humanity into the timeless state of eternity. The Bible is the written will of God. It is the image of the invisible God. I get amazed as a pastor when folks are consistently asking me to help them find the will of God for their life. I like to pick the Bible up and say, "There it is. You want to know what the will of God is? There it is. It's right there in your Bible."

Men have exhausted their time on earth investigating, interrogating, and exploring its rich resource of wisdom and understanding. Much of it is yet unrevealed, unknown, and unexplainable. It is said that the only time the great Houdini, the great escape artist, was ever baffled by a door that he could not unlock, it was because that the door was not locked. He was trying to unlock something that was not even locked. The good Lord said, "I have set before thee an open door." You don't have to be a Houdini, crack a code, or unravel a mystery. All you have to do is just walk into the pages of the holy writ. The door is open, and in that book is the answer to every question you have. It is the healing to every disease known to humanity. It is the way out of every trial. It is the direction of God. It is the profound word of the Lord. The Bible said a fool will not err therein. It's hidden from the wise and the prudent. It's revealed unto babes. And the world by wisdom knew not God.

But God, in his goodness, graciousness, and kindness, did not place the formula for victory and success thousands of years into his relationship with mankind. He did not seclude it in the depths of the middle of his book, or hold you captive until the end. He just laid it out in full view, and we have stumbled over it for generation after generation. I want to expose you this morning to the formula for victory and success. Ladies and gentlemen, it is found in my text, and we read right now: Genesis 1 and 1. "In the beginning God." I want to preach to you for a few moments today on this subject: The Four Word Formula for Victory and Success. And it was the first four words written in the Bible: "In the beginning God." In other words, what God is saying: put me first. If you want victory in your life, put God first. If you want success in your life, put God first. Matthew 6:33: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." If you want victory and success in your walk with God, put God first. If you want victory and success in your home, put God first. If you want victory and success in your business, put God first. If you want victory and success in 2022, on this first Sunday morning, let's make up our mind. It's not a resolution. It's an apostolic determination. It's an apostolic declaration: I am going to put God first in my life. Somebody shout, "God first."

So God wanted man from the outset to understand the position and the placement he wants in his world and in our lives. He said, "In the beginning God." The very first thing I want to write in my book is the first four words, the most profound words in the entire Bible: "In the beginning God." He wanted us to understand he wants priority. He wants preference. He wants preeminence.

You know, there was a day in the history of church and religiosity that people went to church because there was nothing else to do. They couldn't go anywhere else. The church was right there. They couldn't afford anything else. Church was free. They had programs, they had ministries, they had socials, they had get-togethers. And people went to church because there was nothing to challenge the church. But I tell you this morning, without one referential case, everybody that is here today got up this morning and came to church simply because you wanted to, because it was a priority with you, it was a preeminence with you. And let me meddle just a minute, Pastor, and say: I understand if your leg is broke. I understand if you're hospitalized. I understand if you're quarantined, that you can't get to the house of the Lord. But let's review and revisit a word that I think we need: "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go to the house of the Lord." We need a revival of the privilege and the power and the purpose of being in the house of the Lord. If you're glad you could come to church this morning, clap your hands and shout yes. But you're only here because you wanted to be. There's no barbed wire around this building. No one came to your house with a loaded gun, said, "You're going to church today." Nobody said you had to come. But you know what? The God that we serve does not want forced worship, and he does not want forced obedience. He wants people to rise out of the will
 of their own mind, out of their own spirit, and say, "But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." God does not want to be your last choice. He doesn't want to be your last chance. He doesn't want to be your concluding consolation.

It's amazing to me when national catastrophe hits our, our nation, that some people look at God like the Red Cross. They call him in only in the time of disaster or catastrophe. We went through a lot of previous catastrophes, and we'd put a big sign out in front of our church: "Sanctuary open today for prayer during these casualties and catastrophes." People would line up to come to church and pray during that wonderful, that horrible time, when they wonderfully knew they needed God. It was a time of disaster. But as soon as that was over, you could not find them.

I'd like to know if there's a church, and could there be a handful of people here today, that would rise to their feet and say, "You know what? God's good in the night. God's good in the dark. God's good and disaster. But God's good when the skies are blue. God's good when the bills are paid. God's good when I'm not sick. God's good when I'm not in debt. God's good when I'm blessed. And I'm not going to just praise him when I'm in trouble. I'm going to praise him in the good times and celebrate the grace of God in my life."

Years ago — and I understand the ambiguity of the English language; I'm maybe not the best, but I try to be a wordsmith or craftsman of words, because that's our tools in ministry, we use words — there was a, there was a song that we used to sing a lot, and you know, I really understood the message of the song, but on the other hand I understood the detriment of the song, because the song went like this: "When you've tried everything and everything has failed, try Jesus." Oh, folks, you remember that? "When you've tried everything, everything has failed, try Jesus." One day I was listening that song and I thought, hmm, I guarantee the devil loves that song. That has got to be hell's theme song. He'd love for you to sing that, all young people love for you to sing that song: "When you've tried everything and everything has failed, then, then try Jesus."

I want to preach to you this morning: the greatest thing you can do is get in this church right now, while you are young, while you are pure, while you are uncontaminated, while you are unstained, while you're not dragging a bunch of sinful garbage behind you that wrecks your emotions and disturbs your mind. You need to get in this church right now and say, "I got a word for you: put Jesus first, and you'll save yourself the futility, the frustration, and the failures of a life lived outside of the church."

I mean, it's a good testimony: "I used to, now I don't. I was, and now I'm not." Those are good testimonies. And for a while some of our teenagers felt like the only way you had the hope of getting a microphone or platform is if you had a horrible, horrible sinful past and had some kind of prison record or something very detrimental to your life. The church is here for those people. Clap your hand, say yes. The church is here for those people. But on the other hand, the greatest testimony is not "I used to and now I don't." The greatest testimony is "I never did." By the grace of God, the grace that saves them from it is the grace that will keep you from it, if you'll make up your mind: "I'm going to put Jesus first in my life." Clap your hands and shout yes.

I don't have time, neither would I want, to enumerate or list all the places in the Bible where God said, "I want to be first." He just said it from the very beginning: "If you want victory, if you want success, then put me first." That's as simple as it can be, but that is as true as it can be, if you will just put God first in your life.

So let's look at what the Bible said in Judges one, one through two, quickly. Judges one, one through two: "Now after the death of Joshua came to pass that the children of Israel asked the Lord, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites" — everybody say the key word — "first? Who's going to go up first to fight against them? And the Lord said unto Judah, said, Judah shall go up. Behold, I have delivered the land into his hand." Who shall go up first? Judah shall go up first. And the word Judah means praise. He said, the first thing we're going to do is we're going to send up praise. It's not going to be last. It's not going to be final. It's not going to be afterwards. It's going to be the first thing we do. If you want victory, praise God first. If you want healing, praise God first. If you want the Holy Ghost, praise God first. If you want revival, praise God first. If you want deliverance, praise God first. What God is saying: you need to dance in advance and shout, and then the walls will come down.

I wish would take just a moment, could somebody clap your hands, lift your voice, and give God praise for something you want him to do? Go ahead, praise him right now. Praise him before you ever get it. Praise him forever before you ever feel it. Praise him before he ever does it. Send up praise first. Let the church shall amen.

I was raised in the Pentecostal church. I received the Holy Ghost when I was 13. And I've seen the church transform. And for us that a little older, let me just, let me just settle an issue with the senior citizens that are here: you don't need to bite your fingernails off to the elbow every night or burn ulcers in your stomach worrying about this church. I've been in it since I was 13, and I'm here to preach to you today: the church is greater, the church is more glorious, the church is more wonderful, the church is more influential, the church is more dynamic, the church is more blessed of God right now than it ever has been in the history of the church.

I'll battle just a moment. As pastor, I had a lady come up to me. We moved into our new large building, and uh we had a great increase of people. This lady came up to me one night at church, said, she's just crying: "Oh, Pastor," she said, "I just wish our church was like it used to be. I just, I just don't know. It's just not the way it used to be. I just wish our church was like it used to be." I said, "You know what? I agree with you. It's not like it used to be. It's better. It's greater. It's more powerful."

I'm stepping in maybe where I shouldn't step, but if there's any senior citizens here that's got gray hair or no hair and you're crying over the past, let me help you: this church is more wonderful now than it has ever been. It's not time to grumble. It's not time to complain. It's not time to find fault. It's time to give God glory for what he is doing right now.

So I've seen the church go through areas of growth and advancement. And when I was converted, I was converted into a very small church, and people were doing the best they could with what they had. I don't mean to be judgmental, I'm not been critical of them, but we've learned something, we've advanced. If you don't believe it, just look at this church, man. Most of us are any age on us at all, no. And this ain't normal Pentecost here. I had a friend one time, when you take him to a real expensive place to eat or take him somewhere where it was real costly, in his comic statement he would say, "Now this is more like what I'm used to. This is more like what I'm used to." Come on, we need to be real, folks. It hadn't been
 many years ago you couldn't find a building like this in the whole state of Tennessee. And I'm just trying to help you here today, because some of you are settling down on this and getting a little too comfortable with it. You need to realize how favored you are, how blessed you are. And if anybody owes God praise, it's this church right here, right now. If there's anybody here that owes God exceptional worship, you're here today. We can't praise him like everybody else. He's been better to us than he has everybody else. We can't have church like everybody else. He's been greater to us than he has everybody else. Clap your hands and shall, I know it.

So I've seen the church go through all kind of breakthroughs and dimensions of progression. And I remember when, when I was just a teenager, our pastor would get up, and he, he was doing all he needed to do, you know. He'd say, "We need somebody to, to mow the yard this week. Could we get somebody? Somebody, right? We really could use somebody to drive a church fan. Could we get somebody to raise? We really need somebody to vacuum the carpet," because that wasn't a very big job back then. The whole church didn't have as much carbs in that aisle right there, probably. You know, it wasn't a big job. And he asked everybody, "Could you do this? Can you do that?" Volunteers. And this is what I want to preach about this morning. He would then say this. He would say, "Well, if you can't do anything else" — now this is a trap. I'm a nice guy, I don't like trap. Don't say amen. I'm beating you up, okay? I'm, I'm measuring you right now. So I'm, I'm, I'm trying to help you here. So he'll say, "If you can't do anything else, pray."

He meant well, but he had prayer as the last thing, when Paul said in First Timothy 2 and 1: "I exhort therefore first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions." I'm here to preach to you this morning that prayer is not the last thing. Prayer is the first thing. It's the first thing. It's not the last thing. The greatest heroes of this church are the prayer warriors. They never get the mic. They never get the platform. But the reason God is in this place this morning, it's not just because we got a set of drums or keyboards, and y'all master those things beautifully. Such talent, it only makes sense for it to be in Tennessee and not far from Nashville. But I'm here to preach to you: the thing that brings God in this house, it's people that pray. It's prayer warriors. First of all. Everybody say, "Prayer." First of all, prayer.

My grandson, a couple years ago, he's about eight years old. And we have taught our kids, my wife and I have taught our kids, to pray over the meal, pray over the food. And we added to it the biblical aspect of prayer for food. Paul said unto Timothy that when you pray you sanctify the food. It's not just saying, "Thank you, Lord, for the food," but your prayer sanctifies. So when you're out in a restaurant tonight, I think you should ever change after this message this morning: don't ever eat anything from anywhere without saying, "I sanctified in the name of Jesus," because you don't know what's going on back there in the kitchen. And don't ever send food back without praying over it twice, because you don't want to make them mad back there.

So we taught our kids this prayer, and they all learned it from their infancy: "Lord, we thank you for this food. We ask you to bless it and sanctify it to our bodies, in Jesus' name." So Gent, he's a, he's eight, he's got his own little way of doing stuff. So he's praying, and he said, "Lord, we thank you for this food. I ask you to blessify it." You know, let's cut through the chase here. So you put sanctify and bless together: "Listen, Lord, I ask you to blessify it."

So we, we had done that quite a bit. We wanted to get it on, uh, video, you know. Kids do things like that, and then they suddenly quit, and you can't pay them to do it. So we were eating out, we, and we got phone ready, on video ready. We said, "Gent, you asked the blessing." He saw that phone. He said, um, "Oh, come on, Gent, ask the blessed, please. I want to get a video." And this is what he said: "I've been praying way too much lately." He said, he said, "I've been praying way too much lately." He's the first person I ever met that would say, "I've been praying way too much lately." I've been praying way too much lately.

I want to challenge this great church, where there's prayer warriors and people who know how to call on the name of God. And you know what? When the pastor said anybody can pray, he's never been to my church to say anybody can pray. I'm sorry you missed it there. Next prayer meeting you have, do what the Bible said: watch and pray, and you'll find out not just anybody can pray. They're checking their emails. They're, they're doing all kind of stuff. They're walking around the church with babies, you know. "Oh God," they hadn't touched a baby in a month, but all of a sudden they got to take care of this baby. The worst one I've ever seen happen in our church in Raleigh is a Saturday night. North Carolina State University is not far from our sanctuary. State University is having a football game that night. And I don't know how in the world this took place, but one of, one of our men was walking right, walking by, like Pastor Kevin's down there praying just about head like you pray in their past. And he comes by, and he's praying, "Oh, hallelujah. Hallelujah, State just got to feel go, hallelujah, hallelujah." I'm wondering, how in the world did you know Satan, State just got to feel good? I said, I know the Holy Ghost didn't tell you that. I mean, there's craziness that goes on during a prayer meeting, and people say they're praying.

One lady told me, "So I pray, Pastor. I pray, I pray." She said, "I pray driving to work every morning." I said, "Which way do you go to work? I don't want to go that way, if you're praying you're dangerous." Because when you're praying you leave this world. When you're praying you're not cognizant of what's going on around you. When you're praying you're in the throne room of heaven. When you're praying you're shut in that spiritual closet with him, where nothing down here is touching you, nothing down here is bothering you. And I want to preach to some of you have emotional problems, you have neurotic problems, you have nerve problems, you have agitation problems, you have frustration problems. You spend one hour in your knees before God, crying and praying and calling on his name, you'd get a deliverance like you've never known in your life. There's nothing more powerful than prayer.

The Bible tells a story in Mark chapter 4 and verse 38. It says there was a storm, and Jesus was on board the ship. Mark 4:38. And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow. And they'll wake him and say to him, "Master, cares thou not that we perish?" My question to you this morning is: how can Jesus be on board and we still hit storms? No, I thought if Jesus was with us, man, it's clear sailing. How do we hit storms with Jesus on board? Well, I think if we unravel this verse, we're going to find out why and how spiritually you could have Jesus on board and still hit a storm.

First of all, the Bible said it's where he was. He was in the hinder part of the boat, way, way back. And I told you I like words, I enjoy words. The word hinder and hinder is the same word. And when you put him in the hinder, you hinder him. When you put him in the hinder part of your life, you got everything else in the world in front of him. You got everything else in the world
 between you and him. He was in the hinder part. What we've got to do is move him on up to the front. We got to get him to the front. We got to get him to the first place in our lives.

The second thing is what he was doing: he was sleeping. It's not enough to have him in your life if he's inactive. He's got to be active in us.

Now this illustration is going to date me, but it's the best I can do. Years ago I used to drink a lot of iced tea with sugar in it. Since my wife's here, can I tell him my personal corny joke that I made up? Will you indulge me just a second? I'm not gonna preach too much longer. You know, what do you know: why Jesus whispers sweet and low? Do you know why Jesus whispers sweet low? Because he has no Equal.

If my wife was here she'd say, "Preach, preach." Back in the day when I used to drink iced tea with sugar in it, I was eating with some preachers at a place and restaurant, and I, I took a big drink of that tea. Is awful when it's not sweet. If you can drink iced tea anyway without any kind of sweetener, you're a better man than I am. Tea's a misnomer: you heat it to get it hot, you put ice in it to get it cold, you put sugar to get a sweet, and lemon to make it sour. I don't know, it's a complicated order. And so I took a drink of that tea, and I said — how about we believe in baptism — but I about sprinkled all them with the exiting of that tea. It was so gross. And so I said, "I know I put sugar in this glass." And then I looked at the tea glass, and there was about that much sugar in the bottom of that glass. It was then I got this phenomenal revelation: it's not the sugar that sweetens the tea, it's the stirring. It's not that 50-year-old Holy Ghost certificate you've got on your wall at home that will give you joy and peace and power and victory. That's why Paul said, "Stir up the gift that is in you." We must stir up the Holy Ghost.

If you've got the Holy Ghost in you, I want you to rise your feet right now, lift your hands, and say, "God, as I get ready to go to 2022, I want the Holy Ghost activated in my life. I want some sizes in my life." I pause just a minute. Reach over, lay your hand on somebody beside you, and say, "God, stir up the Holy Ghost within us. Stir up the Holy Ghost that's in us this morning." Hallelujah. Beautiful. You may be seated.

I'll preach this another moment, so we can go into a storm even if Jesus on board, if we don't appropriately put him in the right place, keep him active in our lives. And the third one is: when they awoke him, they only awoke him when they were in trouble. As long as the skies were blue and the water was still, they let him sleep. I just want to remind you Pentecostals again, I said it a while ago, but we really need him alive and working in our lives even when everything's going great.

I, I pastored for years, and I know I've seen people run to the altar about passed out. When they come running to the altar, and the first thing I thought is, "What's wrong? What is wrong?" Every pastor knows that the rest of the church about passed out, and they come tearing down here crying and screaming, getting hold. Either that, or one of their relatives comes to the altar. Man, it's really getting quiet now. Usually when somebody comes to the altar, if it's not a relative, very close friend, or you didn't invite them, you're a little slow to get down here. But when it's somebody in your family, you're down here like you're just giving it all you've got, your, and you're saying, "What's wrong with you? Come here and help me pray this God through the Holy Ghost."

But I want to be in a church, and I want to live a way, that when I run the isles and I dance in the Spirit, when you see me shouting, when you see me fired up — "What's your name? Elias. Elias, come here, man. You're gonna help me here." One moment in the huddle, and we're not talking about you. There's a lady said she'd never go back to a football game. She said, "Because I know when they got out in the middle and they got in that circle, they were talking about me." So Elias and I are not talking about you; don't worry about it. I want you to come just — and he's a quick learner. One, two, three. Not too fast. That's good. "What are you running about?" "God is good." That's enough to make us run. That's enough to make a shout. That's enough to make us dance. We don't have to be healed of cancer to dance. We don't have to be delivered from drugs to dance. We don't have to be free from alcohol to dance. It's just enough that God is good. Clap your hands and give me praise right now.

I've often wanted to see this. You know, when they come running to the altar just screaming, "Oh God, oh God, Jesus, oh God, oh God, oh God," I want to run down there and say, "What's wrong? What's wrong?" And I just wanted them to say, "I need God. Ain't nothing wrong. Everything's great. I just, I just — I don't know about you, but I need God." You know what I've found? If you will serve God like you're in a storm, you won't ever have as many storms. If you'll worship like you're in a storm, if you'll pray like you're in a storm, if you'll love like you're in a storm, you'll find out you won't have nearly as many storms. Clap your hands and bless him right now.

One final verse of Scripture: John five and four. "For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, trouble the water. Here it is: whosoever then first, whosoever then first, after the troubling of the water stepped in, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had." That verse gives me this simple little statement: God rewards first responders. God rewards first responders. The first one that says, "I'm coming to the altar" — there she is. The first one that says, "I'm not going to be the last one today. I'm not going to be the last one to say I need him. I'm not going to be the last one to say I've got to have God in my life." Step on up here, Sister. I'll pray for you. "I'm not going to be the last one to say amen. I'm not going to be the last one to worship God." I'm looking for some first responders here in 2022. Let's make up our minds: we're going to be first responders.

Throw your hands up and praise him right now. You can receive the Holy Ghost right now. You can be refilled with the Holy Ghost right now. Be a first responder. Come quickly, come quickly. It was the first ones in that got healed. Let's praise the church. Let's praise him. Put God first. Put God first. Put God first. Make up your mind in 2022: "I'm going to put God first in my life." That's it. Give it praise. Praise him in advance. "Pray for me. I want to put God first in my life. I want to put God first in my life." They stumbled. Throw your hands up and receive the Holy Ghost. Throw your hands up and be healed. Throw your hands up and be filled up. He's here for you, right of the now. Oh, if you'll seek him first, all these other things will be added. The other things will be added, if you'll just seek God first. Seek God first.