By KEVIN EWING kevinewing@coralwave.com MANY folks are under the grand illusion that a winner is one who wins or achieves something first in order to be labelled or even considered a winner. Well, according to secular standards this is quite true. However, with God, the opposite is true. In fact, God encourages us to think of ourselves as winners even before we enter the contest for winning anything. "Call those things that be not as though they are"; "All things are possible to him that believes"; "According to your faith be it unto you" are a few scriptures passages for us to learn from. We must ask the question: Why is God so confident in us, and why do we find it so difficult to be confident in ourselves? The understanding of this mystery is quite simple. We have bought into the secular ideology that winning is the physical achievement or attainment of a desired goal. New Flash: Being a follower of Jesus Christ qualifies you as a winner already, regardless of your present position or the physical evidence that would suggest otherwise. As a matter of fact, your present position or feeling of defeat and despair is not of God. Instead it is a well-crafted plan, specifically engineered by Satan and his forces for you to focus strictly on your feelings. In so doing, your feelings will offer you the option to give up and throw in the towel, but the Devil is a liar. God did not say depending on your feelings you are a winner, instead he says you are presently a winner, even in your seemingly defeated state, because winning begins with what God has said and you believing what he has said. Begin breaking that feeling right now by saying, I believe what God says about me. I am convinced that I am a winner even now and for the areas of my mind that have a tough time believing that. Lord I humbly ask you to help my unbelief in this area, in Jesus' name. A true and genuine winner is one who searches the scriptures in an attempt to discover what God says about whatever it is that he wants to win. He in turn now begins to convince himself that the word of God is his final and ultimate authority and begins to meditate on that word day and night. In doing this, scripture does not say he becomes a tree. Instead it clearly says he becomes like a tree. Meaning, he begins to grow with a solid understanding and foundation in his mind of what the word says about him being a winner and not what it is that he wants to win. This is key. Scripture then goes on to say that it is only when this process is done that whatever he puts his hand to shall prosper. In other words, he must now win physically. Psalms 1:2-3. The bottom line is, winning with God has two stages for the believer. The believer must initially place in his mind whatever the word of God says about whatever it is that he wants to win. Then he must meditate on that word and not what he wants to win. It is only then that he must put action to what he desires to win, with the sole belief that he will win not due to his strength or intellect but by his confidence in the power of the living word of God. So, to answer the question that I asked earlier, what makes me a winner? Well, my complete confidence in the word of God is what makes me a winner. Heavenly Father, I thank you for giving the readers of this article the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of you. I thank you that the eyes of their understanding have been enlightened. So that they may now know the hope or expectation of your calling, as you have assigned them according to your purpose. I pray that they will proceed from this day forward with confidence, boldness and might to do the impossible, because their idea of winning has been converted from just an act to being completely saturated in the belief of your word that says they have been created to win. In Jesus' name, amen.