Psalm 119: Part 3 - The Power of God's Word

Hi Victorious Living family, I am Christi Overton Johnson, your host of More Victorious Living. I am excited to be with you today. I'm here in my office and I have some fun things that I wanted to share with you and I don't know if you know how much you mean to me and to our team. How much your letters mean to us. We get just the most beautiful artwork that is sent to us, cards that are created for us and just thanking us for what we do. And I am just so grateful for that. I wanted to share this one right here from Jason. Jason, I have this put up in my office. There's some tape here. I tape it so that when I walk in every day, I can read this. It says, Christi, we all love you. I love y'all too. You're changing lives everywhere, no matter how hard it gets, don't give up. This was your calling. God bless you. Stay prayed up. Please put some videos on Edovo. Thank you, Jason from North Carolina. Jason, I taped this up. You can see I have this highlighted right here. It says, no matter how hard it gets, don't give up. This was your calling. And I can't tell you what these drawings, these cards, the poems that you send, how much they mean to us. And I just want to thank you. I wanted to share this morning, this is something that we don't often do on our broadcast. And I do believe it's important for us to start doing is sharing some of your artwork,

some of your, we share it in our magazine sometimes, but there's a lot of people watching and I want what you send us to encourage others as well. And so there was a poem that was sent to us. I believe his name is Roger in Virginia. And Roger wrote a beautiful poem called One of Us. And it says, the mind wanders and the heart hurts without the love of our father, Jesus Christ, in our life. Without our Lord and Savior, our father for life, Jesus Christ, we have no guidance. We have no light. Through praise, with love and faith, we receive everything we need, all that we can dream, all that we can imagine, even one of the greatest gift of all, salvation. Our father God prepared a way for us, gave his only son for us, that cornerstone that's just who even became one of us. He is that one who beat death, who slayed sin, showing us what it means to be reborn, forgiven and loved again. Praise him. Thank you so much, Roger, for this beautiful poem. Our correspondence team has read it. We just love these letters, so thank you, thank you, thank you. I wish I had time to share all of them. These are some of my favorite pictures up here from our events. I've got a drawing up there that Alberto Henriquez drew for me. He was at Marion Correctional. Now Alberto is in an ICE facility in Miami, so please be praying for him. But yeah, that is a hand drawing of me from something he saw in the magazine that he did with colored pencils. And I tell you, I look better in that painting than I've ever looked in real life. So it is just exciting. I've got cards that, I think that one was sent by Calvin McLeod, and he's been released now living a great life, got a great business, has mastered the reentry with God's help,

and I'm so proud of him. These were some of my favorite pictures. That was from South Carolina. This was in Florida, and there was a gentleman there in a wheelchair that I had the opportunity to pray with. And this was a lady from Texas, one of the, I don't know if it was Gatesville, Texas, but that we had the opportunity. I partnered with Gene Strom, and just grateful, grateful for our partners, grateful for the opportunity to go behind bars and meet you, to hear from you in the letters, and to be able to publish this magazine that God had you in mind when he put this on my heart. I had no idea who the audience was going to be, and it was you. God created this magazine. for you. And we take this as an assignment from God to do it with excellence. I know one of my sons has often asked me, he's like, Mom, why do you spend so much time on that? Like you have all this AI now, this artificial intelligence, you could just tell it to write a story or whatever. And I'm like, oh no, we are going to do this with the with the help of the Holy Spirit. And it is his help that crafts this. It is his words to you. It is the power of testimonies. And I hope you enjoy this magazine. Please pray for us as we are getting so many requests and actually just got off a phone call where we are getting access to more and more federal facilities. But the reality is that's another, if we were to hit all of them, $60,000 a year because we give this magazine away. And I just believe it's what God's called me to do. And so we're going to continue to move forward with that. We're grateful for the digital platforms that we have. But yeah, so just pray for us and we will continue to pray for you. Today I wanted to continue to dive in to Psalms 119. So we've had two sessions already. We've learned that Psalms 119 is, I believe, the longest passage, longest chapter in the Bible. It has 176 verses. I'm not sure who the author is. I did do some research on it. It says that some say it was David, but others say it was Ezra, some say it was Daniel, and some say it was Jeremiah.

We've learned already that there's 22 sections in this chapter, Psalms 119, and each section is in, they call it an acrostic poem. And each section, there's eight verses, each one starts with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And there's 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. So there's some little poetic design to it, and I love it because we can break it up into sections and we can tackle each one. You'll notice as you read Psalms 119 that it all centers around the Word of God. And y'all, I can see my reflection of my little camera there, so I'm gonna take those off. But it's all about the power of God's Word, the importance of God's Word in our life. It teaches us what it will do in our life, like the power that is in it. It is alive and it is active. And before I dive into Psalms 119, I do want to share that verse. It is from 2 Timothy 3, 14 through 17. 2 Timothy is in the New Testament, and sometimes it is hard for me to find. You know how I remember it? It's with all the T's. You got 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and then after that you got Titus. So all these T's are together. If that helps you, it helps me by association. So I said 2 Timothy 3, 14 through 17. And this is the Word, the power of the Word. It says that you have been taught the Holy Scriptures from childhood. So this is Paul writing a letter to Timothy, and he says, and the Word of God has given you wisdom to receive salvation. So the Word of God teaches us how to be saved for all of eternity. And John 3, 16 is a great verse to read if you want the salvation message in a nutshell. It is for God so loved you, the world, that He gave His Son Jesus for you. Jesus came. That was God in the flesh. He lived among us. He understands everything that you're going through. And He went and died on a cross and took upon Himself all of our sins so that we could be saved. But God doesn't want us to just be saved one day. He wants us to be saved now. And the word saved, sozo, means being whole. Jesus died on the cross so that you could be whole. You could have a sound mind, a sound body. You would have a purpose-filled life right here. And then you will also have eternal life. But you have a relationship with God here on earth where He partners with you. And you partner with Him. And together you go through this

life. And you learn from Him. You hear from Him. He guides and He directs you. He helps you go through difficult times. And He takes those difficult times. And He does amazing things with them. Yesterday I was in jail. And I was ministering to the guys at the Pitt County Detention Center. And we were talking about God's salvation, how it extends to all of us. And if you read the Bible, you will see. I got this question the other day. It was, do you really think that God could forgive someone who's murdered somebody? And I said, well, you know, if you read the Bible, you'll see. God used Moses to write the first five books of the Bible to lead God's people into the promised land. What did Moses do? I got things. My watch is speaking to me right now. What did Moses do? Moses, he took it upon himself to kill an Egyptian. And then he buried him in the sand. And God used Moses, someone who had murdered someone on purpose. He forgave Moses. He used Moses. He also used David, King David, who on purpose killed, let's see, Uriah, which was the husband of Bathsheba. Remember, Bathsheba was taking a bath up on a rooftop. And King David saw her. He lusted after her. He went and had her brought to his palace, and he laid with her. And then when she conceived, he went and had her husband killed in the battlefield after some other things happened so that he wouldn't get caught. And God used him. He said, he's a man after my own heart.

How can that be? It's because when the people messed up, like Paul. Paul wrote this chapter to Timothy, Paul wrote this letter. Paul was used mightily by God. A majority of the New Testament was written by Paul. Paul murdered Christians. So if you read the Word of God, you will see God's character, God's love, the truth of who God is, and the truth of who you are. And so he talks about, Paul says, it's important for salvation. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful. It's useful to teach you. It's useful to teach you what is true and to make you realize what's wrong in your life. Why does God want you to see what's wrong in your life? Not to condemn you, to set you free. To get to the word correction, when it says here that the Bible, the Word of God corrects us when we are wrong. It's actually a term that means it uprights your ship. It's a nautical term. It gets you on course. God wants to upright the ship of your life and get you on the right course. Why?

So that you don't have to live in the painful cycles that you're living in. That's what the Word of God is. A lot of times people say Bible, B-I-B-L-E. It's basic instructions before leaving earth. It's the foundation that you can build your life upon so that you will be, it says here, In 2 Timothy 3 verse 17, God will use the Word of God to prepare you and to equip his people to do every good work. And so we see in the New Testament and in the Old Testament the importance of the Word of God. So let's go back to Psalms 119. Here we have the writer of Psalms 119 that we know that this scripture is inspired by God. This wants to teach us something. It wants to equip us. So let's see. This is a person crying out to God. And he says, Be good to your servant that I may live and obey your word. I believe in this scripture here that the writer is saying, Would you come alongside me and help me live? I need your goodness in my life. I need your help. Apart from you, I got no chance of living in this crazy world. He says, So be good to your servant that I may live

and that I may obey your word. He's saying, I need your help to obey this word that you've given me to carry out your will for my life. And that is something that I have to pray a lot and say, God help me, strengthen me, help me to be able to walk in the calling that you've put in my life and help me to be able to do it according to your way. Because sometimes it's scary and sometimes it's overwhelming. He says, Open my eyes. This is Psalms 119 verse 18 and I'm reading from the New Living Translation. The writer says, Open my eyes to see the wonderful truth in your instruction. Again, he's recognizing the need for God's Holy Spirit to intervene in his interaction. He's like, I need you to open my eyes. I need you to soften my heart. I need you to help me understand the Word. Have you ever looked at the Word of God and thought, I don't know how to read it? It can be something that's very overwhelming. And before I had the help of the Holy Spirit, when I was just trying to flip it open and was trying to read it in my own intellect, it did not make a lot of sense to me. But now that I have the help of the Holy Spirit, where I say, God, open up my eyes, open up

my heart, help me to understand the truth that you have for me. It's like an adventure every time I go to the Word of God. And it can be like that for you too. But the writer realized, I need you to open up my spiritual eyes. I need you to give me understanding so that I can understand how to apply this. And I need your help, God, to carry it out. Then he says, I'm only a foreigner in the land. Don't hide your commands from me. He's saying, I'm only living here temporarily. And that is how we need to look at our life. And aren't you glad? Aren't you glad that where you are right now and many of our audience, most of our audience that are watching our videos are incarcerated? Aren't you glad that that prison cell and that jail cell and that bunk and that bunky cell mate, that is not your home. That is not your forever place. And I've never been in your situation. You guys know my story, incarceration never hit my family. I have a first cousin who had a loved one, I think her daughter, so a cousin removed that entered into, that had incarceration, some distant relatives that had addiction. But it had not hit our family. So I don't for a minute understand what you go through. When I go to prisons, and I get to go every week to jail, I get to go into prisons all throughout the year across the country, I'm looking forward to going internationally with some partners, I go in and I come out. So I go back to my bed. So I don't even begin to understand what you are experiencing on a daily basis. But I do know this on the outside, I thank God every day, Lord, this ain't my home. Even though I've got a beautiful home, I'm thankful that this body that hurts, honestly, it hurts from head to toe, my head hurts most every day.

My hips have been reconstructed, my whole pelvis, but they hurt, my back, my neck, Lord, I'm so glad that this earthly tent here, this skin suit, earthly suit is not my eternal home. I'm so thankful that I have a body waiting for me in heaven, and we will have heavenly bodies that will not decay, will not rust. How do I know? Well, I'm not rusting here, but I am, I'm getting a little creaky, getting a little wrinkly. I'm using a lot of creams this day, and going and getting some facials and stuff, trying to maintain something that is so fleeting, y'all, it is so fleeting. Beauty on this earth, and trying to maintain the health, it's an everyday challenge. And you guys, I can't even imagine looking around if you've got a life sentence, or even years to go, and I want you to take heart today to realize that this is not your home. And the writer here thousands of years ago was saying, I am a foreigner in this land, don't hide your commands from me, tell me what I need to know. This is him begging God for help, teach me, give me eyes to see, I'm just living here, I'm yours God, I am not this world, I am not this earth, I am not the society around me, I don't belong here, I belong to you, and I need your help. As I sojourn here, as I walk this earth in this earth suit, but I am really, my residence is in home. And so, he recognizes the need here for God's intervention in his life, for his help. Then he says, I am always overwhelmed with a desire for your regulations. He's declaring here that the most important thing in my life is you God, and what you have to say. And I want to tell you, friend, when you come to a place like that in your life, that's when everything changes. When the word of God is worth more to you than chicken or... Freedom, or food, or whatever it is, position, that was for me. That the word of God was more important to me than fame, and being recognized for my work and my performance

as an athlete. When this became the heartbeat of my life, everything changes. And when I'm around people, when I'm around friends, where I really thrive and where I get fueled up is when I'm around another sister or brother in Christ. That's why I love to go behind bars, because I get to beat brothers like these guys right here. When I got to go to South Carolina, that was back in 2020, in the early of 2020, right before the COVID shut down. And that builds me up, because I get to hear your testimonies through letters, through your visits, and different things of our visits, and see your faith. And it's so strong. And so many of you are overwhelmed with the regulations, your desire for God's word. And that is what is giving you life and an abundant life right where you are. So then he says, you rebuke the arrogant. The writer here is now acknowledging, God, you draw close to the humble, but you are against the proud and the mighty in their own eyes. And the Bible is very clear that one thing God detests are lying lips and a proud, haughty heart, one that thinks that you're all that. And so there were people that thought they were all that coming against the writer here.

There were princes, people in high positions we're going to read, that were coming against this person. And he's saying, but Lord, I know that those people who think they're something, you rebuke the arrogant. There's some verses in Proverbs 16, 18. That is a great verse. It says, pride goes before a fall. It says in 1 Peter 5, 5, and James 4, 6. So those are some other verses you can look up on your free time. So Proverbs 16, 18, 1 Peter 5, 5, and James 4, 6, God resists the proud. But God lifts up the humble in heart. Blessed are those who are meek and humble and recognize their need for God. And so he's saying those who wander from your commands, they're cursed. If you read in Deuteronomy 28, I believe it is. Let me double check that. That's where you see the blessings and the cursings that can come by following God's commands. We do know now y'all as, yes, Deuteronomy 28, curses and blessings for obedience and disobedience. We know now that Jesus Christ took the curse that we were under, but that still doesn't give us a license to just go live our lives contrary to this world. I mean, excuse me, to this word, because if we do that, it's not that God is necessarily cursing us,

because we know Jesus took the curse. He became the curse for us. And because of what Jesus has done, not our obedience, but because of what Jesus has done, we now have eternal security in his good works. But we still need to walk in the word of God because that's where we walk in alignment to God's will and God's way. That's when we are remaining close to him and we're in communion with him. It's where we can hear from him. And so we are, in essence, cursed when we walk off on our own and we do our own thing and we decide we're gonna go have the affair. We're gonna lie. We're gonna covet. We're gonna go murder someone. We do reap consequences that wreak havoc on our life. And so that's why even here it says, those who wander from your commands are cursed. You're not gonna live the abundant life that Christ has for you and for me apart from God's word. He's talking now in verse 22 of Psalms 119. He says to God, don't let those prideful people scorn. That means to shame me and to insult me for I have obeyed your law. He's asking God to stand and be his defense. Even princes sit and speak against me. He had people in high places taking note of him and saying bad things about him, shameful things about him,

rebuking him, coming against him. He says, but no matter what they're doing, I am gonna meditate. I'm gonna focus on your word. Why would he do that? Because he knows in Isaiah, it says that a man or a woman whose mind is steadfast God and His Word, God will keep in perfect peace. If your focus stays here and not on all the battles out there, and you trust God to fight your battle, then that's where you're going to have the victory. He says, I'm not going to get in that war over there. And that's wisdom for us because the Bible is very clear that our war is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and rulers in high places, in spiritual realms, is what He's saying. So your war is not against the guard. It's not against the system. It's not against your cellmate. It's not against your significant other or a gang leader, another gang. Your war is not against flesh and blood. It's against rulers in dark places who have come, it says in John 10 10, to kill, steal, and destroy you. That's your battle. That's why you can't fight a supernatural battle with natural tools. You can't go out with your gun and shoot up people and think you're going to win the war when the war is in the spiritual world. The war is in here, and this is when you renew your mind with the Word of God. Romans 12 2 says that you don't conform to the ways of the world and fighting like the war of the world, the ways of the world, but you renew your mind with this, then you're going to know what to do. You're going to have God's protection. You're going to have God's provision, and if you go for God and you go for His Word, and listen, you cannot know God apart from His Word. A lot of people say, I love Jesus, but they don't

know the Word. Jesus was the Word. It says the Word in John, it says the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, that the Word has always been. He is the living Word, so if you want to love God and know God, you really, it says if you love me, the Bible says you will obey my commands, and the commands, you have to know them. You're learning them now with me, but I only know this because I've learned it from others, but I've gone in here and studied the Word for myself hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours, and I can't do that for you. This is a start, but now it's like you taking this and this like being a little morsel that makes you want more. God says, taste and see that I'm good, and that's, I'm bringing these tastes to you of God that says He's so good. He's so good, but you've got to draw close to Him yourself. I can't do it for you. I can't read and teach so much. I can't be on 24-7. I have to go and meet people and go into jails and talk with people. I gotta go home to my husband. Y'all, I want y'all to see my husband. Hang on a second. Let me introduce my husband to you. It's funny. My husband's name is Tim Johnson, and I'm, sorry, I'm segwaying here. This is Tim Johnson, who was our cover, and he's a friend. He is Pastor Tim Johnson out of Orlando, does a lot of work in Rikers, but Tim is not my husband. This is my husband. This is Tim Johnson. So Tim Johnson and Tim Johnson, and so I want to introduce, there was some confusion last time I was in Arizona there at Central. A lot of guys go, oh, we enjoyed reading about your husband. That is my brother in Christ, and we're brothers and sisters. Got the same daddy, but different mamas, and but this is my husband Tim, and y'all, this is my mentor who's now in heaven rooting me on.

This is Jack Murphy, Murph the Surf, and Murph, and I'm me, Murph here was my mentor. He taught me everything I know to do with prison ministry, and he, I got to ride with him. I got to go into prisons with him. I'm so thankful for that man, so I have a little tribute to him over here. I can show y'all a couple of things before I get back in the Word. This is, y'all are in my office. I moved that chair out of the way, so it's a little out of place, but these are paintings that Jack Murphy did while he was at Rayford Prison, and I mean he did a whole White House series, and this was a man, if you don't know about him, this is a man that, he was a mover and a shaker on the outside. He was a champion surfer, so he wrote this to me. It says, to hit it, Christy, because that's what I always said as a water skier, from Hangton Murph. Blessings in Jesus, Murph the Surf, and, but yeah, but Murph was a man that had pulled off the largest jewel heist in American history. And God, let me get away from that chair there, God got a hold of his heart while he was at Rayford Prison and saved his soul. And then Jack got in here. And Jack was a changed man because he renewed his mind with the truth. And that man was supposed to have gotten out in 2244 for the murder charges that he had, for the jewel heist, all the different things. And I want to tell y'all today, there's some of you that have that kind of sentence. If God wants you out, you will get out. There is no door or gate that God cannot open for you. Trust his timing.

Here's what I know. I don't understand why someone like Jack Murphy would get out, but God knew that this man was going to go forth and he was going to impact. He impacted so many people, but he may have for you an impact right there where you are, reaching young people who are coming in off the streets, who have never had a father figure or a mother figure. They're coming off the streets. They're dying on the streets. They're getting ready to get lost in a system. And you're there to be the hands and feet of Jesus. And the same word that will help you in your ministry is the same word that is helping me in my ministry is an anointing that'll come on you wherever you are. And so I want to encourage you with that today. I want to encourage you to dive in God's word and to just hold the future things and the people that are coming against you and all the what ifs and this may happen and when am I getting out? I want you just to put all that in God's hands and you commit your life to him and getting in his word, surrounding yourselves with brothers and sisters that are true believers, not just in name only, not just going to the chapel because it's a place to meet up.

Y'all, I know what happens in the chapel sometimes, but there's also some really strong people of faith that they're serious about this. You will know them by their fruit. That's what the word of God says. And how do I know that? Because I read it and y'all could read it too. So listen, I'm going to close with this. It says that princes sit and speak against me, but I'm going to meditate on your word. Your laws please me. They give me wise advice. Listen, all the wisdom you need is in here. All the peace that you need to find will be found through this. The word of God and the spirit of God will, when you just meditate on him and pray, Philippians 4, six through eight says, the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. So let me pray for you today. And before I do, I want to show you this one thing that I have almost knocked over. Y'all, these are Legos, Lego roses. And these Lego roses were put together by my team, by God's team. These are little Legos. This was an exercise that someone did with our team to show us the importance of teamwork and listening to instructions.

So we had instructions and only one person could read the instruction. And then they had to give the command to the rest of us of how to put this together. And you talk about some fights, you talk about some grumpiness, the anxiety, because we couldn't read the instructions for ourself. I didn't know how God was gonna use this. I knew I was supposed to be talking about these for a second. But when you had the instruction manual, the person that had it had this intimate knowledge of how to move forward, to how to put these things together. And when they were just sitting there and I'm trying to listen to someone tell me about it, it wasn't resonating in my heart. But when I got the instructions for myself and I could read, okay, this piece goes to that piece. I got to gather these pieces. Now I got to put these things together. It made these beautiful roses. And I just want to encourage you that maybe you've just been hearing. Now, faith comes by hearing and the hearing of the word of God, that faith is built by hearing the word of God. But it also, your hearing is with your spiritual eyes. You've got, I keep looking at the wrong place, sorry. You've got to get in God's words for yourself.

And it won't be such a big struggle. You're right now, if you're trying to just gather the directions from other places and you're not reading it for yourself, the Holy Spirit wants to speak to you and tell you the next piece to put together in your life. What to discard? What doesn't fit? And when you do, I just broke something. I'm going to have to look where that went. If I had knocked this on the floor a while ago, which I almost did, I would have cried because that was a labor of love. And every time I touch it, something's falling off. But use that as an example today to know how the Word of God, it can take away that anxiety that you feel when you're trying to put something together and you don't have the instructions. That's what the writer of Psalms 119 is telling us. This will guide, it will be your refuge, it will be your peace, it will tell you which way to go, and it will free you for wherever the Spirit of God is, there's freedom. And when you know the truth, the truth will set you free. So Father, I thank you for this day. I thank you for my brother and my sister in Christ, wherever they are, Lord, whatever facility they're in, whatever their name, you know their name. You know their name. You know their situation. You know their sentence that has been given to them by man. But you are above all names. You're above the name of cancer. You're above the name of a bad health sentence or a bad judgment by the court system. Father, you're the name above all names. And I also know, Lord, that today you have a word for that man or that woman that's watching on their bunk or out in the yard somewhere. They've got their headsets on

and you want them to know that you see them, that you love them, that you know them, that there is no weapon formed against them that can prosper. When they get in the word, God, and they renew their mind with this, there is nothing, nothing that you can't do in their life. And in the meantime, Lord, while they're waiting for those promises, I've got promises to God that I'm waiting to see come to fruition in my life and in my family's life. Lord, in the meantime, may we just keep meditating on your word, be transformed by the renewing of our mind, staying in perfect peace, being guarded by your word so that we know the next step to take. And we're going to trust you, God, that you're working out all the things in our family, in our lives, in our court cases, in our health, in the mighty, mighty name of Jesus. I thank you, Lord, for my brother and my sister today. Thank you for those that have written to us, who have drawn beautiful pictures, sent us poems, that come to our events. In Jesus' name, amen. I do want to say one shout out to someone. Hello, Mark. Hello, all the guys at Marion. I just want to say hello to you. Coleman, different ones. I miss you guys. Look forward to being in Craven Community, not Craven Community College, Craven Correctional, April 11th, I think at one o'clock. So if you're all watching this, please, yeah, April 11th is a Friday, 2025. I'm not sure when you're watching this. 2025, we will be there. I will be there. Look forward to seeing you. God bless you. Bye-bye. Thank you for watching our broadcast. Are you an incarcerated brother or sister who needs encouragement? Write to us at Victorious Living Correspondents, PO Box 2751 Greenville, North Carolina, 27836,

or email us at hope at vlmag.org. To view Victorious Living magazine in its entirety, please have your chaplain contact us at 352-478-2098, or email us through our website at vlmag.org. We are happy to provide our Victorious Living magazine free of charge, in bulk, with or without staples.