Winning life's battles

It can seem as if life is one battle after another. We face battles over our money, our relationships and our time. We are challenged in areas like our honesty and integrity, self-image, loneliness and fear.

We face battles that are:
Personal (I don’t like the way I look)
Emotional (I’ll do anything to be accepted)
Mental (I need to be the best)
Spiritual (Who am I going to follow)

Is it any wonder that there are times when we feel like giving up and letting the enemy win the fight. The question isn’t: How do I avoid the battles. It’s more like: How do I survive the battle or even how do I win the battle.

The bible is full of stories of people who faced battles. Sometimes they fell, sometimes they overcame. People like Job who overcame loss, or Jonah who overcame fear. David who overcame persecution, Daniel who overcame exile. Peter who overcame failure and Paul who overcame prejudice.

How did they do it? Was it their personalities or strength of character?

Undoubtedly these things had some part to play, but there is more to their stories than simply a matter of personal perseverance.

Winning the Battles

Before we talk about winning strategies for life’s many battles, we must first understand the nature of the battle. In many respects we could summarise the battle we face as a battle for our hearts, our minds, our strength and our souls. In other words, the very things with which we are to love God (heart, soul, strength and mind) are the very areas in which we come under attack.
In Ephesians 6 Paul defines the battle first in terms of what it is not. It is not a battle fought on a human level against a human enemy.

Our struggle is not against flesh and blood

It is:

Against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Or as Eugene Petersen puts it:

This is no afternoon athletic contest that we’ll walk away from and forget in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the devil and all his angles. Be prepared. You’re up against more than you can handle on your own.

According to Paul, the best defence against these attacks is the armour that God provides. The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the shoes of the gospel and the sword of the Spirit. To this armour Paul adds the importance of prayer. But once you’re in the armour, what’s your strategy going to be?

Winning Strategies

#1 Prepare well

You don’t get far if you don’t prepare well. Sometimes you can wing it, sometimes you can get away with minimal preparation, but in the end it usually tells.

I have the utmost respect for everyone who takes part in a marathon. Whether they compete as a serious athlete or as a chicken. But if you watch the race unfold you’ll notice there are some who don’t look like they’ve prepared particularly well.

If we are going to win the battle, we must prepare well. I think the key to good preparation is simply this: honesty before God. Honesty before God means saying: I can’t do this on my own, I can only do this by the grace of God.

But good preparation also means to know the enemy, to understand the tactics and to prepare your defence. A rusty sword is of little value.

#2 Seek God’s strategy

Paul promises us that we won’t face anything that God has not prepared us to face. God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but will, with the temptation, make a way of escape.

When we go it alone we miss God’s strategy.

#3 Follow the plan

It’s easy to get the plan and then forget to follow it. This happened to Saul in the Old Testament. It can happen to you and to me too. Following the plan means that we submit ourselves unconditionally into the hands of God.

To make this step means we have to trust God, we have to believe he can be trusted. Jesus said: You trust in God, trust also in me.

#4 Persevere

Have you ever watched a marathon? At the starting line there are a lot of smiles. The chickens and super heroes all line up and chat away to the crowd and each other. Everyone begins in a happy smiley mood.

Now depending on your fitness levels that feeling may last 10 or 12 feet before reality sets in. Your feet begin to shout stop, your legs begin to shout stop, every muscle in your body begins to shout stop (you’ve probably reached 20 feet by now!)

At some point over the next 26 miles you will, as any runner will tell you, “hit the wall”. What you do at that point will determine whether you finish the race or not.

Perseverance is the key. Will you keep on running, will you keep on walking with God despite the pain and heartache that’s crying out to you to stop.

As followers of Jesus Christ we are called to be persistent in prayer, persistent in doing good, to press on to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me.

Facing the Battle

If the principle call upon our lives is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, strength, soul and mind and to love our neighbours as ourselves, then it seems reasonable to assume that this will be the focus of the major battle that we face.

The battle for our mind is the battle for our thoughts and our thinking; the battle for our strength is the battle for our time, for what we will do with our lives; the battle for our souls is the battle for our faith, the very things that we believe; the battle for our hearts is the battle for our commitment.

These four areas express our every faculty and capacity to do and to be the people the God. As we come under pressure, as we face the battle we can be sure of one thing. God is with us. Jesus Christ came into the world so that we would not have to face this battle alone. You need not be alone. You need not face the enemy of your soul alone.