It’s Friday…The Only Way to Win

On this Veteran’s Day weekend, I’m truly grateful for the more than 1.4 million Americans on active military duty, and the other 778,000 on reserve duty. Thank you for your service and for keeping us safe. We truly owe you a debt of gratitude.

As followers of Jesus, perhaps we’ve never experienced a physical war, but we have discovered soon after giving our lives to Him that we are in a middle of a war, a spiritual war. And this spiritual war is so real that life, too, often becomes a struggle.

We have two options: fight or flee. The option to flee is an illusion – the spiritual war exists whether we want to acknowledge it or not. If we ignore it, we’ve lost already. But the option to fight – that’s where we get confused. We charge into battle and then quickly wind up defeated. We forget the number one rule of engagement in the spiritual war:

“Be strong in The Lord and in His mighty power.”  (Ephesians 6:10)

That’s easy to say but hard to live out. It isn’t complicated, just unnatural. We pray for God’s strength, and live by faith for a while, and then, any success puts us in our default mode: self-reliance. Only after failing in our self-reliance do we learn to rely again on His strength.

The battle mentality is essential for our life with Christ. We cannot bear spiritual fruit, internally or externally, if we are not alert and equipped for the conflict that inevitably comes. But our alertness is not to lead us to our own strategies and resources; it must lead us to dependence; a casting of ourselves unreservedly into the hands of God. That’s faith. And we, like Jesus and the apostles, will pray for God’s authority and strength to overcome evil and live for His Kingdom, but the power behind the prayers and the life are not ours. It belongs to the Spirit within us. If we aren’t vitally related to Him, we will lose. The Only Way to Win – the only way to even survive – is to be strong in His mighty power. Yes, we are strong when we submit and depend on God.

Have a powerful weekend. Make it better by worshiping The LORD with those who see themselves as more than conquerors because of what He has accomplished in and through them. Agree? And please, let’s go the extra mile to express our gratitude to our Veterans for their service.

All For Jesus – Nothing More, Nothing Less, Nothing Else.

“He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, The King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see, to Him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.” (1 Timothy 6:15b-16)