Does your Christian life make you feel like you’re fighting a losing battle?If it does, you’re not alone. You are so not alone.
Fellow pilgrims, the narrow way can be brutal. Our God is doing big things in us! To ready us for eternity, He is transforming us from the inside out. Such wondrous developmemnts of character and grit are seldom accomplished without blood, sweat, and tears.
So here’s a question: Is a battle a victory only when it’s won? My short answer to that question is a robust “No!” And if you’re reading, and feeling quite weary in the battle today, consider this the whisper in your ear that you’ve needed in order to press on.
You see, in God’s economy, our noble failures can be far more more redemptive than our obvious successes. It is in the temporal losses of this life that you and I come to understand that to fight with all we’ve got is where the real you and the real me is forged. Like diamonds, we’re made strongest, and we shine brightest, after waves of intense heat and relentless pressure.
I contend that it’s not as much about victory on the battlefield as it is about victory in us, what might be described as our learning to stay true to who we are — who we’re called to be in Christ — all the way to the end. That’s called perseverance, and it’s of inestimable value.
Let’s face the facts. The Lord calls us to difficult — sometimes ridiculously difficult — assignments. Oftentimes, humanly speaking at least, the odds of our success are laughable. Tried forgiving the unforgivable recently?
Life is full of “losing battles,” we must admit, but that should never deter us from our mission. The victory department is not our department, but God’s.
How do you and I fight a losing battle without losing all hope? We remember whose we are. When the deck seems stacked against us, and when the attacks and the opposition seem insurmountable, Christ stirs something deep within us until we find ourselves rising above fear and anguish with an inexplicable desire to stand! To stand firm to the end.
Each and every child of God will experience moments, if not protracted seasons, of crippling despair. These are hard but necessary segments of our journey. We see an enemy’s cold hand stretched out to destroy us mercilessly, but — instead of taking the easy way of surrender — we grab our sword and strike back! When our armor is God’s, you see, it really doesn’t matter if we “succeed” or not.
The places of desperate danger are where you and I are being trained not just to survive, but to thrive. But we must lift our eyes.
In the Hall of Faith recorded in Hebrews 11, God’s Word recalls our broader and deeper history among His beloved covenant people, who “through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice … stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire.” They “escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign enemies to flight.” Spiritually speaking, you and I are descended from those who were “tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking … and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword.”
Apart from that, it was all fun and games.
In his unique style, G.K. Chesterton (1874 – 1936) offers us this word of encouragement: “The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God’s paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle — and not lose it.”
Strangely but wonderfully, when God is in it, to lose is to win.
Friends, an enduring faith in our risen Lord Jesus Christ is the ultimate victory — whether or not we evade all the bullets for now.
For the tomb is empty, and we have won.
Pastor Charles
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