I love the scene from J. R. R Tolkien’s “The Return of the King” where Aragon is desperately outnumbered. He looks fear right in the eye and finds the strength to inspire his men against what seems like an almost certain defeat against the massive forces of the enemy. Standing firm and riding in front of his army, he declares,
 
I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me.
A day may come when the courage of men fails,
when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship,
…but it is not this day! This day we fight!
By all that you hold dear on this good earth,
I bid you stand…
 
Sounds so easy in the movies, doesn’t it?

Ambrose Redmoon defines courage as not having the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. “God, I am afraid, but give me the courage to push through my fears, the burdens of a passive spirit and the regret of my past failures.” It was time for me to take up the sword of the Spirit, the word of God and to go to war on behalf of righteousness; it was time to begin the battle for my children! All this stuff, the garbage that has burdened my life for so long and all the generational issues that had been passed down, had to end with me. I did not want any of this to be passed down to my children, and I asked the Lord to do whatever He needed to do in my life to free my children of these chains and burdens that I have carried for so long. Unfortunately, I had to walk through another failed marriage for me to really get this. To break free of old patterns, to stand up and become the man God called me to be.

As in the scenes of Jericho and David’s battle with Goliath, it is only through the Lord’s power that we will be able to be break free from satan’s control. When we begin to allow God to invade our lives, His word will reveal the control that satan has in our lives through strongholds. We need to identify where these strongholds are and in the power and might of the Lord have them torn down and destroyed. An army first has to remove the strongholds, to conquer the land and we need to do the same in the strength of the Lord.

Waving the banner of the Lord before me, it was time to storm the encampment of the enemy and reclaim territory for Jesus Christ; it was time to storm my Jericho.

 
Not sure you’ve noticed, but life comes at us like a ferocious lion at times. The challenge most of us face during these times of adversity is we become paralyzed. In our fear, we would rather sit on the sidelines and watch an extraordinary life happen than live it despite our circumstances. Neale Donald Walsch reminds us that life begins at the end of your comfort zone, but the irony is that when we step out of our comfort zone life gets inconvenienced.

Now these are the nations that the Lord left, to test Israel by them, that is, all in Israel who had not experienced all the wars in Canaan. It was only in order that the generations of the people of Israel might know war, to teach war to those who had not known it before. These are the nations: the five lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon as far as Lebo-hamath. They were for the testing of Israel, to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. So the people of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And their daughters they took to themselves for wives, and their own daughters they gave to their sons, and they served their gods. -Judges 3:1-6

So basically, God intentionally left the Israelites with nations who would oppose them because the current generation had never experienced battle. Wait a minute, what?!?!

An aspects of God that we often overlook is that He will do whatever it takes to teach us to stand up in the midst of battle and to fight. The sad reality is that most of us want God to fight all the battles for us without any effort on our part. We want to live a life where God removes all of life’s difficulties and the obstacles that come our way on our journey. We always want the victory without the battle.

What we often forget is that God will never put us in a circumstance where there is not a battle on the horizon. Even if you’ve just won a great battle, I’ve got some news for you…that battle is not the end of your story. What God is trying to instill in us is the reward for winning a battle is preparation for a greater battle down the road. Of course we all want peace and rest after fighting a great battle, but God is allowing these battles in our lives to fight so we can discover just how strong we really are and how powerful God really is. When we step into this mindset we will be able to see that the very thing we were afraid of is now somehow diminished on the other side of the victory.

When life throat punches us and we default to asking God “why is this happening”, we can find the answer right there in Judges 3 – He wants to prepare you for battle. He wants to develop the muscle in us to fight the good fight and finish the race strong. He wants us to live a life of great faith and of great courage!

Everything God does in your life is to strengthen your resolve and capacity to overcome every obstacle that life throws at us. Remember, times of great difficulty are times of great opportunity where ordinary people can rise up to meet the challenge. Molière reminds us that the greater the obstacle, the more glory there is in overcoming it!

Theodore Roosevelt It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Has God taught you how to trust? How to fight? …and how to be victorious?

I don’t what you’re facing right now. Divorce, addiction, sickness, abuse, abandonment, wayward kids, death in the family, fill in the blank _____________, but there is only one way to face life — head on with God. Live with courage, faith, without regret and without fear. Remember…you only lose if you’re afraid to live.

Adapted from: Battle Ready © MOSAIC LA/Erwin McManus.