April 2020 Magazine

Words of Wisdom
How to Win Life’s Battles
‘The battle is not yours, but God’s.’ 2 Chronicles 20:15 NIV
Learn to relax in faith. Notice how God responded to Jehoshaphat’s
prayer: ‘The battle is not yours, But God’s.’
Many of us wear ourselves out
trying to fight God’s battles in
our own strength. In the initial
flush of becoming Christians,
we’re eager to win the world to
Jesus, and want to go out and
single-handedly bring about His
Kingdom. That’s because we
don’t realise what’s involved.
Then after we’ve worked hard
under our own stream, reality
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA
sets in. We end up crawling back on our hands and knees, disappointed,
because we think we’ve let God down. But He assures us, ‘You didn’t let
Me down because you weren’t holding Me up.’ The truth is, we don’t
hold God up – He holds us up! We don’t have Him in our hands, He has
us in His hands! And He’s telling us to relax in faith and let Him do the
work through us.
Paul wrote, ‘As you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your
lives in him’ (Colossians 2:6 NIV) In other words, remember how you
first became a believer – by simple faith in the finished work of Christ –
and continue to live by simple faith. You didn’t become a Christian by
striving for perfection and doing good works. Good works have nothing
to do with it! Salvation is a free gift.
God doesn’t need us to micromanage things; He has everything under
control, and He wants us to relax and let Him live through us.
Bottom line: victory in life is a gift from God! ‘Thank God, who always
lead us in victory because of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 2:14 GWT).
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