Are You Ready for Battles and Challenges?
Many times, we wait for battles before getting ready, which makes winning harder. Are you ready for the next challenge to come your way? This video discusses the importance of advance preparation for the battles of life.
Other Videos in this Series
- David vs Goliath: How to Beat Giants
- Being Certain God will Fight for You
- Depending upon God in Battle
Ready for Battle Video Transcript:
We are looking at the Bible passage about David and Goliath, examining principles that will help you in the situations you are facing.
These days, many are facing challenging circumstances where they don’t know what to do or how to get through. People are crying out to God, desperately wanting Him to help. A lot of the time, they don’t know how to get God involved.
We’re looking at how David got God involved.
How was David able to overcome this giant with God’s help?
God delivered him and brought him through. David, a young lad, was able to beat a giant much bigger and more experienced than himself.
These days, you may not face an actual Giant, but you can face circumstances and situations that are giant. Situations that are bigger than you. So, we want to know what the biblical principles are that we can apply into our lives to help us overcome.
How to Beat Giants: David vs Goliath
Review
In the previous videos, we talked about your perspective and focus. Are you focusing on the size of the challenge or the size of your God?
We also looked at speaking about God confidently in terms that you know He is going to help you, rather than, ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure if God’s going to do something’. How to become confident and boldly know that God will help, get involved and deliver you.
We also looked at where your dependence is. What are you relying on? Are you relying on yourself or upon God? You can put your trust and reliance in Him. Credit Him as being the One who is helping you. ‘I’m not getting through this just because of my ability and my strength. I’m getting through this, Lord, because you are helping and enabling me’.
Ready for Battle
Today, we will look at another principle: getting ready for battle and ready for giants. If you are already facing a giant, then you have to do your best to get ready.
David was Ready
In 1 Samuel 17, when David arrived at the battle scene and heard Goliath’s challenge to the army, he immediately got interested. He said, ‘I will go and fight him’.
David did not have to run off to spend time in prayer first. He did not need to go and build his faith before the battle. He did not say, ‘just give me a day or two, so that I can seek the will of God to make sure that God wants to help me beat this giant.
When the challenge arose, he was ready. He arrived on the battle scene ready for whatever situation came his way.
How Ready are you?
This is an important point. A lot of Christians are not ready when circumstances hit them. They are not prepared to deal with challenges. Instead, they have to go off and spend lots of time in the Word to strengthen their faith before they can face things, because they simply are not ready for the battle.
Ideally, we need to learn to stay ready. That means we should be preparing ourselves, getting stronger in the Word of God long before the battle ever arises.
If you are already in a battle and did not prepare in advance, then you need to get ready as quick as possible and strengthen up.
Not Being Ready makes things a lot Harder
Often, when things arise, our confidence in God is low and we are not prayed up. We have to go and take the time to get prayed up and ready. While we are trying to get ready and strengthened up, the battle is going on.
We often work from a perspective of weakness, trying to get strong enough to deal with what we are going through.
Many people are in the situation where they have not prepared beforehand. Therefore, when a crisis hits, they are not in a position to handle it. They have to throw themselves on the mercy of God and cry out for a miracle.
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Let’s take a step back to before the battle.
David was able to beat Goliath because he was already ready when he got to the battle, when the giant circumstance came his way.
1 Samuel 17:37
:37 Moreover David said, “The LORD, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” And Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you!”
This was not David’s first battle. It may have been his first battle against human armies, but it was not the first situation where he had trusted God to get through. He had made a lifestyle of trusting God.
Beating a lion or a bear are not small things. It was not the case that David dealt with little battles first, then suddenly one day dealt with Goliath. The bear and lion were also big situations. He didn’t battle a mouse first; he battled a lion and bear!
What it shows, though, is that David was practiced. He had made a lifestyle of depending upon God to get him through things. That’s why he had a track record.
Do not wait
I encourage you not to wait until you are in a big battle. Don’t wait for impossible situation. Put the principles we have been learning into practice now.
Get your focus and dependence on God. Become established in His will and confident that He wants to do these things for you, so that when the battle comes your way, you are ready for it. You are ready to go into the battle and are strong already.
Often people crack under the pressure of the size of the situation because Up until that time, they have not made a consistent lifestyle of being strong in God.
I once heard a minister say that if you are not in a battle now, you had better be getting ready for one.
If you’re not in a fight or tough situation, make sure you are preparing for the next battle.
Don’t wait until a battle comes your way. Don’t wait until a giant, storm or challenging circumstance arises before you start getting ready.
Preparation is Scriptural
The principle of preparation and getting ready is throughout the Word of God. There are plenty of passages about it.
1 Samuel 17:32
:32 Then David said to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.”
The moment David heard about the giant, he was ready to get involved and go fight. He had already made sure he was strong in God.
The ideal situation is that you are ready for challenges long before they ever come. How do you do that? You need to be walking with God consistently, day in, day out. Every day spending time getting stronger in His Word. Spend time in prayer and praying in tongues.
Get yourself established in the promises of God long before the battle ever comes your way.
Jesus’ Disciples
In Matthew 17 Jesus had just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration. He encounters a situation where the disciples had been trying to cast a demon out of a boy.
Matthew 17:14-21
:14 And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying,
:15 “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water.
:16 So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him.”
:17 Then Jesus answered and said, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me.”
:18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.
:19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?”
:20 So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.
:21 However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”
Jesus’ disciples were not in a position to help this boy.
There were reasons for that. Jesus rebuked the demon without any fuss or deep conversation. The demon came out and the child was set free.
Afterwards, there was some discussion between Jesus and his disciples. People have made all kinds of funny doctrines out of what is said here. I just want to draw one point out from it.
Why they could not help
In Matthew 17:19 the disciples wanted to know why they could not do anything.
People have used Jesus’ answer to claim we have to spend lengthy periods of time fasting and praying a demon out. They say we have to have a big battle with the demon, claiming that Jesus taught that here.
That interpretation does not work with the context of the passage.
Notice that, when dealing with the demon, Jesus did not do that!
Despite saying that prayer and fasting is needed just a few verses earlier, Jesus rebuked it and it came out. There was no prayer and fasting involved. Jesus did not go into a long, prolonged battle with the demon. He rebuked it and it came out, just like any other passage where he dealt with demons.
I don’t believe Jesus was saying that the demon itself needs to be prayed and fasted out by extended fasting and praying.
Staying Ready
What he was indicating, rather, is that the person ministering needs to be a person who is prayed up. They need to be someone who is ready.
The reason Jesus did not have to go into extended prayer and fasting here is that he was already ready. He had already done those things when the situation arose.
Jesus had just come down from the mount of transfiguration, from the presence of God.
Letting your spiritual life slip
The reason the disciples could not do anything was that they had allowed their spiritual lives to become lax. They had slipped backwards. As a result, they were not in the position where they were ready to deal with that demon when it arose. They are the ones who would have had to run off to get ready.
We don’t want to be in the position where we have to go and get ready to deal with things. Be prepared in advance.
That means we spend time praying and in the Word getting strong long before the challenge ever arises. Don’t wait until you are in a battle before you start getting ready for a battle.
Fighting unprepared
If people did that in the natural and tried to go to war without any preparation of their army in advance, they would probably lose. Armies train and get ready.
They do exercises and learn how to use their equipment long before the battle. This is so that once they are in battle, they are ready to fight.
The reason a lot of Christians are losing against challenges is because they have not done any advance preparation. They are expecting to just be weak spiritually, not prayed up, not strong in the Word of God, to not even know what the Word says, and then to just deal with the challenges.
A situation comes their way and suddenly they panic, get desperate and they try to rush to get ready for the battle. That’s not the time to get ready.
If you are facing a battle and that’s where you are at, then you just have to do what you can do. Throw yourself on the mercy of God.
Get prepared in advance
However, the ideal situation is that you get ready in advance. Be ready for Giants, battles, impossible situations long before they come up.
If you prepare, then when a Goliath of a situation stares you down and torments you, you are strong and ready. Then you can say, I am going to beat you because the Lord is going to deliver me. I’m ready for this fight. I’ve prepared up until this point. I’ve trusted God through other things and I’m going to trust God through this one. The Lord will deliver me.
So, take the other principles we have been learning in these videos. They are important. Also, get a hold of this point. Get ready for battles long before they ever come, so that when things come your way, you overcome them because you are already strong in God.