The Battle is the Lord's

UV 1699/10000 The Battle is the Lord’s
One man of you shall chase a thousand: for the LORD your God, he it is that fighteth for you, as he hath promised you.
Joshua 23 v 10

The Lord is a God not just of grace but also of overwhelming and awesome power. Only He can restrain His own power and nothing and no one in the heavens or the earth can restrain His power. The experience of Israel under Moses and later under the leadership of Joshua was that the Lord fought for them. It was also the experience of Gideon and his band of three hundred volunteers that the Lord delivered them supernaturally and miraculously from formidable and numerically as well as militarily powerful enemies. Joshua was enabled to defeat 31 kings in order to wrest the promised land from them. The promised land is not given to us on a platter. It involves many great challenges. The Lord promises to be with us in all these challenges and to reveal His awesome power so that our force, strength and power is magnified a thousand times.

There is a common saying, “ it is not the size of the dog but the size of the fight in the dog.” It is not our size or power or prowess but the size of the God in us who determines victory and deliverance. He is our bulwark of defence, our refuge, our fortress. He encourages us in all our struggles or gives us courage from within to see victory coming and stay in the fight till we taste it. The Lord is involved personally in all our struggles. The battle is truly the Lord’s. We need to only take time in prayer, claiming His promises to give us certain victory and also do due diligence on our part or all that He has asked us to do or all that common sense and practice requires us to do.
In all our struggles in life, we need to depend on the Lord’s guidance and wisdom and not on our own feeble strength or limited wisdom and intelligence. It is the sword of the Lord and not our own that gives us victory. We need to cleave to the Word or hold onto the promises of the Lord like Eleazer had such a tight grip on the handle of his sword that it seemed to be part of his arm and body. We need to cleave to the Lord as Israel under Joshua clung to Him. We also need to leave behind the “hamartia” or failure and misery-causing selfish or flesh nature of fear, lust and double-mindedness behind us. The first battle the Lord needs to win is the one inside each of us- the inner enemy camping deep inside us. Once that victory is claimed, running over the external enemy is only a matter of time and detail.

Prateep V Philip