MONDAY
Today we embark on a new campaign. How exciting! The title of this new campaign is “The Lord will Fight for You.”
As the Israelites stood at the edge of the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s army closing in behind them, Moses delivers a powerful message that echoes through the ages: "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still." (Ex. 14:14) Today, we often find ourselves facing seemingly impossible obstacles, desperately trying to control outcomes through our own strength. Yet throughout Scripture, we discover a transformative truth: God actively fights on behalf of His people. What if the key to victory isn't in our striving, but in learning to step back and let God take the lead?
Usually when we use this phrase in Christian circles, we use it in the context of counseling or comforting someone facing an uncertain outcome. Whereas this is certainly a great comfort, that is not how I intend to apply it in this campaign. This truth also presents us with an incredible challenge. The challenge is not in the first phrase “The Lord will fight for you.” We all like that idea of God fighting for us, even if our understanding of it is a little misguided (more on that later).
The great challenge for us is not in the first phrase but in the second—”you need only to be still.” We find it difficult to surrender our control to God. If we are honest with ourselves, we want to affect our own change. We want to be in the driver’s seat. When we have control of a situation, we feel safe. When we don’t have control, we feel afraid or anxious or angry. In situations we cannot control, we may become paralyzed with fear and anxiety or overreach to control and manipulate. The challenge, then, is not in accepting help from God but in allowing him to help us. To do this we must remain still, silent and calm in the face of uncertain outcomes.
Now, let’s go back to our misunderstanding of God fighting for us. We often hear this and think it means that the Lord will help us accomplish our desired outcomes. Someone in the middle of a lawsuit regarding a boundary dispute with their neighbor may take comfort in this truth, thinking that God will convince the judge to decide the case in their favor regardless of whether their fence was actually built too close to the line. A soldier in a battle may take this phrase to mean that God will grant his side the victory without any regard for whether it is God’s will or not. This is, of course, not what this phrase means. Our will is to bend towards God’s will, not the other way around. He does not surrender to ours, but we to his.
This phrase means that the Lord will fight on our behalf according to his desired outcomes. So, again, the great challenge for us is not in accepting God’s help, but in surrender. We find it incredibly difficult to surrender our will to God’s will. So much bitterness in our souls stems from this reality. When bad things happen, we can think God has failed to fight for us and we can easily grow bitter towards God. So at the outset, when we think of God fighting for us, we must think of it in the sense that God will fight on our behalf according to his will, not ours.
For the first couple of weeks in this campaign, we will look at what is required of us to allow the Lord to fight for us. The first and greatest of these is surrender, which we will cover this week.
Reflection
Reflect on the last time you faced a seemingly impossible obstacle that was outside of your control. How did you respond? Were you able to remain calm in the face of it, trusting that God will fight for you according to his will? Or were you filled with anxiety, fear, or anger at the situation, reaching constantly for control or lamenting the fact that you had none?