James Merritt once told that during one of the darkest periods of World War II, after the collapse of France and before America got involved, Winston Churchill wrote that the question in the minds of both friends and foes and it was this:  “Will Britain surrender too?”

At the time he made a speech that contained this sentence: “What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over.  I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.  Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.”

If you are reading this and you are a Christian…you are at war, too.  You are in a battle.

In this battle the peace in your heart, the joy in your marriage, the wellbeing of your children, the influence you have in your community are all at stake.

You are involved in spiritual warfare. 

Don’t yawn.  Don’t brush this off.  Don’t act like this isn’t some big deal.  It is.

One of the biggest problems is that many Christians, perhaps most, do not even realize it.  They have gone AWOL from the front lines and are asleep in the barracks.

The reason why many Christians are losing their battle with the devil, day-by-day, is because they’re not even showing up for the war.  In fact, I believe that most Christians try to fool themselves into believing that a war isn’t being fought.

And far too often Christians are going to war against each other and not the real enemy!

Someone has said, “Much of the church’s warfare today is fought by blindfolded soldiers who cannot see the forces ranged against them; who are buffeted by invisible opponents and respond by striking one another.”

Douglas MacArthur, one of our greatest generals, once said, “In war there is no substitute for victory.”

That statement is true in physical war, but doubly true for spiritual warfare.

Make no mistake about this: If you are a Christian: In your war, God wants you to be victorious. 

The people of God need to stop retreating and begin attacking.

To illustrate this, let me share a story that has been used in many sermons as an illustration, but is valuable for our discussion:

The story of a football player who graduated from college, and the coach asked him if he would like to come on staff and be a scout and try to find other good football players. 

He said, “Sure coach, what kind of a player are you looking for?” 

He said, “Well, there’s a kind of guy that when you knock him down he just stays down.” 

He said, “We don’t want him do we, coach?” 

The coach said, “No, we don’t want him.  But then there’s the kind of guy that when you knock him down, he gets up.  But if you knock him down the second time he just stays down.” 

The man said, “We don’t want him either do we coach?” 

The coach said, “No, we don’t want him either.”

He said, “But there’s the kind of guy that when you knock him down he gets up; you knock him down and he gets up; you knock him down again and he just keeps getting up.” 

The man said, “Now that’s the guy we want, right coach?” 

The coach said, “No, we don’t want him either.  What I want you to do is find the guy who’s knocking all these other guys down, that’s the guy I want.”

Well, I believe it’s high time that many Christians begin to knock down some of these strongholds that they have allowed Satan to place in their lives.

“Too many Christians are limping into heaven as defeated saints, when they need to be leaping into heaven as victorious soldiers.”

The next few blog posts I will be sharing with you how you can have victory for yourself daily in your spiritual war.

Charge!