LEARN TO STAND UP AND FIGHT ON YOUR OWN

You have to learn to fight your own battles. You can’t depend on someone else for your deliverance!

Perhaps you have a prayer warrior friend you can call and say, “I’ve got a battle before me. Will you pray for me? I know you have power with God!” That is scriptural—but it is not God’s complete will for you! God wants you to become a warrior! He wants you to be able to stand up against the devil.

God promised Gideon, “Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man” (Judges 6:16). God told him, “I have sent you—I will be with you!”

But then the people of the city came looking for the one who tore down their idols (see Judges 6:28–30). Where was Gideon? He was hiding—still unsure of God’s promises, still wondering if God was with him. Gideon said: “If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? And where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of…?” (v. 13). And so it is with many of us! Jesus has promised us, “I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20). And yet we have not learned to stand on his Word and fight!

Things will begin to change—the moment you are fully persuaded that God is with you. That he speaks to you and that he will show you all you need to know!

You are stronger than you think! Like Gideon, you may wonder, “How can I fight? I’m so weak, so inexperienced.” But God told Gideon, “Go in this thy might” (6:14). “What might?” you ask. Gideon’s might was bound up in God’s word to him: “Surely I will be with thee.”

Beloved, that same word—“I am with you”—is your strength! And you will receive that strength believing this word is true—and by acting on it!