In this battle to win the war

(Part 2 of 2)

The military has taught me the importance of defending the ground won in the battle. In the military, instead of spending much time celebrating the ground won, soldiers implement a plan to defend the ground so that they do not lose it again. Winning more ground depends on our ability to defend what has been won already. It is of great importance to note that if one plans to conquer a city, they will never achieve that if they keep on losing every ground they win.

Though this person may be celebrating a victory every other day, they can’t really claim to be making progress if they keep winning the same ground over and over again. Winning the city requires retaining every suburb won and adding to those gains. This is also true in our Christian walk; we cannot keep failing in areas we once conquered and think we are advancing. With such a tendency there is no way we can win the war, instead, we will continue to celebrate whilst we are actually losing.

This reminds me of a rugby team we grew up supporting. The team would go out every weekend to play games, however, every time they are asked about the match results, they would respond, “we tackled them very hard” without mentioning the score. We found out later that they were actually losing those games and at the end of the season they got relegated to a lower division. Though they came back after every game satisfied about tackling their opponents, they were in fact, slowly going down.

It is important to assess how what we perceive as gains helps us towards winning the war. Again the military has taught me that some of the things that appear as a victory are actually traps. There is this approach mostly employed in the military called, “Tactical withdrawal.” This is when the force opts to withdraw during contact with the enemy, either to regroup or lead the enemy into an ambush. The enemy that is led into an ambush is usually convinced that it has an upper hand and tries to finish off its opponents, only to find out when it is too late that they had been led into a trap.

The enemy we face today employs this tactic a lot to draw us away from our position of strength in order to destroy us. Normally we think that we have it all figured out when the enemy draws us out of our place of strength, only to find out very late that it was all a lie. We cannot overemphasize the importance of checking what appears to be a victory or gain with how it fits to our ultimate victory. This assessment with open our eyes from being persuaded by deceptions to leave our areas of responsibility.

13 Now when the devil had ended every temptation,

he departed from Him until an opportune time. Luke 4:13

The preceding verse provides us with details of the encounter that Jesus had with the devil. According to the story, Jesus sent the enemy to the cleaners. One would think after this victory the enemy was going to play far away from Jesus, but that was not the case, instead, the enemy intensified his efforts. Though in this verse the enemy is clearly conceding loss, it is also clear that he was not giving up on his mission. Anyone in Jesus’ shoes would have thought victory in the first encounter meant the mission was complete, only to find out that more victories and the ultimate victory were still ahead.

This verse teaches us, among other things, that we cannot afford to be complacent so that we are easily distracted by some of the victories we secure along the way but focus on winning the war.

Luke 10 records an account of Jesus deploying 70 disciples in pairs of two. They came back excited about the number of victories they encountered on the mission trip. Jesus, knowing that the battles they had just won were not the end of the war, warned them to stay alert, as the enemy was getting ready to strike back.

18 And He said to them,

“I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

19 Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents

and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy,

and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

20 Nevertheless do not rejoice in this,

that the spirits are subject to you,

but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” Luke 10:18-20

Winning the battle was not supposed to make them remove their eyes from the ultimate prize of winning the war. Staying alert will deny the enemy a very important element of war, “catching opponents by surprise.” Denying the enemy a chance to catch us off guard will go a long way in our quest to win the war.

Conclusion

Though wars are fought as battles, it is very critical to note that winning a battle does not mean winning the war. It is natural for humans to celebrate victory, but we are exhorted not to lose sight of the ultimate prize, which is winning the war. Keeping what we conceive as gains in check will go a long way in ensuring that the enemy does not deceive us with pseudo victories in order to take us away from our areas of strength, so as to catch us off guard.

This demands that we understand we are in this battle to win the war. It does not start and end with the current battle, and therefore we need to keep on winning those battles in order to win the war. In the same breath, we need to remember that the battles we have lost are not the end of the war; all that we need to do after conceding a loss in some of the battles is to regroup and continue fighting the good fight.