BY TONY EVANS
There are seasons when life can wear you down. You’ve prayed about something, but it hasn’t changed. You’ve tried to do the right thing, but the situation seems to keep getting worse. Maybe there is tension in your family you can’t seem to resolve, a financial pressure that keeps following you, a fear you can’t quite shake or a burden you’ve carried so long that you’ve almost gotten used to carrying it. And after a while, you can get tired. Not just physically tired. You can become tired on the inside. If you have ever been there, I want you to remember something: what you see is not all there is to be seen. If you’re a Christian, you’re in a battle whether you realize it or not. One of the challenges of spiritual warfare is that you can spend a lot of time dealing with what you can see, touch, hear and feel, while failing to recognize that what happens in the visible, physical realm is often being influenced by what is taking place in the invisible, spiritual realm.
You are not facing your battle empty-handed.
That doesn’t mean what you are facing isn’t real. The hurt is real. The disappointment is real. The person who wounded you is real. But Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:12 that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood” because God does not want you to become so consumed with what is happening around you that you miss what is happening spiritually. Sometimes you can spend so much time asking God to change your circumstances that you forget to ask Him to change your perspective.
Victory in spiritual warfare comes down to one foundational thing: your perspective. What are you looking at? Are you staring at what you can see before you? Or are you looking from the perspective of “heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12)? Unless you learn to operate from up there, you will succumb to your challenges down here.
That is why I want to encourage you today: you are not facing your battle empty-handed.
You are not walking this path of life alone.
God has given you truth when the enemy tries to confuse you. He has given you righteousness to guard your heart, peace to steady your steps and faith to extinguish the fiery darts that come against you. He has given you salvation to protect your mind and His Word as the sword of the Spirit.
And above all, He has given you Jesus Christ.
You are not trying to talk God into giving you a victory He has been withholding. Christ has already defeated the enemy through His death and resurrection. Your responsibility is to learn how to stand in the victory He has already secured.
So if you are approaching the end of this year carrying something you thought would have been resolved by now, don’t give up simply because you cannot yet see what God is doing.
If you have prayed and the answer hasn’t come yet, keep standing. If your circumstances are telling you one thing while God’s Word is telling you another, keep standing on what God has said.
You may not be able to control what comes against you, but you can decide where you will stand when it comes.
And when you stand under the truth and authority of Jesus Christ, you are not standing there alone.
He is with you every moment of every day.
A Prayer for Your Victory
Father, help me to see what I am facing from Your point of view. Keep me from allowing what I can see to become greater in my mind than what You have said.
Ground me in Your truth. Guard my heart with Your righteousness. Establish my feet in Your peace. Strengthen my faith, protect my mind and teach me to use Your Word in the battle before me.
When I feel tired, remind me that I do not stand in my own strength. When I cannot see what You are doing, give me faith to trust that You are still at work.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Unhurried conversations. Biblical perspective.
Join Dr. Tony Evans for thoughtful conversations about faith, culture and everyday life with guests including Tony Dungy, Faith Womack, Chrystal Evans Hurst and more.
watch and listen on youtube @drtonyevans
THE BIBLE'S JOURNEY THROUGH HISTORY
In Paris, Dr. Tony Evans spent time with Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt at Église Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois for an in-depth conversation exploring the people and movements that helped carry biblical truth through pivotal periods of history. He also spoke with Dr. Bruce Gordon, Dr. Alec Ryrie, Dr. Volker Leppin and NBA star Michael Porter, Jr.
These conversations are part of a much larger journey Unbound is following around the world through historic locations, important biblical treasures and conversations with leading scholars and experts.
Long before you ever held a Bible in your hands, generations of people were preserving it, studying it, translating it, teaching it and passing it forward.
The places change.
The centuries change.
The languages change
THE TRUTH CONTINUES.
Do you remember when the Word first reached you?
Maybe you remember the voice.
The station.
The sermon.
The season.
Maybe you were driving to work. Sitting at the kitchen table. Lying awake at night. Or walking through something nobody else knew about.
And then something happened.
A passage you had heard before sounded different this time. A sentence in a sermon seemed to reach right into what you were carrying. What had been simply biblical information suddenly became deeply personal.
Through the years, people have said to me, “Tony, you were talking directly to me.”
Well, I wasn’t.
I didn’t know what was happening in their home. I didn’t know what was going on in their marriage, what they were afraid of, what decision they were facing or what they had been praying about.
But God did.
That is one of the remarkable things about His Word. God knows how to take His truth and get it to the right person at the right time.
Maybe you have experienced that yourself.
God knew where you were.
He knew what you were carrying.
And somehow, His Word reached you.
For more than four decades, The Urban Alternative has existed to help biblical truth reach people wherever they are whether through radio, television and now digital platforms reaching people around the world.
You may never know all the places that truth travels: the person driving home who needs hope, the family listening in a kitchen, someone alone in a hospital room or a person halfway around the world hearing biblical truth in a language they understand.
But God knows every one of them.
You remember what it meant when His Word reached you. And your partnership can help make that kind of moment possible for someone else.
For His kingdom,
THE URBAN ALTERNATIVE
Furthering the proclamation and application of the Word of God.
Help keep it going.
Request The Armor of God sermon series and Victory in Spiritual Warfare with your gift.
