I’ll Fight on My Knees
Let’s listen to the chorus of Phil Wickham’s song Battle Belongs.
So when I fight, I’ll fight on my knees, with my hands lifted high
Oh God the battle belongs to You
And every fear I lay at Your feet, I’ll sing through the night
Oh God the battle belongs to You
We spoke yesterday about laying our fears at His feet and relinquishing them to Him, but today I want to focus on the first two lines of that chorus which said, firstly, “when I fight”. Not if. But when. Wickham knows the truth that battles will always be a reality in our lives – following Jesus does not mean an end to our battles, in fact it probably means more spiritual battles will comes our way. So friends, be ready for battles to manifest in your life – that’s normal, Jesus said that in this world we will have trouble.
Pray on Knees: Humility, Faith, Victory
But the key here is what to do when they come, and I love how Wickham says “when I fight, I’ll fight on my knees”. Two thoughts about this: first is that on your knees is the posture for prayer. And yet many of us can find ourselves praying less when battles come, because we are just slightly mad with God for allowing them in the first place. Oh how we should avoid that! We should be on our knees in prayer day after day during our battles, always bringing our fears and concerns and struggles and worries to God.
And remember, it’s not to inform God of something He doesn’t know, that we pray – He knows it already! It’s to include God in our fight, that we pray so often. When we spend time in prayer, we are coming alongside the great warrior Christ, who is the conqueror of evil and the very power of God. It’s a wonderful thing to go on our knees and spend time talking with Him about these things that He already know about.
The second thought about fighting on our knees is that it’s a posture of humility. It is a way of stating that you realise you don’t have all the power or all the answers, but that God is greater and so you turn it over to Him. It’s an act of faith!
Battles Belong to God: Victory
Because in the end, the battle belongs to Him – we learn this in the David and Goliath story in 1 Samuel, where David says this: “This day the LORD will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’S, and he will give all of you into our hands.”” (1 Samuel 17:46–47 NIV11)
The battle is the Lord’s. He will give us victory. What a wonderful thought today, that our battles are His, and so we will fight with passion – but we’ll do it prayerfully, on our knees, trusting that God is the one who holds it all in His hands and will bring us victory.
