Battle

Every believer who wants to make a difference for Christ can count on living in the crosshairs of the enemy.—Stu Weber in Spirit Warriors

Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.—Martin Luther

It is on the battlefield that we reflect what’s on God’s heart, and we stand in that place where God longs to make Himself known.—Erwin Raphael McManus in Chasing Daylight

It is the natural virtues that battle, not sin as we think of sin, but pride, egotism, my temperament, my affinities; all that has to have the sword run clean through it mercilessly by God, and if I stick to my natural inheritance the sword must go through me.—Oswald Chambers in God’s Workmanship

You will meet with unkindness and “two-facedness,” and if your motive is love for your fellow-men, you will be exhausted in the battle of life. But if the mainspring of your service is love for God, no ingratitude, no sin, no devil, no angel, can hinder you from serving your fellow-men, no matter how they treat you.—Oswald Chambers in Biblical Psychology

God brings us to the point where the fortress of the will is stormed by Him. If we yield, the battle is fought and won; but if we don’t keep on the fighting line God has drawn, we shall suffer a relapse and be taken by storm by the very powers we ought to have overcome, e.g., vain imaginings about God, empty moonings, spiritual reveries, spiritual ecstasies, spiritual anythings that we have not gripped up.—Oswald Chambers in Notes on Jeremiah

Remember, the battle is in the will; whenever we say “I can’t,” or whenever we are indifferent, it means “I won’t.” It is better to let Jesus Christ uncover the obstinacy. If there is one point where we say “I won’t” then we shall never know His salvation.—Oswald Chambers in The Love of God     
  
The wise warrior avoids the battle.—Sun Tzu

We are not sent to battle for God, but to be used by God in His battlings. Are we being more devoted to service than to Jesus Christ? —Oswald Chambers in My Utmost For His Highest

The battle is not against sin or difficulties or circumstances, but against being so absorbed in work that we are not ready to face Jesus Christ at every turn—Oswald Chambers in My Utmost For His Highest

There is always a battle royal before sanctification, always something that tugs with resentment against the demands of Jesus Christ. Immediately the Spirit of God begins to show us what sanctification means, the struggle begins. “If any man come to Me, and hate not . . . his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”—Oswald Chambers in My Utmost For His Highest

“Sell all that thou hast”  —undress yourself morally before God of everything that might be a possession until you are a mere conscious human being, and then give God that. That is where the battle is fought—in the domain of the will before God. Are you more devoted to your idea of what Jesus wants than to Himself? —Oswald Chambers in My Utmost For His Highest

The great battle in private prayer is the overcoming of mental wool-gathering. We have to discipline our minds and concentrate on wilful prayer . . . Prayer is the battle; it is a matter of indifference where you are.—Oswald Chambers in My Utmost For His Highest

We have to battle through our moods into absolute devotion to the Lord Jesus, to get out of the hole-and-corner business of our experience into abandoned devotion to Him.—Oswald Chambers in My Utmost For His Highest

To discern that natural virtues antagonise surrender to God, is to bring our soul into the centre of its greatest battle.—Oswald Chambers in My Utmost For His Highest

The battle is lost or won in the secret places of the will before God, never first in the external world. The Spirit of God apprehends me and I am obliged to get alone with God and fight the battle out before Him. Until this is done, I lose every time. The battle may take one minute or a year, that will depend on me, not on God; but it must be wrestled out alone before God, and I must resolutely go through the hell of a renunciation before Him. Nothing has any power over the man who has fought out the battle before God and won there. If I say—“I will wait till I get into the circumstances and then put God to the test,” I shall find I cannot. I must get the thing settled between myself and God in the secret places of my soul where no stranger intermeddles, and then I can go forth with the certainty that the battle is won. Lose it there, and calamity and disaster and upset are as sure as God’s decree. The reason the battle is not won is because I try to win it in the external world first. Get alone with God, fight it out before Him, settle the matter there once and for all.—Oswald Chambers in My Utmost For His Highest

The battle in spiritual life is, on whom or on what am I building my confidence?—Oswald Chamber in The Place of Help

All through Isaiah there is the confidence that God is reigning and ruling; the devil likes to make us believe that we are in a losing battle. Nothing of the sort! we have to overcome all the things that try to obscure God.—Oswald Chambers in Notes on Jeremiah

If we battle for a doctrinal position we will see no further spiritually.—Oswald Chambers in Disciples Indeed

The popular evangelical idea that we are to be against the world in the sense of a pitched battle with it, is simply an expression of the spirit of the world dressed up in a religious guise.—Oswald Chambers in God’s Workmanship

The power and vigour of the Holy Spirit in lives must go further than the threshold of the experience of being right with God; bit by bit the battle for God and for His truth must be pushed, and the only way to push it is by an experimental belief in Jesus Christ’s testimony regarding Himself.—Oswald Chambers in God’s Workmanship

Satan is overcome not in a battle, but by the easy might of a power greater than his own coming upon him, and that power is none other than our Lord Himself . . . When we are born again the Holy Spirit brings to us the realisation of what Jesus Christ has done, and the great emancipating point of personal experience is not that we have power to overcome, but that He has overcome; then the Holy Spirit instructs us all along the line how we can successfully battle against the encroachments of Satan.—Oswald Chambers in God’s Workmanship

God restrains the powers of evil. How does He do it? Through the lives of the saints who are pushing the battle everywhere their feet are placed.—Oswald Chambers in The Servant as His Lord

The armour is for the battle of prayer. “Take up the whole armour of God. . . . Stand therefore, . . .” and then pray. The armour is not to fight in, but to shield us while we pray. Prayer is the battle.—Oswald Chambers in So Send I You

The battle comes when we begin to debate instead of obeying. We have to obey and leave all consequences with God.—Oswald Chambers in The Moral Foundations of Life

Don’t even think about going into battle alone. Don’t even try to take the masculine journey without at least one man by your side.—John Eldredge in Wild at Heart

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.—George Patton

Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.—Sir Edward Creasy in The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World From Marathon to Waterloo
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When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.—Abraham Kuyper