There's no such thing as losing in the kingdom of God. God has never lost a battle yet, but we lose them, and we lose them when we lose sight of God, and when other things control our life. So there is a battle, and it's not a battle against something you see. Your fight and struggle is not with people. We think it's with people. It is never with people. People were called to love and reach out, to show the loving kindness of God, but there is a spirit world that manipulates, controls the environment, influences people, and also influences you. So the battlefield is a spiritual battlefield, and the place it's fought out is primarily in your soul. Your soul is the place this battle, or this fight of faith, takes place; and notice what the Bible calls it. It says it's a fight of faith. In other words, the key thing is, what do you believe? What do you believe in your heart to be true about your circumstances, about people, about God, about finance, about the feelings you have, about the thoughts you have? What do you believe? It is a fight about what you believe.
The only thing that can move the hand of God is that we are in faith, that we are agreeing with God about what God says. We take His side in life, and we begin to learn how to live and move by faith. You have to understand, just because you have a need, does not mean God will meet it. He knows the need. He looks for faith, and faith can be developed and cultivated. Faith has an evidence in our life, so when you're operating and living by faith, it is evident. It's evident in how your attitude is; it's evident in how you think, it's evident in what you say. If unbelief is in our life, it's evident by complaints. Complaints are the evidence that my heart is responding to unbelief, and I have a wrong perspective on life. The Bible says: in everything give thanks. Well that can't be true, how could I give thanks in everything? Because I know that God is making everything work together for my good, so giving thanks in the midst of difficulty is an act of faith, an act of warfare. Complaining is an act of belief. Negative speaking, pessimism, critical thinking, judging, all of those are the actions, or the out workings, of a heart that is not in a place of faith with God.
So in this next season I was really thrilled - I picked up what Brydon spoke, and don't know how many of you picked it. He was talking about just in the finance area, but he said: its faith; and we're in a season of faith, of actually stirring faith in our lives, so we need to be fired in faith! Amen. God is for us! Notice it says: the weapon, so we're not powerless. You've got something you can do, just got to do something with it. The weapons of our warfare; there is a conflict, it is your warfare, and here's something good about your warfare. One is, God has never failed in a battle yet, so He'll help you. The second thing is that it's your battle, not mine - so I hope you're winning it. You know one of the things is, you can actually tell when people arrive in church, whether they're winning. You can tell when you shake hands with someone, whether they're winning. It's all over their face, and in their spirit, and in the atmosphere that they carry, a winning attitude; or a defeated attitude.
So when we come to praise the Lord of course, some days the poor old song leader has to get into perspiration, and a sweat, and just about exhaust themselves trying to encourage people to respond to God; but you see the Bible tells us to give a sacrifice of prayer, so if it's not going well then give them a sacrifice, costly only when it's not going well. That's when it's a real sacrifice. If it's going well for you, easy to praise the Lord. It's not a sacrifice then is it? [Laughs] Okay, let's move on. So what we want to do is, we're going to go back, and we're going to look because when God took people out of Egypt, He had in mind them going into a land of promise, so He took them through a few situations where they experienced lack. Now if you're experiencing lack, that's okay. The key thing is, how will you respond? Everyone has lack at times. We all have lack at times, and there's times when you go through, and all your resources are less than the challenges you face. That's life, and it happens seasonally, you have those pressures.