I am telling you this story because it speaks to a real problem that so many today have when it comes to exiting some season of struggle in their life. They are impacted in such a way that it changes or forms their perspectives on life to the point that they continue to remain thinking the same way they did while they were in that difficult season right into the next one. I realize when you are in a battle you have to think about the intricacies of war. In other words, if we are at war with an adversary we have to be vigilant about the details of the battle. But when we come out of that season we have to learn how to live and possess what God has given us through a positive manner of thinking.

 

It is here that many don't know how to come out of a season of battle and take off the armor and put on the garment of praise. In fact there are many who find taking off the armor when the battle ends can be very hard to do based on their understanding of scriptures that tell us to put on the whole armor of God. If we look in the book of Ecclesiastes we find that it tells us that there is a time and season for everything. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. What many fail to do is realize that taking off the armor once a struggle has ended is appropriate in order to be able to put on the garment of praise and give thanks. You are not throwing the armor away, you are just dressing according to the moment at hand. When its war time you fight, when its peace you enjoy the freedom to relax!

 

We have to learn how to celebrate the blessing as much as we fight to get the blessing. You will need to stop and smell the roses just as much as you fight the thorns to get to the rose. You will need to learn how to leap for joy just as much as you would be willing to lay prostrate on the floor in deep intercession for the breakthrough in that area of need. If you found yourself in a car accident and received a bad case of whiplash to your neck and they had to put a brace on it, that's all fine. But when the neck heals take the neckbrace off! There are so many people today who will keep an infirmity in their life because it has provided new found benefits to where they have now become co-dependent to those perceived benefits that there are receiving due to the injury. 

 

Many times I have witnessed people come out of a season of struggle and they don't know how to possess a season of success, and if they never possess success they will never possess significance. There is not one person on the earth that has not been in a survival mode. To give an example: My grandson is playing football in Jr. High and at one of the practices he came home telling us that he had hurt his arm. Later that evening he talked his Mimi into getting him a sling for it. What we learned was that he actually was placed on the lesser team in his school and he was just discouraged about it and therefore used the injury as a way to milk the situation to his liking. The benefits: he didn't have to practice, and he received attention from his coach, team-mates, and yes, even his Mimi. However, it will cost him from being able to play in the games if he continues to hold on to the sling. 

 

Philippians 3:14 (KJV)
14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

 

If we look at that word "press" we will find that it means: pursue. Therefore, we are instructed from God's Word to pursue the mark or finish line. We need to remember that we are in a life journey which is not a sprint. It is a marathon. Whenever you are in a marathon race one of the key issues to keep in focus is that you need to keep going! Therefore, if you are in survival mode right at this current moment you will need to keep going! If you happen to be in success mode, keep going! If you are at a place of significance in your life, keep going! The only way you can lay hold of the prize is you have got to keep going.

 

If you will recall the 23rd Psalm tells us that, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil for thou are with me." Did you notice it said, "walk through." If you lay down in the fire you will be burnt beyond recognition. If you give up in the middle of a struggle you will be destroyed in the midst of it. If you decide to curl-up in a fetal position and conclude to yourself that there is no hope for you, there will probably be no hope for you. Why? It is because you have quit the one sure thing that promises to never fail us, God's Word! You must pursue the direction that the Word instructs you to go and never give up on it.

 

We must remain fluid or moving forward and declaring that reliable Word that tells us that greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. You must shout out of your spirit that if God be for me who could possibly be against me! Irregardless of how great the battle is raging, or how bad the pain is riveting and tormenting your body; there has to be something deep inside you that says I will press toward the mark for the prize of my God that cannot fail me. I will pursue the goal; I'm a superior runner and I'm going after the prize like a marathon runner. There will be times that you will feel dehydrated and there will be times that your legs will send you to the ground with excruciating cramps. There will be times in the battle where you will feel drained and wondering if the journey will ever end. But if you are going to possess the goal or prize, you've got to keep going!

 

Most struggles that spin us into survival mode are relational issues. There are some of you reading this today that has survived a season of great difficulty in your life. Maybe you have survived a medical diagnosis that didn't fair to well when it was given, but you survived what should have impaired you more significantly or possibly should have even killed you. There are financial survivors. There are times when things happen in the economy that none of us have anything to do with it, but we end up suffering under the repercussions of it just the same. Jesus told us that in this world we would experience struggles and difficulty but we are told to be of good cheer because He overcame it by His faith! The first thing that you will experience while in a season of survival mode that was caused by relationships will unfortunately be feeling of rejection. Our adversary comes to create scenarios of rejection based from lies through people that we love and care about. He will cause people to talk about your 1% mistakes or failure rather than the 99% that you do good. Therefore, our struggles will be filled with rejection, lies, and chaos.

 

David in the Bible had an opportunity on several occasions to end his struggles that he was experiencing with King Saul by simply taking his life. There is always the temptation within each struggle to get out of appropriate and godly character. It should not matter whether someone has lied about you, slandered you, and essentially brought chaos to your life. What matters is whether in the temptation you abandon or compromise your character that God has purposed for you to maintain within the struggle or survival mode that you may be presently in. Our adversary does not want our stuff as so many people believe. No, he is after your calling and purpose. How does he accomplish this? By getting you to violate your trust in God. In other words, he presses you to quit on God's Word. I heard a preacher quote Bishop T.D. Jakes the other day on the radio that fits what I am saying here, "If you have ever lived through anything that should have killed you, you ought to know or realize that you are anointed of God." 

 

Whenever you move into a season of success and significance there is conquest in that success. There is the expanding of your boundaries and territory within those successes. There is greater wealth in some cases, there is greater influence. But the thing that postures you for any of this is your ability to have a survival victory that shapes you in a positive manner. This simply comes about because you will not quit! Remember the old Rocky films. There was one episode in particular where Rocky Balboa was fighting against another fighter by the name of Apollos and he was losing really bad. Actually, I always thought Rocky looked as if he lost every battle in those movies even when they raise his arms as the winner. But in this particular film Rocky grabs a hold of Apollos with one eye completely closed over, nose profusely bleeding to the point he couldn't even breath through it and he says these words, "Apollos, I'm not going down no more!" And Apollos began to throw out his best punches at Rocky but he never once more went to the mat because of his determination. He kept going and refused to go down.

 

Don't ever judge your successes by what you saw in the struggle, but rather by what the Word tells you. Don't allow yourself to get in a mindset that concludes that you should just sit down because you decide this is as good as it is ever going to be. Within every struggle there will always be some kind of glimpse that God reveals to us to help us realize it ain't over. For David it was when the band of misfits came to the cave he was hiding in and desired to serve under him. Yes, I realize they were a bunch of confused, discontented, discouraged, broke men; but they fell in love with David. As a matter of fact the Bible tells us that it was over heard by one of them hearing David long for a drink of water from the well of Bethlehem. What did this servant do? He ran across the Philistine lines risking his own life and recovered that glass of water and brought it to David. It was here that David got a glimpse of what it was like to rule and be respected the same way that David respected and honored his king dispite Saul's evil actions toward him. 

 

Some of you are better men and women today because of the survival mode that you came out of and refused to allow it to redefine you from what God says you are. Unfortunately, there are others who continue to carry the marks and impressions upon their heart and minds that they received within their personal battles, only to have now carried them to the next battle ever keeping the same cycles that keep them battle worn and weary. These find themselves in deep depression because they have never learned how to take off the armor once the battle has ended and put on the garment of praise in the season of peace. They just keep the weight of that armor on anticipating the next battle. If you don't learn to engage in restful, refreshing times of praise to honor the One from where your help comes from, you will not be renewed in your spirit for the next struggle that will certainly come. 

 

It's not the time of ease that will produce the character of a lasting warrior in you, but rather the "struggle" to which you successfully come through without it changing your resolve to the faithfulness of your God in it, or the temptation to quit on that reliable word of promise by taking things in your own hands. Before a shift or change in the struggle there is always an all out war by the devil to get you to violate your trust in God. David was just a few days a way from God's judgment falling upon King Saul which would end his struggle with the king once and for all. But not once did David let go of his character to take things in his own hands by destroying the king that God had ordained. He resolved in himself to respect and honor those whom God has raised up irregardless of their actions; and if they are to be removed, even if David had a word from the prophet of God that he would be the next king of Israel, it would have to be God and not David to remove him.

1 Samuel 18:14-15 (KJV)
14 And David behaved himself wisely in all his ways; and the LORD was with him.
15 Wherefore when Saul saw that he behaved himself very wisely, he was afraid of him.

 

Handle yourself with wisdom and never let go of what God said even though the battle intensifies itself. We have blessed promises from God that will never fail those who place their trust in them!