Win the Daily Battle, Second Edition: Resist and Stand Firm in God's Strength

By Steve Goss

If you are a Christian, you are in a raging battle, whether you like it or not. Your only choice is to stand and fight or to become a casualty.

Arrayed against you are the world, the devil and the flesh. They seem formidable. However, once you understand just who you are in Christ and how your enemies work, you can expect to emerge victorious from every skirmish with them.

This practical and straightforward book demystifies the spiritual battle so that you can live as the conqueror you now are in Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Release date: Mar 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9780281087587

Steve Goss

Steve Goss is Executive Director of Freedom in Christ Ministries International and Freedom in Christ Ministries UK. He presents the FIC course. He has a background in marketing. He is married to Zoe and they have two daughters.

Book preview

Excerpts from unsolicited letters and emails received by Freedom In Christ Ministries from people who have received the teaching in this series:

‘I can truly say that, after finding Jesus as my Saviour, entering into the fullness of my spiritual freedom in Christ has been the most significant moment of my life.’

‘The release that I felt as years of shame and bondage were lifted from me is hard to describe. I really do not know what to say – I feel like a human being again!’

‘My life has been transformed. It truly was like walking from darkness back into light again.’

‘FICM provided the tool which has allowed me to break the sin–confess, sin–confess cycle. I am full of hope for the future.’

‘I am a new person and everyone has seen the difference.’

‘Even though I work for a church and have done many things for God, my walk had become a laboured trudge. Yet now I feel so at peace.’

‘I have a clear head, praise Jesus – it hadn’t been clear for years! Finding my freedom in Christ has changed my life.’

‘The everyday problems of life that once seemed so insurmountable are now well in perspective and I am able to tackle most of them in a calm and rational way.’

‘It has transformed my life. I now know God always loves me even though sometimes I might stray from the path He has mapped out for me. I know God is always there, and I marvel at the truth about His kindness, His generosity and His feelings towards me.’

‘When my ex-husband left, I felt like half a person. I didn’t think I should be alone and I didn’t feel whole. Those feelings have gone. I feel fulfilled in who I am and am happy with my life.’

Steve’s background is in marketing and for many years he ran his own mail-order business. He started Freedom In Christ Ministries’ UK office in 1999, thinking that he would devote every Friday afternoon to it. However, it soon took over his life and he gave up his business in order to run it full time.

He wrote The Freedom In Christ Course which is based on the teaching of Freedom In Christ’s founder, Dr Neil T. Anderson. It quickly became a bestseller and has now been used by well over five hundred thousand people in the UK alone and has been translated into around forty languages. He is the author of five further books and the presenter of four further video-based courses including The Grace Course, Freed to Lead and Keys to Health, Wholeness and Fruitfulness.

In 2012, Steve became Freedom In Christ’s International Director and spearheads its work around the world (it operates in around forty countries).

His passions are discipleship and unity and he speaks regularly at events in the UK and overseas. He is engaged in writing further resources to help churches make fruitful disciples.

This book is dedicated to my wonderful wife Zoë, whose very

name (Greek for ‘spiritual life’) speaks of the ministry that God

has given us together. There is no way I could play my part

in that ministry without her constant support, hard work,

words of real wisdom and willingness to step out in faith.

Contents

Foreword

Win the daily battle

Know yourself, know your enemy

The battleground

Our enemies: the world

Our enemies: the devil

Our enemies: the flesh

More than conquerors

Notes

Foreword

As the founder of Freedom In Christ Ministries (FICM), I have been asked if I want the ministry to survive me.

No ministry built around a founder other than Jesus Christ should survive beyond its initial purpose.

Our purpose in FICM is to equip the Church worldwide, enabling it to establish people, marriages and ministries alive and free in Christ through genuine repentance and faith in God to His honour and glory. We provide resources and training so that this can happen.

Legitimate parachurch ministries have arisen and disappeared providing a unique service to the body of Christ, but never seeking to replace it. So my answer has always been: FICM as an organization is not intended to last, but the message is.

We have not yet fulfilled our purpose, so I needed to pass the baton to the next generation in keeping with Paul’s instruction in 2 Timothy 2.1–2 (

nasb

1995):

You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

It would be incredibly presumptuous to equate myself with the apostle Paul, but Steve Goss and I have had that kind of Paul-and-Timothy relationship. Steve has not only faithfully taught the message to many others, but has expanded the ministry around the world in ways that I couldn’t.

You know someone has grasped the message when they rewrite it from their own perspective using their own words, which is what these four books represent. It is the same gospel message of forgiveness, new life in Christ and freedom from the enemy.

For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church.

(1 CORINTHIANS 4.17

nasb

1995)

Dr Neil T. Anderson

Founder and President Emeritus of Freedom In Christ Ministries

Win the daily battle

As a child, I used to love snowball fights, the bigger the better. It was the nearest I could get to a real battle experience – there was real ammunition and you could score real hits. In every battle, one side would eventually be overwhelmed by the other and would suffer a relentless bombardment of snow and ice, leaving them drenched and cold. Very often at that point, one or more of them would stand up and say, ‘We don’t want to play any more.’ That was, of course, designed to bring the game to a close and stop the onslaught – not that it always worked!

I can only imagine the fear faced by soldiers in a real battle as the firepower against them seems to become overwhelming and they are in constant fear of death. If only they could stand up and say, ‘I don’t want to play any more’ and bring it to an end. But they can’t. Once they are in it, they have no option but to see it through to the bitter end.

When you became a Christian, I doubt that you realized that you were entering a spiritual war zone. Perhaps all that had been talked about up to that point was love, peace and joy. Yet the battle between good and evil runs like a thread all the way through the Bible. Satan makes his first appearance right at the start in the garden of Eden itself. He also pops up at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. And much of the book of Revelation describes the mighty battles to come.

If you are a Christian, you are in the battle whether you realize it or not – and, for that matter, whether you like it or not. Just as in a real battle, choosing not to play is not an option.

One of the most quoted Chinese people of all time is an obscure military commander who lived around 500 years before Christ. Sun Tzu wrote a series of essays on the art of war, packed with pithy statements full of wisdom. His texts are still used in military training around the world.

One of his sayings was, ‘The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.’ In the spiritual battle, our enemies are trying to do just that to us. They are trying to make us ineffective without our even realizing they are there. If we do not understand that we are in a battle, we will not fight and it will be easy to subdue us.

What does it mean for a Christian to be in a spiritual battle? Is it a real battle? If so, who or what are we fighting? Is it possible to become a casualty or are Christians somehow immune?

This book is designed to answer those key questions. It will explain the nature of the battle we are in and how it works. Once we understand that and appreciate the incredible resources we have at our disposal, we will see that there is no reason at all why we should not win this daily battle and that there is nothing whatsoever that can stop us becoming the people God wants us to be. However, if we do not understand these things, it is difficult to see how we can avoid becoming spiritual casualties.

Know yourself, know your enemy

I am especially struck by the relevance of another of Sun Tzu’s often-quoted observations to the battle faced by every Christian every day:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

In the spiritual battle, knowing both yourself and your enemy is essential. Every defeated Christian I have come across does not understand either who they are now that they are a Christian or who their enemy is; in most cases, in fact, they don’t understand either very well. When they come to understand these things and resolve outstanding issues, however, they are able to move on and become fruitful.

If you don’t know who you are in Christ, you won’t know what your capabilities are. You might give up when you could press on through to victory. If you don’t know your enemy, you might run away thinking he is stronger than you, when in fact it may all be deception.

So how can we get to know ourselves and our enemy? We could do a lot worse than turn to Paul the apostle for some help. He addresses these things in the letter he wrote to the church at Ephesus.

Let’s start with Ephesians 2.1–10, where he spells out for us exactly who our enemies are (there are three) while painting a clear picture of the huge difference between what we used to be like before we were Christians and how we are now:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live . . .

This is a ‘before and after’ passage and Paul begins here to describe the ‘before’ picture. Note that he therefore uses the past tense.

Paul says that we were dead. Now, you may from time to time struggle to get up in the morning. You may even appear a little comatose over breakfast. But, if you are managing to read this book, it is safe to say that you are not dead according to the generally accepted definition of the word – and you never have been. Clearly Paul is giving the word some other meaning, and in fact he talks about sins in which we used to live. How can we live if we are dead?

When God made Adam, He gave him a physical body, his outer person. But the really important part of him