The Battle Doesn’t Disqualify You

Do you ever feel disqualified because of the battle you are in?

Disqualified from God's plans for your life, disqualified from purpose, disqualified from your calling?

Recently, I felt the Holy Spirit speak to my heart.
“The battle doesn't disqualify you; it is the battle that qualifies you."

Battles have this way of making your head spin, blurring vision and draining strength. Battles have a way of yelling at you, screaming at your inadequacy, fighting to strip you of courage, blocking the view of the road ahead.
And if we allow the voice of the battle, the voice of the forces against us, to be the inner dialogue of our heart, we will lose sight of the plans and purposes of God for our life. Our courage will wain, our strength will drain, and our hope will faint.

We need another dialogue!

We need a voice that sits above the battle. A dialogue beyond the fray. A voice that for centuries has carved and called forth heroes and heroines through the landscape of battle. A sound of power, peace, victory, courage and hope.

The voice of God.

We come under a slippery and damaging deception that saints are forged in fields of peace, and heroes stand on platforms of perfection.

But history tells us otherwise. Heroes and heroines rise on the wings of great and mighty battles.
Saints are forged in the fire, and fathers of faith emerge from a furnace of affliction.

King David wasn't qualified in the cushy courtrooms of the King but alone in the wilderness fighting lions and bears. These battles qualified David to fight the giants that would seek to defeat the people of God. David didn't sit back and let the lions and bears take a sheep or take his life and destiny; instead, he grabbed the lion by its mane and killed it.

The lion would have roared. The bear would have sought to control the dialogue. But David had an inner dialogue deeper than the roar of the lion. And the courage, conviction and strength of that inner voice was the courage, conviction and strength that called David to face and defeat Goliath and ultimately lead the people of God.

The battle didn't disqualify David; the battle qualified David.

The battle doesn’t disqualify YOU; the battle qualifies YOU.