Greater Victories

November 14, 2013

By David Brandt Berg

You never have a victory without a battle, and there are some battles you have to fight your whole life until your dying day. But you have to keep getting the victory. You can’t just “forsake all” once and for all.1 You’ve got to keep “forsaking all” every day. You can’t just be a martyr one day; you’re a martyr all your life. It’s something you have to do almost every day—“die daily.”2

Life for the Lord is not something about which you say, “Well, hallelujah, I got that victory! I’ve won the battle and the war is over, and now I’m going to settle down and be selfish and live just for myself.”

David said, “I will not give unto the Lord of that which hath cost me nothing.”3 He was saying, “It’s got to cost to be worth something. It’s got to be a sacrifice.” What is a sacrifice? It’s something you lay on the altar; it’s something you kill.

Every day He’ll probably have you sacrifice a little more to see if He can trust you with more responsibility, if you can become stronger and tougher and a better fighter. He’ll give you more, and He’ll trust you with more if He finds out you can give up more, if He finds out you won’t get so attached to it that you won’t give it up.

When you give up something for the Lord, and then if later it is good for you, the Lord will return it someday when He can trust you with it. But if you are selfish and won’t give it up, or if you are not willing to make it a freewill offering to the Lord, then God may take a collection at some point.

You have to fight the Devil and your old self every day. You are a new creature, yes, but how that old self likes to try to pop up again! Paul said, “I’ve fought a good fight”—and probably a fair bit of it was against his old self.4 It’s a battle every day—especially with your besetting sins—“the weights and the sins that so easily beset you,” like selfishness and laziness and jealousy.5

Some people have the idea that you start off your Christian life with your biggest battles, like getting saved. Those are just little ones. That’s just a starter. Once you pass the little tests, then the Lord starts giving you bigger ones. And if you think that because you have a one-time victory you’ve got victory once and for all, you are sure to find you are mistaken.

Some people have the idea that once they’re saved, that’s all there is to it. They’ve given their heart to the Lord, but they go on living for themselves. They think they’ve already made their sacrifice, so now they don’t have to make any more.

The truth is that you keep making more and more sacrifices every day, dying daily. The Lord keeps testing you with bigger and tougher and better sacrifices, so that you grow and get stronger with every battle, and you win bigger victories all the time.

You never stop battling, you never stop winning victories, and you never stop progressing or you’ll backslide. You can never stand still. You don’t just get the victory once and for all over some besetting sin; you have to keep fighting it. But the more you win, the easier it gets, with His help.

You’ve got to keep progressing, keep sacrificing, keep forsaking, keep fighting the good fight of faith every day.

You think you have “forsaken all”? I’ve never found anybody yet who’d forsaken all forever—until they forsook their life! You have to keep forsaking every day.

Some of you seem to think you can get the victory once and for all over something and you’ll never have another battle. But that’s where the Devil is apt to test you the most: on your weak spot, your Achilles’ heel, your greatest weakness, your besetting sin, your greatest temptation. Or the one thing that is dearest to you or the area that is most important to you.

That’s the trouble with many Christians: they say, “Lord, here is my dearest Isaac, my sacrifice. I’m going to lay it on the altar now. Lord, see, it’s all Yours!” And then they pick it up and walk off with it.

Likewise, some people come to church on Sunday morning and sing, “Just as I am without one plea. I surrender all.” Then they get up and walk out with it just like they came in, and they don’t “surrender all” at all.

It says in 2 Timothy 2:3, “Endure hardness, as a good soldier”—and the more you’re a soldier, the tougher you get! The more you’re able to take, the more you’re able to give up, the more you’re able to forsake, the more you’re able to suffer, the more you’re able to sacrifice, the more you’re able to stand wounds and hurts, and the tougher, stronger soldier you become.

Every day He’ll probably have you sacrifice a little more to see if He can trust you with more responsibility, if you can become stronger and tougher and a better fighter. He’ll give you more and He’ll trust you with more if He finds out you can give up more, if He finds out you won’t get so attached to it that you won’t give it up.

It’s like the rich man who had such a big harvest and so many riches that, instead of deciding to share with others, he decided to build bigger barns to hold more for himself.6 It wasn’t the big crop that God gave him that was his sin. Being rich is not a sin. It’s being unwilling to share and give the poor those riches. It wasn’t the barns that were his sin, but that he could have been passing out food from those barns to the poor, but didn’t. It was the barniness, the selfishness of his own heart, that was the sin.

God entrusts some men with riches so that they might share them with those who need them. There have been some Christian captains of industry who felt a great responsibility for the employment of the poor. If their business failed, thousands of people would be out of work.

But they shared their riches and its fruits, their industry, their factory, their business with others. It sometimes gave employment to thousands. As long as they were faithful in their responsibility and continued to share and made it possible for others to have their fair share, God trusted them with more. The more you give, the more He will give you.

It’s too-rich industrialists and selfish capitalists who covet it all and want more than their rightful share, who withhold from the poor and withhold the hire of the laborers that reap their fields, that God is displeased with.

It says that the canker of their gold and their silver shall be a witness against them.7 In other words, the rust of it, the corrosion of it from disuse will testify that they didn’t use it and share it with others.

I’ve heard some people say, “But the Lord gave me this house. The Lord gave me this business. I couldn’t give it up now! God gave me all this money. He certainly wouldn’t expect me to forsake it now!”

That’s why He gave it to you—so you could share it! For His will, or give it to the poor, or let God use it in some way. That morning when Jesus helped the fishermen catch the biggest load of fish they had ever caught, He said, “Come, follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men!”

What if they had said, “But Lord, You just got through giving us this huge, miraculous catch of fish. You gave it to us! We shouldn’t go off and forsake it.” Instead, “they forsook all and followed Him.”8

Abraham could have said that about Isaac: “But Lord, You gave him to me. This is the child of promise, the one You gave me by a miracle! You don’t expect me to give up this child.” But no, when God told Abraham to give him back, he obeyed. Then look what God did: He gave Isaac back to Abraham and blessed him and let his seed be “as the stars of the heaven and the sands of the sea!”9

So “let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not,”10 “lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.”11

A lot of people faint on the way to the victory. They get weak and tired of sacrificing and giving, tired of dying daily, tired of fighting, and they give up.

The Devil only wins if you surrender! He can never win as long as you keep fighting. “Resist the Devil and he will flee from you.”12 As long as you keep resisting, he’ll keep fleeing. But if you stop resisting, he uses his lies and temptations and persuasions to win.

Dying daily is something you have to do every day—you’ll never get it done until you’re dead. Building the Lord’s work is something you never get done, until you die! Building a life, you never get done until you die. There is always more to do.

You can’t coast on yesterday’s victories and yesterday’s accomplishments. You can’t rest on yesterday’s laurels. “But Lord, look what I did for You yesterday!” He’ll probably reply, “But what have you done for Me today?”

My mother used to say, “There is no discharge in this war!” You fight it until the day you die in it, and die for the cause. He’s trying to make you stronger every day and make you able to give a little more, sacrifice a little more, suffer a little more, fight a little more, grow a little more.

The end purpose is that the Lord’s trying to prepare you for the next life, when in the Millennium you are going to have to learn how to run the whole world.13

God wants you to grow into the full stature of a mature Christian who is a real fighter for the Lord, a soldier, one who's able to stand a lot of responsibility, a lot of suffering, a lot of giving, and can do a big job, not just little ones.

Jesus “learned obedience through the things which He suffered.”14 Every day we learn some new obedience, just like a little child.

My mother used to say, “The worst place in the world for a Christian is a comfortable place.” It’s got to hurt a little or it’s not a sacrifice.

What makes a mother’s love for her baby so marvelous? It’s so sacrificial! She gives her all. She suffers for that baby. She gives up herself and her time, her strength, and her sleep. It costs something; it’s a sacrifice.

They wanted busy Dr. D. L. Moody to speak at a luncheon once. They said, “Well, Dr. Moody, you only have to talk about ten minutes—it won’t take much out of you.” He replied, “Then I’ll have to refuse, because if it won’t take much out of me, it’s not worth doing.”

Things that are really worthwhile cost something. This isn’t a bargain-counter religion. It’s not something you get discount prices on and a shortcut to heaven! You’ve got to go the hard way and the rough way and take the knocks, make the sacrifices, die daily and suffer, and it costs something.

Not only do you have to die daily, but you have to love daily and sacrifice daily and pay the price daily. It even hurts daily. But the greater the battle, the greater the victory.

The greater the sacrifice, the greater the reward. We may have enough victory for today, but then comes tomorrow, and we’ll have greater battles and greater victories—if we keep faithfully running the race that is set before us.15

“Greater things than these shall ye do.”16 To get greater victories, you have to keep fighting greater battles, and for greater rewards, you have to keep making greater sacrifices, and for greater joys, you have to keep suffering greater pains. To get back more, you have to keep giving up more, forsaking more. If you’re going to keep forsaking more every day, the Lord is going to keep giving you back more.

So for God’s sake, let’s learn our lesson today and get it down pat so we don’t have to learn this one over again tomorrow. But don’t get me wrong. Some things do get easier. You don’t usually have to fight the same battles over again if you get the victory. Otherwise it would be too hard and a losing game.

God bless you and help you to gain greater victories every day! It’s really thrilling to look back and see your own progress—to look back down that rugged mountain road you’ve just come over and to see you’re really getting somewhere. But it’s even more thrilling to look forward and up to heights you’re soon to attain and views you’re soon to thrill to if you keep fighting, climbing, winning, and don’t quit. 

Originally published August 1978. Adapted and republished November 2013.
Read by Peter Amsterdam.

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