Overcoming Christianity truly isn’t rocket science. It is actually quite simple: Trust in God + Passionate Supplication = Answered Prayer … Answered Prayers = The Victorious Christian Life. It is that simple. Not easy, but simple. If we walk daily, hand-in-hand in a relationship of simple trust with the Lord, and boldly, expectantly pour out our needs and desires to him, he will answer our prayers, and at the end of the day, we will have lived an overcoming Christianity.
Going Deep // Focus: 1 Chronicles 5:20
They cried out to God during the battle, and he answered their prayer because they trusted in him.
As I read this short, simple, to-the-point verse, here is the first thing that hit my brain: Overcoming Christianity truly isn’t rocket science, is it? It is actually quite simple:
Trust in God + Passionate Supplication = Answered Prayer
Answered Prayers = The Victorious Christian Life
It is that simple. Not easy, but simple. It is not easy because we often allow other things to wreak havoc on that divinely order relational formula. We allow fleshly desires to corrupt our trust and tempt us to desire selfish things; we allow fear to stunt our prayer; we allow busyness and self-sufficiency to shelve our prayer life; we allow the world to push in and push the things of God to the margins; we give the devil a foothold in our lives by flirting with immorality. And the list goes on.
That being said, the biblical formula is still simple: if we walk daily, hand-in-hand in a relationship of simple trust with the Lord, and boldly, expectantly pour out our needs and desires to him, he will answer our prayers.
When we so order our lives to do the will of God, we have every human right—in fact, we have an invitation from God himself—to come before him in bold, expectant prayer, and his promise is to answer us when we call on him. When you string a bunch of those experiences together, you have the makings of an inspiring witness of a life surrendered to and used by God. And that is the victorious Christian life.
That is the kind of life God blesses. In fact, those are the kinds of people God looks for. 2 Chronicles 16:9 says, “For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”
That is what explains the testimony of the Israelite warriors we read about in 1 Chronicles 5:18-20. We don’t know much about their lives individually; we don’t have details of the battle they were in; we don’t know anything about their enemy; we just know about their trust in God. In the midst of their life and death efforts, they cried out to God. And he heard them:
There were 44,760 capable warriors in the armies of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. They were all skilled in combat and armed with shields, swords, and bows. They waged war against the Hagrites, the Jeturites, the Naphishites, and the Nodabites. They cried out to God during the battle, and he answered their prayer because they trusted in him. So the Hagrites and all their allies were defeated.
They were in a fight—a life and death struggle. They did their part, but they needed God to do his part. So they cried out to the Lord in battle, and as he had promised his people, he heard them. He heard their prayer and they achieved a victory significant enough to make it into the pages of eternal history.
That is the he kind of life I want to live—a life of ruthless trust, passionate supplication, answered prayer and victorious Christian living. My guess is you do too. Follow the relational formula and you will have that life indeed.
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