You can look at the Old Testament story of Joseph to see a perfect example of someone who successfully overcame resistance. Faithfulness and persistence were keys to his success but look at all the obstacles he had to overcome to get there; he had a dream of great success and immediately there was resistance: his brothers’ jealousy drove them to throw him into a pit. When they pulled him out, they sold him into slavery!

While in slavery he became the head servant for an Egyptian army captain named Potiphar. While at Potiphar’s estate Joseph became a trusted overseer, but before long there was greater resistance: he was falsely convicted as a rapist and jailed! In this situation, anyone would probably give up, but he kept pressing his battle. After 13 years of contending, he was moved from the dungeon to the presidency, within one second! He was finally fulfilling his God given dream; but what is he doing all along the way? He was pressing the battle at every opportunity. When disappointment came, he did not allow it to turn to disillusionment. So, I say to you, do not allow your present disappointments to turn to deception. Press the battle, child of God!

Years after Joseph passed away, the children of Israel faced resistance when they were enslaved for 400 years. They experienced persecution and suffering at the hand of their Egyptian taskmasters. How would you feel being a slave, owned by someone else as property, for four hundred years? The children of Israel cried out for deliverance so God sent a man named Moses to break the resistance. God, in effect, said, “Moses, I want you to press the battle. It is time! I have heard my children’s cry!”

Let me tell you, that is the first sign of somebody that is coming out of bondage. They begin to cry out to God. They still believe Hebrews 11:6,

“But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

They believe not only that “God is,” but that He is a “rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” They are operating in the Spirit to press the battle. They are learning to disregard what the enemy might say to them; they know he is a liar! They are not focusing on what the circumstances might say to them. Instead they boldly declare, “Regardless, I am going to press in to God and find my answer. I am going to find the strength to break through!”

Sometimes we can cause our own resistance. Moses was chosen of God, but in Exodus 2:11-15 we read that he stepped out in his own strength by slaying an Egyptian. This mistake cost him forty years in the desert; but out in that desert he had an encounter with God in the form of a burning bush. It put a fierce determination on the inside of him. He led the children of Israel for 40 years in the wilderness pressing the battle in order to enter the Promise Land. Even though he never entered the Promise Land, you can still sense the vitality of Moses’ persistence!

Have you ever watched kids play video games? They start out with mediocre weapons and fight weak enemies. But every time you step up to a new level, the enemies become more intimidating and difficult to defeat. Eventually, you get to the top level and there is one huge, hairy demon that you have to fight. You understand what I am talking about. It is the most formidable foe that you face in the video game. Joyce Meyer says it this way, “New level, new devil.” Welcome to a new level! Every time you come into a higher plane with God you will have some new enemies to defeat.

I am telling you, choose today what you are going to do. Will you go in farther and possess what God has for you? Or, will you back off and say, “Hey, this has been great. We have experienced revival, and it is been powerful, but I have had all the revival and refreshing I want, thank you.” You can only make it to the next level when you persevere. It is a choice whether to keep going or to quit. At each new level there will be new challenges, so be ready soldier. There will always be opportunities to overcome but you can make it with God’s help. Let me encourage you; press on to the higher level. Your greatest victories lie ahead. Once you start to press the battle the enemy will begin to actively resist you. You must learn to counter this if you are to go up to the level God wants you to achieve.

Look at Leviticus 20:24,

“But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the LORD your God, which have separated you from other people.” (emphasis added)

According to the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon, the word “inherit” is from the original Hebrew, yarash, meaning, “to seize, dispossess, take possession off, inherit, disinherit, occupy, or to be an heir.”

God has set the body of Christ in battle formation to secure what He has for them to inherit. That means that you need to strap on the full armor of God, soldier! You are going to have to dispossess the enemy because he is a squatter on your land. There is somebody occupying your property! Receiving this kind of inheritance requires some effort on your part. You are not going to receive it without a fight.

The true believer has a unique quality: they like a good fight. I am talking about a spiritual fight. When you are confident about using your weaponry, when you are sure that the Greater One is on the inside of you, you will have a different perspective on the battles you face. Nothing will satisfy a soldier of the cross until they actively partake in what God has designed for them to do. You are designed with gifts, weapons, and talents. You are designed to use those resources in the field of battle which He is called you to fight in. Nothing will ever satisfy you until you use the weapons that God has provided you!

You cannot win wars by simply maintaining a position. An army that is not advancing is an army that is headed for defeat. After a victory, you must avoid the temptation of laying down your weapons to rest. There will be many battles during the life of a believer – not just one! No matter the number of victories you have, until the trumpet blows, there are still souls to be saved, prayers to be prayed, offerings to be given, and works to be done.

You cannot allow yourself to assume a defensive posture. You cannot say, “I have gone this far. This is where I will build a fortress. I am going to defend this particular doctrine or that one. I like it here.” Once you say this you will find out that you have not built a fortress but a tomb. In the Word there were continual opportunities for men and women of God to say, ‘I quit! I am staying right here.’ But the successful ones pressed on and did not give into that temptation; they kept pressing the battle!

In the spiritual world we see a stark contrast to what my stepfather and the Allied armies faced in 1944. We have already been given the victory through Jesus, we have domination over the enemy and we have ability to do great exploits, yet we do not see the fruit of that being walked out. I want to share with you a great discrepancy I find in the body of Christ.

In our churches today, I see many believers becoming bored, frustrated, and complacent in their walks with God. They are not laying ahold of the overflowing abundant life they are promised. Why is that? And why do so many of these same people throw in the towel whenever the smallest of pressures comes there way? The answers to these questions are simple: They have laid down their weapons and are not pressing the battle. You must put actions to your faith and fight the good fight!

Pressing the battle is this: in the face of adversity, you keep confidently and boldly advancing; in the face of overwhelming circumstances, you keep going forward. Do the right thing, set your face like flint, trusting that He, the Father, will guide you. Fight the good fight and do not quit under any circumstance!

Because we have this charge, it is imperative that we learn how to press the battle against our foe, the devil; not once, or when we feel like it, but every time he comes up against you! Even when it seems like your anointing is gone and you feel as if you cannot go another step, you must press the battle. You will hear me say ‘press the battle’ many times throughout this booklet. I am hoping that it becomes so ingrained in your spirit that the next time you face a difficult situation that is the first thing you will say: Press the Battle!

It is time for we as the Church to take up the weapons of our warfare. We cannot lay down our weapons in this fight. God is searching for an end-time army. He is searching for people who are loaded with his Word and his Spirit, and who will not flee at the first sign of resistance.

In the chilling hours before dawn on June 6th, 1944, my stepfather boarded a transport ship in England bound for the coast of France. He was a soldier in the 29th Infantry Division tasked with securing the beachhead codenamed, “Omaha.” He looked off the deck that morning to the slowly brightening skies; they were prophetically cast with heavy clouds and below him the seas churned furiously. If there was ever a morning for a soldier to not go to the battle, this was the morning.

On the distant shore, he could see the sands scattered with the dead and dying, the carnage of a first wave of infantry. The few survivors were set against a sea wall, under fire from machine guns ‘nests’ dug in on the bluffs. Between the nests massive bunkers brandishing artillery pieces defiantly fired rounds at the approaching crafts.

As my stepfather boarded the landing craft the gravity of his situation confronted him. Behind him was the safety of Britain and the entire Allied expeditionary force. Before him was an accurate concentration of firepower and the reality of death. Despite these facts, there was no turning back. A beachhead in France had to be established as a landing point for the rest of the army, and he and his fellow soldiers could not fail. It was at 7 AM when the landing craft came to a stop.

The small craft hit a sandbar a few hundred yards from the shore. The landing ramp slapped the water and a spray of bullets met the disembarking infantry. My stepfather had to wade several hundred yards to reach the beach. Many of his fellow soldiers drowned in the water because of the heavy equipment they carried. Around him, artillery fire buried landing crafts and the soldiers they carried with single shots.

The sight on the beach was more gruesome: bloody streams flowed down to the water and mangled corpses and limbs spread across the shore like a blanket. Despite the horrifying image that confronted him, he did not stop; after a one hundred yard advance he reached the sea wall. There, he and a group of soldiers began to press the battle: they poured gunfire on the enemy emplacements while fellow soldiers assaulted those positions. The fighting was intense, many times the bullets from the enemy came close but that did not stop the soldiers from doing what they had been trained. They continued to shoot while others circled to the sides of the positions and found weak points to exploit. One by one the machine gun “nests” succumbed, and small footholds were gained until the massive bunkers were infiltrated.

By noon that same day the majority of that 5 mile long beach was secure and some 34,000 men were ashore. These men would never have landed if someone had not pressed the battle against the beach; but their fight was far from over.

The fight in the hedgerows of France was equally as traumatic as the fight on the beach. The Allies had to attack blindly across rows of shrubs and trees, unsure of the strength of the enemy on the other side. During one of these attacks my stepfather’s platoon discovered they were engaging an enemy with automatic weapons. Almost immediately he was wounded by a bullet. His wounds forced him to spend many months in a field hospital recovering; he almost died of an infection, but his efforts and the efforts of many other brave soldiers had established an unshakeable foothold on the coast. Within a year Hitler was dead and Europe was free.

Look at how many times the children of Israel had victory and how God caused them to continue to keep pursuing. He took them to the river; they crossed the river. He led them to Jericho; the walls came crashing down. God would not allow them to stay in Jericho because there was much more land to be taken. They had seen a tremendous miracle. The walls came down and God commanded every one saying, ‘The walls are going to come down and you are going to go straight into the city. You are not going to find a breach. You are not going to look for a gate. I am going to knock the wall down for you and then you are to go, every man, straight into the city—straight into your possession.’

I believe that promise for you too! God is going to knock walls down for you! You will enter into your inheritance. You will possess what God has given you. Walls of resistance, sickness, lack, discrimination, and disappointment are about to come down in your life!

Wouldn’t t it have been foolish for the children of Israel, at that point, to say, ‘Let us lay down our weapons right now and let us start the Church of the “Fallen Wall denomination?”’ You might laugh at this and think it is silly, but this is exactly what believers today are doing. People are settling on one particular “facet” of the Word that they hear and building their life around it when they need the full counsel of God and the Holy Spirit to guide them. In Daniel 11:32 we read,

“…the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits.”

There is a time to celebrate. There is a time to shout, dance and praise the Lord. We can always have a praise break. What I am talking about is that we don’t let one victory or revelation cause us to think that what we have is all there is. There is always more. God has infinitely more than we could ask or think. Let’s keep pursuing all that God has for us!

In the last days, the Church’s victory will be dependent upon discernment. Your victory is dependent upon your discernment. Now, lets look back at Joshua and the children of Israel as they are about to engage in the first battle to secure the Promise Land. We read in Joshua 5:13,

“And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?”

That is an intimidating sight! I am so glad that Joshua did not cower back and say, “Oh my, the enemy has come! Let us throw in the towel right now!” No, Joshua was a warrior; he walked right up to him. Do you know why? Because he was a believer and he was armed! A believer who is armed for battle knows who they are in Christ. They know the power of the blood of Jesus. They do not look at circumstances and situations to tell them whether they need to continue holding on, they just press the battle. The enemy is no match for you if you press the battle!

Come on! It is time to stop letting fear and intimidation keep you from what God has for you. You have not because you ask not. Some of us have been too intimidated to even venture to ask. Even if the answer is no, it won’t prove lethal! You were created for victory! You were created for advancement! You can press the battle against all the junk life has thrown your way!

 When we use the weapon of the name of Jesus and when we quote the written Word, the enemy is already on the run. We are not moved by what we see. We are looking at the eternal. It says in 2 Corinthians 4:18,

“While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

You can begin right now to focus on the power of God and the favor you have in HIm. This is the time to get the sword out of its sheath and start to press the battle on the enemy. Take the Word of God and begin to speak it with authority over your situation. If you don’t know what it says about your situation – find out! God’s word coming out of your mouth will carry the same authority and power as when it did when He spoke it! You have power to press the battle over your adversaries. Life’s problems do not have to be more than temporary. 

No guts, no glory. No battle, no spoil! PRESS THE BATTLE!