Never Lost
Sometimes I’m a sore loser. I guess we all can be. My husband, my daughter, and I are a close-knit family of three. She is almost fifteen but is still not too cool to play Mario Kart, Trivial Pursuit, or Phase Ten with her old mom and dad. In our family time, we almost always play games and/or watch Shark Tank or a comic book movie. All three of us can get very competitive from time to time (my husband all the time). A couple of years ago, every time we got a free minute we played Phase Ten and he beat us every time for MONTHS… months… Even though it didn’t really matter, I would get so frustrated I would want to just sit down my cards and stop in the middle of the last phase because I knew I was going to lose. (I don’t know what kind of magic he did to win like that, but it happened and it defied all odds and logic.) Other times we’ll all three be playing Mario Kart and trying to get three gold stars on each map as a team and my husband will lose a race and threaten the lives of Toad or Princess Peach and all their family members (no worries, they are fictional characters, but I still warn him that our Amazon Alexa may pick up on what he says and get us put on a list somewhere). Anyway, he’ll be so angry and I’ll be just racing along, not caring if I win or lose, just minding my own business, driving my little car.
I can say that this happens to me in life sometimes as well. Sometimes feeling defeated will knock the wind out of me, frustrate me, and anger me. Sometimes I just take the defeat as something that doesn’t bother me and keep on moving. I don’t know if either one is good in extremes.
On the one hand, I don’t need to sit around in what feels like defeat, in anger and pouting, but I also don’t need to say, “it doesn’t matter if this thing beats me, because it doesn’t really matter”.
One of my favorite songs of recent times is “Never Lost.” My favorite version is the one featuring Joe L Barnes, Lizzie Morgan & Melvin Crispell III.
The first verse says, “He is my faithful Father, calling me out of the dark. Night cannot whisper away what He said in the light.”
We could just stop right there and call it a wrap.
First of all, He is my FAITHFUL Father. People leave us, they let us down. That is a recurring theme in my life that the enemy uses to remind me that no one wants me, no one will ever stick around, no one will like me once they are around a while, etc. I heard someone say once that the higher you place someone on a pedestal the further down and harder they can fall. It’s so true. The more faith we put in people, the more perfect we want them to be, the more it hurts when they disappoint us.
He calls us out of the dark.
AND Night cannot whisper…WHISPER away what HE SAID in the light. When we feel like we are in the dark, we cannot forget the things He said to us while we were standing in the light.
A part of the chorus I love is, “Who are you great mountain, that you should not bow low?”
Mark 11:23 says “Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.”
The thing that is huge and standing in our way has to bow and submit to the authority that is over all, the word of our Lord, our faithful Father.
“He has never lost a battle.”
I lose battles daily, multiple battles daily.
I’m trying to eat healthy, but I just walked by a bin of chips in the hallway by my office, and I ate a bag.
I’m trying to save money, but I stopped by Starbucks for an Iced Brown Sugar Oat Milk Shaken Espresso and a blueberry scone… (and drank it and ate it, also contributing to the not eating healthy).
I’m trying to have a good attitude, but I let something small ruin my whole day.
I’m trying to walk in His peace, but I let a situation work me into an almost full blown panic attack.
I could go on and on, I could fill up pages of all the battles I lose daily.
When I lose those battles, sometimes I’ve been losing them for months… years… much like Phase Ten and I want to set my cards on fire and never play again. Sometimes, it’s like Mario Kart and I lose, just like others are losing, but I don’t really mind too much, because who cares if I don’t win, if we don’t win, it’s not a big deal. I’ve gotten used to losing, so what’s one more loss right?
As I continue to be so, so human, as I let the whispers in the dark resound so much louder than the truth He has spoken over me in the warmth of the sun, I can rest assured that when I decide to stop being stubborn and let Him fight for me that I am guaranteed to come out a victor. When I fight in my strength alone I can’t do much, but when I decide to bring in the Champion, to stand on His word, to claim the victory He has promised, then I can win every time.
A study I’ve done over and over is Holy Roar: Seven Words To Change The Way You Worship. A word for worship in the Hebrew is Towdah. It means: an extension of the hand. Thanksgiving. A confession. A sacrifice of praise. Thanksgiving for things not yet received.
Sometimes we have to worship like the battle is already won even while the fighting is going on. To give thanks in advance for the victory that is coming. To remind our soul Who God is, Who we serve and what He can do. That isn’t always easy. It’s hard
sometimes to remember what it’s like to breathe in fresh, clean air in the middle of a burning building filled with smoke. It’s hard to remember what peace feels like when you’ve been in chaos for so long. What victory feels like when you’ve been losing for so long.
We don’t have to accept defeat, we don’t have to fight alone. We just have to trust the One who has never lost a battle. Who has always won and always will win.
-Ashton Banes
