Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation, and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. If anyone has an ear, let him hear | Revelation 13:7–9
Ten years ago, Charlie Sheen, who at the time was one of the stars of the top show on television, had a very public flameout. He appeared, flanked by women and fueled by drugs, while continually talking about ‘winning.’ This instantly became a hashtag that represented having a very inflated sense of your value and victories, while everyone around you can see the truth. #winning came to represent bravado and blindness. The crazy thing about it is that Sheen was not as crazy as everyone wanted to make him seem; the winning that he was celebrating was the very thing that the majority of people are chasing (both inside and outside of the church). He was at the top of his field, with enough money to get whatever he wanted; flaunting the fact that he had achieved the American dream. He was unhindered from living life on his terms. The biggest difference between him and others is that he had actually reached the destructive end of this pursuit.
If those who reach this goal can so easily be called out for it, we should all be careful with chasing the elusive goal of winning. Winning is only valuable if you are winning at the right things. One of the themes that the Bible echoes is that temporary people are really bad at knowing which things are the right ones, so we spend our time winning things that are not important. I love how DL Moody put it:
Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn’t really matter.
This is where the prophecy of the antichrist can help us. This week, I preached on Daniel 7 and the coming power that would wage war on the saints. This same warning is given to us again in Revelation 13 (above). Whether you choose to see it as a single coming event, or a cyclical pattern of human ‘progress,’ the statement is the same: God lets His people lose. The people of God are not called to win every battle on this earth, as a matter of fact, they are told that God will give their opponent victory. How does this help us when it comes to winning?
It allows us to engage much differently in many of the temporary battles we are in. This isn’t a call to apathy or pacifism, but it is a reminder that there is more involved than winning and losing. Everything that we do on this earth is a proclamation of what we believe to be true about our eternal God. If we believe that He has authority and that He will exercise all justice, then we can work toward these things with the goal of bringing glory to God rather than conquering those who stand in the way.
The church has a history of trying to bring God’s kingdom to earth by force, and it is not a good history. We tend to view success in human terms, and we do battle by earthly means. The apocalyptic promises can help us to find our hope in what God will do, so we can better understand what our part is. If He is going to exercise His power to put all things under His feet, we can embrace our weakness and live out a simple faithfulness.
This simple faithfulness begins with how Jesus taught us to pray:
Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
That is not a prayer of winning, but a prayer of submission. It is putting trust in God to win His battles, and for us to continue trusting when they don’t align with ours. We certainly have a part in this, but our part is to obey God, to the best of our abilities, whether it leads to winning or not. We can do this, knowing that any investment in God will live beyond this temporary world into His eternal kingdom. Knowing the end of the story should give us the confidence to endure when life isn’t going the way we hope.