The idea of being victorious appeals to everyone, but the world’s way to achieve victory calls for relying on our own strength. The typical strategies for winning teach us to focus on ourselves and compete with others to come out on top. Watching war movies, TV shows, and televised sporting events gives us a skewed vision of winning, but that kind of victory is hollow.

However, less is said about winning in spiritual warfare. This type of fight is invisible, but just as deadly and real as what we can see. Our way to this kind of victory is through Jesus Christ.

God knows that there will be days when we just don’t feel strong. It’s during those times that the devil tries to drag us down and devour us (1 Peter 5:8). He is constantly plotting and developing strategies to destroy us any way he can. Satan knows that there is no way we can withstand him on our own. However, when we rely on God’s power and strength we gain the victory over the devil. He is powerless against us when we let God fight our battles.

When Jesus died for us, He didn’t stay down for long. In three days He rose from the dead. That’s the ultimate victory. We can lay claim to His finished works when we trust Him and turn over all our struggles and battles to Him. The enemy has brought the fight to us because he knows there’s real power in the promises of God. We fight him by reading the Word, applying it to our everyday situations, guarding our thoughts, and making sure that our words are pure and honest.

During His powerful ministry on earth and despite all the miracles He worked, Jesus remained humble. We can be more like Him by resisting the urge to be prideful, and instead making a conscious decision to be humble. Being humble means to submit or comply, and complying with the Word of God clothes us in humility (1 Peter 5:5-7; James 4:6, 7). When we submit every area of our lives to God’s authority, His power can work in us and through us.

God’s grace makes an amazing difference in our lives, and the beauty of this grace is that He makes us strong when we offer Him our faults and flaws. He turns those weaknesses into strengths so that we—and others—can see His power at work (2 Corinthians 12:9, 10). When we try to force our way through a tough situation, we can end up making a mess of it.  But when we acknowledge that God is controlling our lives and we turn over that situation to Him, miracles happen.

Speaking what we believe concerning Jesus’ finished works ignites our faith in the same way that the tongues of fire ignited the disciples’ faith during Pentecost (Acts 2:1-11). Even when we don’t see the manifestation right away, we still have faith that we’ve received the victory. Faith like this is what separates us from the world.