I sat on a dirty couch, surrounded with dirty toys, in a building filled with people who seemed to only care about themselves. 

My parents were in court, fighting for the rights of two little girls we were fostering, and I was, once again, stuck in the waiting room with my little siblings. Just… waiting. With absolutely nothing I could do. 

Everything was messed up in ways it was never supposed to be. Ways that would take days and chapters to understand. But the one simple fact was:

I couldn’t do anything to make it better. 

I sat there, smiling at the worker watching us and joking with my little siblings, but inside my head I was a broken record, repeating the same phrase over and over. “God, fight for us.” 

“We can’t do this, Lord.”

“Fight for those children.”

“Fight for us.”

“Please, I need you.”

It’s a phrase I’ve come to pray so many times over now; in the dark of my room late at night, in the car as the world goes flashing by, outside in the grey of the evening as problem upon problem piles up. 

Fight for me.

I can’t do it.

Dear Rose, you can’t fight forever.

The world has tumbled upside down: maybe someone you love is hurting, maybe you were just diagnosed with an illness that may never go away, maybe your family’s relationships are strained and almost broken, or maybe a hundred other things have simply gone wrong. 

And you just need to make it right. To fix everything, succeed, be perfect, run a thousand miles per hour to stay ahead of it all. 

I know what that is like. 

But dear warrior, you can’t keep it up. You can’t fight forever. We’re human. We get tired, we make mistakes, and sometimes we can’t fix it. Sometimes the world gets so twisted that we feel like we’re left standing in the middle of the battle, sword in hand, no clue where to strike first. 

And that is okay.

You are not defined by what you can and can’t do. 

You are not defined by your failure to make everything all right.

You are defined by Jesus, the almighty King who loves you so much He died for you. Not because of anything you could do, but simply because you… are you. 

And because He loves you, the same King will fight for you.

God has promised to fight for you, so let Him fight. 

“The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace” (Exodus 14:14 KJV).

I stumbled upon Exodus 14:14 around the time we first started fostering, and it became my anthem. That verse gives a promise, that you don’t have to do it all yourself. That all you have to do is trust Jesus. That no matter how much is against you, or how hard things get, God can and will make a way.

Maybe you don’t know how the battle is going to end. But God already knows the ending, just as He knows the answers to all the questions raging in your mind right now.

Giving the battle you are facing over to God does not mean you’ll wake up in the morning to victory. It doesn’t mean everything will suddenly become clearer, or all your problems will suddenly disappear.

My family spent years facing down people who said we were unfit to adopt because we are Christians. We didn’t see God’s hand working right away; it took time. And now, looking back, I can see His perfect plan: in the people He brought to help us, in every disappointment, and every little victory. 

Sometimes God fighting for you doesn’t look like clashing swords and huge, spectacular miracles. Sometimes God fighting for you looks like a person saying something kind just as you begin to lose hope, or the sun rising after a long night, or an answer coming just when you need it most. 

In Exodus 14, the Israelites were about to be overtaken by the Egyptians. There they were, cornered between a vast, churning sea and a raging army. 

And do you know what God did? He fought. 

He told the Israelites to stand still, to fear not, to be at peace. And when they needed it most, God parted the waters, opening a way for them to travel through.

God did not just save you to then toss you into the waves to fend for yourself. He is willing to guide you through the waters, and to raise up His sword when your enemies come crashing down on you. 

As Elisha said in 2 Kings 6:16 (KJV), “…Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.” 

Our God is the Lord and Creator of everything! He has the power of death and life, darkness and light. And He has the power to fight the battle you are facing—and make it turn out for good. 

He will see you through the battle. 

  “The LORD will perfect that which concerneth me: thy mercy, O LORD, endureth for ever: forsake not the works of thine own hands” (Psalms 138:8 KJV).  

A few months ago, while the world was launching into quarantine, God brought a battle to an end. After four years of fighting, we officially adopted those two little girls. 

Dear Rose, know this: God will see you through the battle.

He won’t abandon you mid-fight.

He won’t toss you a weapon and say, “Good luck!”

He won’t leave you on that battleground forever.

“Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:” (Philippians 1:6 KJV).

Maybe it won’t go according to your plan. Maybe it will still hurt. And maybe the battle you are facing will take much longer to overcome than you ever thought it would. But God will see you through it. He will fight for you, and He will win. As it says in Psalms 27:14 (KJV), “Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.”

You don’t have to fight the battle alone; you don’t have to run yourself ragged trying to make everything right again. Give the battle to Jesus.

He will fight for you.