Life is War. This is a common inscription you find on cars and trucks all across Accra; and I surmise to say the commonality of it indicates its universality: Everybody fights this war called Life.

Many times in the book of Joshua, God tells Joshua “only be strong and very corageous”. In the New Testament, Paul writes to the church in Corinth and says “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling of strongholds”. Did you notice Paul just said we have a “warfare”? It is ridiculous to go through life thinking everything must just fall in place. It never works like that. Show me someone who didn’t fight and I will show you a bummer.

Quite recently in my life, I was feeling low. I was feeling so low I had to raise my head to see the bottom of the pit. Yes, that low. Those are the times when you want to sing “I feel like a motherless child”. I don’t know if you’ve ever been that low but trust me, it is not a good place to be. Just when I felt I was never going to win this war, I heard the Holy Spirit clearly, “if you don’t fight this war, nobody is going to fight it for you”. That was my wake up call.

Sometimes, we just want to bury our heads in the sand hoping by the time we raise our heads, the problems have solved themselves out. No. It doesn’t work that way. You have to fight. If you are a Christian, you have to “war with the scriptures”. Never allow the wrong to become the norm. King David once said, ‘even though I fall seven times, I rise seven times’. In other words, he had no quitting sense. We all know the saying… Winners never quit and Quitters never win. It is your responsibility to fight this war called Life until you win.

Let me share a secret I learnt a while back with you. After struggling to beat looming deadlines, I had a frustrated art director who had a client service person breathing down her neck tell me “look, I choose my battles”. Wow what a deep thought.

Many times in life, we focus on winning a battle and in the end, we lose the war. What we forget is that a war is broken down into several battles but not every battle is worth fighting. When the (in)famous french footballer Zidane head-butted Materazzi in the world cup finals, he allowed an unnecessary battle to distract him from winning the war. He got red-carded and his team lost. He could have focused on winning the match and pressed charges against Materazzi later on.

We all have Materazzis in our lives. They goad us till we want to lose our cool. We’d love to show them what stuff we’re made of. My advice, look beyond them and see the bigger picture. You have a world cup to win.