This quote is not unfamiliar but I like the way Tozer
expounded it so graphically through this illustration.
There were other biblical examples but I like this one:
"They say that a fighting man leaves his
victory in the nightclub.
While I've never seen a fight and I don't
attend them, they do illustrate this truth.
They illustrate the fact that for a man to
be in fighting form, he must take care
of himself.
And when a man gains world acclaim and
becomes popular, he finds himself going
to the nightclubs and drinking and staying
up all night and loafing through the day.
Then comes the time to fight again and,
although he tries desperately to get ready
through what they call training, the
nightclubs have taken too much out of him.
So he goes into the ring and collapses in the
fifth round and people say, "How can it be
that this mighty fighter should go down
to disgrace before a man who wasn't
supposed to be good?"
The answer is that he lost the fight before
he went into the ring, not when they counted
him out there on the floor, face down and
unconscious, but as he drank wine and stayed
up and danced half the night away.
He left his victory in the nightclub."
In the same way that battles are lost before they are
fought, battles are also won before they are fought.
And how to do that? Tozer's recommendation:
prepare by prayer.
"...never let a day creep up on you. Never let
Thursday upset you because you didn't pray
Wednesday. And never let Tuesday get you
down because you were careless on Monday.
Never let 3.00 in the afternoon floor you
because you didn't pray at 7.00 in the morning.
See that you are prayed up all the time."
