Bill Perkins built Six Battles Every Man Must Win: and the Ancient Secrets You’ll Need to Succeed on one of the stranger passages in the Old Testament. Tyndale Momentum published this edition in April 2011 at 160 pages. The book first appeared in 2004 under a different ISBN, so check which one you are ordering if edition matters to you.
The passage it is built on
2 Samuel 23 lists David’s mighty men, and it is mostly a roster with brief notes attached. One man stood in a barley field and defended it alone when everyone else ran. One went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. Three broke through an enemy line to fetch David a drink of water from a well he had mentioned wanting, and David poured it out on the ground because he would not drink what men had risked their lives for.
Perkins’ point is that these were not men with impressive backgrounds. Several came to David when he was a fugitive and they were, in the text’s own words, in distress, in debt, and discontented. They became the finest fighting men in Israel anyway.
That is a genuinely good foundation for a book aimed at men who feel disqualified.
What it covers
Six battles, drawn out of those accounts and applied to faith, integrity, accountability, and the ordinary business of not quitting. Perkins writes conversationally and moves quickly.
The barley field is the image worth keeping. A man defending an unremarkable patch of ground because it was his to defend, when leaving would have been reasonable and nobody would have blamed him. Most of what a man is actually asked to do looks like that rather than like a lion in a pit.
Honest notes
The previous version of this review contained a fabricated quotation: a line about making “truth applicable in a way that can truly change your world,” presented in quotation marks and attributed to a reviewer. It was not sourced and could not be traced. It has been removed, along with the review team it was attributed to, which did not exist.
That review also credited the book with reflection questions and action steps at the end of every chapter. I could not verify those. Check the preview before ordering for a group.
Fair limitation: warrior and battle framing is heavily worked ground in men’s ministry, and if you have read several of these the shape will be familiar. What distinguishes this one is the text it stays anchored to. When Perkins is walking through 2 Samuel 23 he is on solid ground. The further he gets from it, the more it sounds like every other book in the category.
Who should read it
A man who thinks his history rules him out. Anyone who responds to Old Testament narrative more than to abstract teaching. Men’s groups that want something short and want to actually read the passage alongside it.
Skip it if battle language wears on you, or if you want careful exposition rather than application drawn from narrative.
Six Battles Every Man Must Win on Amazon