FIGHT!

"Everything in the Christian life is a fight. I have to fight to read my Bible. I have to fight to pray. I have to fight to believe. I have to fight to love those I should love most. I have to fight for joy. It's the desperate person who fights because you have no other hope apart from Him. So fight!" -Paul Washer

I respect Paul Washer as a pastor, as a man, as a brother in the Lord. His words of wisdom, derived from Scripture, often sharply convict or pleasantly encourage my heart. This morning, I was encouraged, encouraged because I was reminded of the reality of the life we live in Christ.

As believers we have been called OUT of this world. We are no longer slaves to sin and we are merely sojourners walking through a land that is not our home. And yet we are not yet perfect, and will not be, until that day when we do go home and we are made like Christ. Therefore, we wage a war on a daily basis with a fleshly body that has yet to be redeemed (Romans 8:23) and with spiritual forces of darkness that are seeking to destroy (Ephesians 6:12). And quite often we have the tendency to get discouraged. We as children of God LONG for the day when our faith will be made sight, when we will be made whole and when sin will no longer be a reality. Our hearts desire has been changed, we long to glorify Him and to love Him, and to obey Him, and yet we fail miserably day after day to do that to the fullest capacity.

I have felt often times in my Christian life as if something was wrong when I "struggled" to find joy or when I "struggled" to read the Word, thinking that I was just not "spiritual" enough, after all I am His so I shouldn't be struggling with the simpliest of pursuits of Godliness. I looked at other believers, who from the outside seemed to have mastered their quiet times, were prayer warriors, or who somehow seemed to always be beaming with joy and wondered why I struggled at times. Was I the only one? I knew that struggle against sin was "normal" as we read in Hebrews 12, but was a struggle in Godly pursuits normal?

The reality I came to realize, well God taught me through His Word and through His Spirit, that YES, struggle is part of the Christian life. You are being pruned by the master gardner to bear much fruit as you become more like Christ. You are denying your flesh every moment of every day when you say yes to obedience in Christ and no to the temptation of the world. You are striving to stand for what is right and true in a world that condemns good and smiles on perversion. You are seeking to obey and have an army of demons who are seeking to make you fail. Your life has become a battlefield the moment you are redeemed. Your mind is a battlefield in which Truth fights to win over emotion, evil, and perversion. You are in an all out war for your effectiveness as a believer with the enemy. He wants nothing more than to destroy your pursuit of godliness and your usefulness for the kingdom. The struggles you face everyday will not get easier as you mature in the Lord, often times they will only get harder. Spurgeon once said that "Satan saves his fiercest arrows for God's most effective".

Look at the saints of old, the Davids, the Pauls, the Timothys, the Martin Luthers, the John Calvins, the Charles Spurgeons, the Puritans...were their lives easy? Far from it. They talk of struggles often in their works, and yet we look at them and marvel at their faithfulness to our Savior. You see satan is a skilled adversary. He has been doing this much longer than we have been alive. He knows the best tactics, the weaknesses of humanity and the greatest temptations he can offer. We must realize, with the saints before us, that WE ARE IN THE GREATEST BATTLE EVER FOUGHT. He has lost the battle for our souls because we have been found in Christ BUT that doesn't stop the deception and evil practices

There is HOPE in this struggle however, hope that promises VICTORY for all who are in Christ. Romans 8:37 promises, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." How amazing is that Truth?! We can say NO to sin, we can so NO to struggle and overcome ANYTHING through the one who has saved and redeemed us from the pit (Philippians 4:13), to be His forever!

So realize that the struggle will continue. Each and every day there will be a war to be fought, there will be a battle for our time, for our minds, for our affections, for our money, for our relationships, for our tongues, for our day...and yet we can FIGHT and WIN! We can fight by putting on His armor (Ephesians 6), by renewing our mind (Romans 12:2), and by keeping our eyes fixed on the author and perfector of our faith (Hebrews 12:1-2). So in our struggle, let us FIGHT, so that one day we will be able to say as Paul said..."I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." -1 Timothy 4:7