Fighting For Christ

God, we grow weary. We are tired and we need supplication. We are weak and we need strength. We feel like failures and we need reassurance of Your grace. We are filthy and we need cleansing. The body of Christ is persecuted and becomes tired of the repercussions of following a great God. Though we know that the sufferings of this present time are not to be compared to the glory that is to come, we compare. Shake us, break us, and move us. We no longer care what it takes for us to become what You wish, we just wish that we could become that very thing. We give up ourselves and give in to You. Love us, keep us, and help us endure. In Jesus name, Amen.

Have you ever been in a fight? If you have, was it fun? Did you get hit in the face, punched in the stomach, or slammed to the ground and say to yourself "I wanna do this again"? What about how tiring fighting is. Do you get tired when you fight? UFC fighters fight for five-minute rounds and are exhausted by the end. Fighting is, in my opinion, the most strenuous exercise someone can do. It involves at least two people who are trying their hardest to win, which means one person will inevitably lose. There is no possibility of someone coming out of a fight and both people winning; one has lost, and one has won.

I bring up the strenuous actions that fighting involves because Paul calls our faith a "fight." He says "fight the good fight of the faith." I feel assured that Paul would not have used the word "fight" if walking in the faith of Christ was easy. He used the word fight to convey how difficult walking with Jesus can be. It is exhausting, strenuous, and most importantly, there is opposition.

In our walk, we fight against the Spirit world and it's temptations. We fight against the flesh and the desires within us. We fight against persecutions by trying to rejoice in them. We battle anxiety, depression, lust, deformity, anger, heart-break, isolation, perversity, and many other antagonists. Paul calls our faith a fight because it is so difficult to do. He calls it good because it is the right thing to do. And he calls it faith because it is only through Jesus that the fight can be fought.

We have pronounced ourselves Christians, we have taken the name of Jesus Christ upon ourselves, what will you do with it? Will you fight for his name, enduring hardship, affliction, trials, temptations? Or will you flee from his name and embrace the evil one? Choose wisely, but do not misrepresent the name of Christ. We are to fight, and when we are hit, may we surround each other with love and may Jesus take the blow with us; for our sufferings are a cross we cannot bear on our own. The fight of the faith is not a fight to win, but a fight to endure. God has already won, it's just a matter of who is on the winning side.

"Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses." - 1 Timothy 6:12