Growing up, I avoided them at all costs.
Many of my male friends loved to tussle
and fight. Even if they were the best of friends, they might scrap. Not me.
Since I was skinny and had no muscular build—and a mild nature—fighting wasn’t
on my to-do list. I didn’t care for a bloody nose, busted lip, or missing
tooth. Nor did I want a pair of broken glasses. I couldn’t see without them,
Mom and Dad had instructed me to care for them, and I didn’t want to walk
around half-blind as I had before I got them.
I can only remember two times when I
almost got into a fight. One was with my best friend. He pushed. I pushed back.
He pushed back harder. I walked away. The other was when a high school peer
accused me of doing something to his car I hadn’t done. Luckily, a friend
intervened.
Not getting into physical fights took
effort. Bullies abounded. Guys who walked around looking for a fight. Boys who
if you looked at them wrong wanted to punch you.
Paul talks about another kind of fight,
but one that’s just as challenging: the fight of faith.
The reason Paul had to fight the fight of
faith was that many folks didn’t buy into what he preached: that Jesus
Christ was the Savior of the world and that they needed to put their trust in
Him. He thought the fight was worth fighting. And he did. Through shipwrecks,
snake bites, misunderstandings, persecutions, lashings, and prison stays.
Not all believed in Paul’s day, and their
descendants have come down to our time. Some believe. Many still don’t. And
some of those who don’t want to fight those of us who do. They attempt to
squash our rights to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. They want to take
away our freedom of speech (about religion). They want to remove all trimmings
of religion from society. They want to jail us . . . to kill us.
Our fight is between good and evil . . . God
and Satan. And the struggle takes a lifetime. Good will win out in the end, but
the very end. Not necessarily before our life ends.
The good news is that we’re not alone.
Others fight with us. More importantly, God fights with us through the power of
His Spirit. Some will die in the fight. Some will avoid the fight. Some will
walk around injured from the fight. But fight we must. The cause is worth it.
People need to know God loves them and wants to forgive their sins so they can
live in heaven with Him in the future and enjoy the life He plans for them in
the present.
Don’t give up in the fight for the faith.
Prayer: Father, give us the strength to
fight the fight of faith.
Tweetable: Are you fighting the good faith?
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