OUR TEXT
“Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.”
1 Timothy 6:12, KJV
INTRODUCTION
We can take hold of eternal life (the divine nature) only as we fight the good fight of faith. And if we want to fight that good fight, then we must do all we can to avoid fighting other fights that are not good fights.
We are reminded in Ephesians 6:12 that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
If we want to fight against Satan and his hosts of wickedness, then we must decide never to fight with flesh and blood. A lot of our spiritual energy is drained away when we fight with human beings. Our calling is to fight Satan – not flesh and blood. Satan has his agents within our flesh – our lusts. And these lusts are always seeking to divert our attention towards people and away from the real enemy Satan.
THE REASON FOR OUR UNREST
So much of unrest in the hearts of believers is caused by struggling with flesh and blood. We may not struggle with people with words. The person we have a problem with may even be a thousand miles away. But we can have an inward struggle with him in our thoughts and thus come to unrest and be weakened in our fight against Satan.
HOW TO FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH
If we wake up in the middle of the night, then we must keep a watch on our thoughts. Perhaps the best thing to do at such times is to pray or to praise God. Otherwise we can give room to Satan by thinking of others with whom we don’t have a good relationship and very soon our thoughts can become bad ones. Then we will begin to battle flesh and blood in our thoughts and be incapacitated for the real spiritual warfare.
Let us, therefore, make a firm decision in our lives that we will never ever enter into a controversy or an argument with any fellow human being, not even in our own thoughts – no matter how great the provocation. We must always bear in mind that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood.”
There may be times when we have to disagree with our fellow believers. That may be necessary at times in order to stand for God’s truth. But if it leads to controversy and strife, then Satan will certainly get an advantage over us.
