1 Timothy 6:12
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.
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.
“Now Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him, but had departed from Saul” (1 Samuel 18:12, NKJV).
Satan envies and fears most those who have been with God in prayer and are determined to stand up and fight in faith. Satan fears even a small army of those who are girded up in faith for a fight. He cowers before those who are up on their feet and ready to resist.
Because he fears you, his design is to neutralize your fighting spirit.
The Apostle Paul taught the Colossian church, “For this reason we…do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:9-10, NKJV).
There is a thrilling Old Testament story that best illustrates what it means to be kept by the power of God. We find it in 2 Kings 6.
Benhadad, king of Syria, declared war on Israel and marched against them with a great army. As his forces advanced, he often called his war counsel into his private chambers to plan the next day’s strategy. But the prophet Elisha, moved by the Holy Spirit, kept sending word to the king of Israel, detailing every move of the enemy troops. On several occasions, the Israelites escaped defeat because of Elisha’s warnings.
Who told you that you’re unworthy, no good, useless, unusable to God? Who keeps reminding you that you’re weak, helpless, a total failure? Who told you that you’ll never measure up to God’s standard?
We all know where this voice comes from. It’s the devil himself. You hear his lies all day long, a voice that tells you God is continually angry with you. That voice comes straight from the pits of hell.
In Genesis 15, God made a glorious agreement with Abraham. He instructed the patriarch to take a female heifer, a female goat and a ram and cut them all in two. Then Abraham was to take a turtledove and a pigeon and lay them on the ground, head-to-head. Abraham did as he was instructed, and as these creatures lay bleeding, vultures began to descend on the carcasses.
As we read Hebrews 11, we find a single common denominator to the lives of the people mentioned. Each had a particular characteristic that denotes the kind of faith God loves. What was this element? Their faith was born of deep intimacy with the Lord.
The fact is that it’s impossible to have a faith that pleases God without sharing intimacy with him. What do I mean by intimacy? I’m speaking of a closeness to the Lord that comes from yearning for him. This kind of intimacy is a close personal bond, a communion. It comes when we desire the Lord more than anything else in this life.
Mark 4:35-41 relates a story of Jesus and his disciples in a boat, being tossed about on a stormy sea. As we pick up the scene, Christ has just calmed the waves with a single command. Now he turns to his disciples and asks, “How is it that you have no faith?” (Mark 4:40, NKJV).
Enoch enjoyed close fellowship with the Lord. In fact, his communion with God was so intimate that the Lord translated him to glory long before his life on earth might have ended. “By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, ‘and was not found, because God had taken him’; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God” (Hebrews 11:5, NKJV).
Chris Palmer joins Gary Wilkerson to encourage Christians at all levels of faith and stages of life to learn New Testament Greek.