The Good Fight of Faith

The first thing we must understand about faith is that faith is the only thing that pleases God. Hebrews 11.6 tells us that God is not pleased by anything but our faith. We can be sacrificial, sanctimonious, compassionate, and upright, but without faith God is not pleased with any of it. But the converse is also true: faith pleases God! When God sees his sons and daughters walking in faith, refusing to doubt, refusing to be moved by what they see in the natural, he is truly and fully pleased! Faith pleases God more than sacrifice! This is an important point for us to understand! We all think that if we pray more, God will be more pleased. But so much of our praying is simply a religious substitute for our poor faith, and God isn't pleased with it at all. You can pray for hours, fast for weeks, and memorize every Scripture in the Bible, but if you aren't believing for what you are praying for and trusting in what you are memorizing, it is all religious nonsense!

In fact, James tells us that the person who doubts is like a wave tossed by every wind (James 1:6). A wind of adversity will blow the doubter toward discouragement, and a wind of victory will blow the doubter toward encouragement. But none of it sticks, because the doubter is double-minded and unstable in all his ways (1:8). The instability that comes from doubt makes us feel powerless, like a wave that is doomed to be driven in whatever direction the wind blows. Doubters feel that they are out of control, that they live on an emotional roller coaster... they feel powerless and helpless and incapable of moving anything in any direction. When I studied English Literature in College I learned a poem that exemplifies the worldview of the doubter:

Life, the hound: equivocal
comes at a bound
either to rend you or befriend you.
I cannot tell the hound's intent
till he has sprung at my bare hand
with tooth or tongue.
Till then I stand and await the event.

This poem views life from a perspective of passivity and powerlessness: life is a hound that will either bite you or lick you, and all you can do is wait to see what happens! The Bible teaches us that life is a gift, rather than an event. Jesus said that he came that we might have [or possess] life, and have it excessively (John 10:10). If life is a gift that you possess through Christ, then the question is not how is life treating you? The question is how are you treating life? That is, what are you doing to protect, cultivate, and utilize the precious gift of life that you received from Jesus Christ? Or better, do you even know what to do with that gift?

Three times Paul speaks of the fight for faith as "the good fight" (1 Timothy 1:18-19; 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:7). When I was younger we used to all gather around my uncle's big screen T.V. if there was a good fight. There are fights that are not good fights, and they are not worth watching. But the good fight? You and your friends will pitch in for pay-per-view to see that! Paul refers to the fight for faith as "the good fight" because it is the only fight worth fighting. "Fight the good fight of faith," says the apostle to his spiritual son, Timothy. "Lay hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses" (1 Timothy 6:12). The "good fight" corresponds to the "good confession." The good confession is the confession of the lordship of Jesus Christ, and through it flows the gift of eternal life. But the good fight follows the good confession because once the gift of eternal life is given through faith in Jesus Christ, the enemy of your soul makes it his chief goal to see to it that you live beneath your privilege as a child of God. Paul says "lay hold of the eternal life to which you were called." The good fight of faith is the fight to lay hold of, to grasp and hold onto, to obtain and maintain all of the prerogatives of the gift of eternal life, and to manifest them on a daily basis!

The devil is only interested in attacking one thing: your faith! He attacks your finances, but only to get to your faith. He attacks your family, but only to get to your faith. He attacks your health, but only to get to your faith. His goal is to get you to stop believing, to stop standing, to surrender your confidence and to start doubting. Because if he can get you to doubt, he can move you from solid ground to shaky ground. Peter was called the rock because of his confession of faith. But before he lived that out he was moved by the wind and the waves and Jesus took him by the hand and said, "Why did you doubt?" You would have been unmovable if you hadn't doubted! Nothing would have shaken you if you just hadn't doubted. But once you began to doubt, you began to sink. And once you began to sink you began to cry out, "Lord save me" out of sheer desperation and powerlessness. I respond to those cries, and here I am. But I'm not pleased by them, because if you had of stood in faith, you would have continued to be a water walker. And I'd much rather give you the power to walk on water than fish you out of every wave you sink into!


If you want to stop sinking, you've got to stop doubting! You've got to stop being moved by what you see! You've got to make a decision that you are going to believe God come hell or hot water! The problem is that you are doubting because you are sinking, and you are sinking because your doubting. You keep thinking that you will stop doubting when you stop sinking, but it doesn't work that way! That's like saying you'll stop poking holes in your tire when the air stops seeping out! That's like saying you'll stop cutting yourself when you stop bleeding! You must wake up and come back to faith, and come back quick! Don't delay, run back to the throne of grace and remind yourself of who he is!

We must always remember that the unbelieving heart is sinful and always turns from the living God (Hebrews 3:12). The goal of every demonic attack is to get you to turn your focus away from the faith realm (in which you see only what God is doing) and toward the demonic realm (in which you see only what the devil is doing). You cannot focus on what God is doing and on what the devil is doing at the same time. You can only cling to one and despise the other. You must choose to remain in the realm of faith, in the place where God is always working, always moving, always healing, blessing, creating and renewing!

The good news is that faith is the victory that overcomes the world! There is no power of opposition that can oppose your faith indefinitely. The enemy and the flesh can and will resist your believing, but that resistance cannot go on forever. The devil cannot fight a long fight! This is why the fight for faith is the good fight! Its the good fight because its a fight that you can win every time! The only way you lose that fight is if you surrender your faith! There is no other fight worth fighting than the fight to keep believing, and every devil in hell is arrayed against your believing! But you can stand against the devil by continuing to fight the good fight!

We all need rest, but you must never allow your faith to rest. We all need time off, but your faith must never take time off. We all need a vacation sometimes, but make sure your faith never takes a vacation! Your faith must be relentless in the pursuit of the manifestation of the eternal kind of life in the here and now! Its not enough to know you're going to heaven when you die! You are called to live an eternal kind of life now! You can and will have it if you lay hold of it by faith!