This is from the blog A Word in Season:
“I have fought the good fight…”
2 Timothy 4:7
The surest sign of the life of God within His own is the unconquerable will to fight the fight of faith. Life is always the antagonist of death. Faith is the adversary of sin. Victory over sin and iniquity is the result of warfare; warfare of the life of Christ Himself. When a heart ceases to fight it ceases to live.
“Fight the good fight of the faith…”
1 Timothy 6:12
We live in a day where “faith” is presented as a legal declaration of victory (regardless of the life lived) rather than the means by which we attain the victory. Paul was ever encouraging the people of God to remain active in the battle, to be diligent in their walk and to grow in the victory of the faith. The writer of the beauty and the power of all the truths in the Book of Romans also wrote this to Timothy… “fight the good fight of faith”! Compromise and concession are the harbingers of spiritual defeat and death. Life by its very nature opposes death and the scriptures declare that the “wages of sin is death”. The life of Christ within withstands evil in all of its deceptive and destructive forms.
The fight of faith is not won in a moment, nor is the crown easily earned, but we have been given the great gift of faith, the blood of Christ and the grace of God to stand in this evil day! It requires a walk of learning, growth and development in the school of His Spirit.
“Blessed be the Lord my strength,
which teacheth my hands to war,
and my fingers to fight…”
Psalm 144:1
Faint not at the battles which assail you; do not lose heart in the intensity of the conflict for we have this promise from God:
“But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you,
and keep you from evil”
2 Thessalonians 3:3
Ω
so sharp and full of danger
that effort can nowhere be relaxed without loss”
--Huldrych Zwingli
Brian Troxel
The World is the Battleground