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
When Israel crossed over the river Jordan into the Promised Land, they entered into a new experience of warfare.
God had fought for them to bring them out of Egypt.
They had fought against God as He spent 40 years getting Egypt out of them.
And now, standing on the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the land that God had given them – they now had to fight to possess what was already theirs.
It was theirs, but they had to fight to possess it.
The same thing is true under the new covenant.
Jesus paid the price to bring your spirit out of darkness into eternal life.
Right now, because you’ve put your trust in Jesus, you have eternal life right now in your Spirit.
You have a power, a vitality, a wealth of resources and relationship with God on the inside of your Spirit, which is the real you.
But to benefit from it right now, to be able to possess what’s already yours…you’re going to have to fight for it.
Inherent to a fight is resistance, opposition and conflict.
You’re going to have to deal with those for yourself…but not by yourself.
God is with you, God is for you, and He has given you every promise because of the price Jesus paid through dying on the cross.
Your part is simple, but not easy or comfortable.
All you have to do is fight for it, insist on it, refuse to compromise for anything less than it, speak it, claim it, persist for it, be belligerent about it and dogmatic about it, be forceful and violent about it.
You do all this not so you can have it.
You do this because you are fully persuaded (faith…pistis) that it is already yours.
And maybe that’s the real fight.
To fully persuade yourself that everything God promised in His word is actually yours and that you can have it now.
Because when you see that it’s yours…and have a personal conviction about possessing it…then you’ll fight for it.