LEARNING DAILY

 

1 Timothy 6:11-12, But you, Timothy, belong to God; so run from all these evil things, and follow what is right and good.  Pursue a godly life, along with faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness.  Fight the good fight (of faith) for what we believe.  Hold tight to the eternal life that God has given you, which you have confessed so well before many witnesses.  (NLT) The parentheses are my addition from other versions.

 

I will get back to Isaiah’s writings tomorrow.  Today I want to add to the writings on faith. Reread the verses above by substituting your name for Timothy’s name.  Make the verses personal!

 

Paul’s final word of encouragement to Timothy was to fight the fight of faith by walking on the narrow way that leads to eternal life in the kingdom of God! The word “fight” is from the Greek word meaning “to contend persevering against opposition and temptation”; “to strive in a contest for a prize, straining every nerve to attain to the object” (from the Vines Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words).  Paul sees the Christian life as a fight so intense that it requires each of us to persevere in being faithful in our devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ. That will more than likely cause us to have to oppose and struggle with those who do not believe in what the Bible teaches.  God calls you and me, as Believers, to stand firm in our faith and let nothing cause us to move.  When you and I gave our life to the Lord by accepting His work on the cross and His resurrection we became His.  Our joy is found in Him.  Our purpose is found in Him and we live to bring honor and glory to Him.  There is no room to follow anything or anyone else!

 

You and I are going to be challenged in our walk of faith by Satan who is constantly trying to get you off the narrow way.  He will try to convince you that you can walk with one foot on the narrow way and the other in the world.  Satan “wants to destroy or seriously weaken our faith.  He wants to push our faith from the cross to other things” (JSESB).  Our faith is going to be challenged; we fight by confidently taking hold of our salvation, the promise of eternal life that we have in Jesus Christ.  Why do we do that?  The answer is clear – we fight the good fight because every battle has already been won by Christ’s victory at the cross.  Because of that we are to face every challenge in life by faith, trusting Him to bring us victory.  In doing so, we take hold of eternal life.  Eternal life is not only for heaven but it is for us now!  We run the race set before us; we do so in confidence because we know victory over the world and Satan has already been achieved for us by faith in Jesus Christ!

 

From now on DJSB will be used to note information or quotes from the David Jeremiah Study Bible and LSSB will refer to information and quotes from the Life in the Spirit Study Bible.  I have added Jimmy Swaggart’s Expositor’s Study Bible to be referred to from now on as JSESB