![]() The fight and the race are images of keeping faith. So, he had three pictures: I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course like an athlete, and I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:7–8, at the end of his life, So we are in a warfare, but our main enemy is sin, which is rooted in unbelief. ![]() Then we cry out for protection in hard neighborhoods, or in hard mission settings. Then we cry out for the sickness all around us, that God will deliver us from that third enemy. He can lead other people to persecute them, but he can’t condemn them and destroy them. He can make them see green things on the room at night. He can tempt them and lead them into sin, but it’s the sin that’s terrible, not Satan. So I say, “Lord, in my warfare with my wife tonight I pray that you would protect her, and Abraham, and Benjamin, and Karsten and Shelly, and Barnabas, and Talitha, from committing sin.” That’s my number one concern for my family. What I have in mind there is somebody breaking into my house and hitting me over the head, or burning my house down, or persecution - only persecution doesn’t begin with S. None of us wants it to come to our families though it often does. Sin is the only enemy that will damn you at the judgment. And I’ll pray them in the order of their importance against me. I’ll tell you how I pray with my wife at night: We get down on our knees, and very often I use four S’s that I pray against. I don’t think Satan is the main enemy I think he’s the second main enemy. That’s why I preached the series years ago called Battling Unbelief, and then wrote Future Grace based on it. The warfare we’re in is primarily a warfare against unbelief. We are to be fighters of the good fight - namely, the fight of faith, the good fight of faith - meaning, whatever it takes, whatever roughhousing, whatever shrewdness, whatever tactics, whatever strategies it takes to build faith in our lives and the lives of people we care about that’s the fight we’ll fight. We’re not to be a mean-spirited group of people who pick fights. There’s a good fight, brothers, to be fought. In 1 Timothy 6:12, Paul says to the younger man, Timothy, “Fight the good fight of the faith.” Fight the good fight. So let me spend a few minutes setting the stage with this idea of men at war, and the biblical foundations of thinking that way: that we are at war, and in what sense we’re at war. Somewhere in the book on missions I say, “You will not to know what prayer is for until you know that life is war.” Somebody gave me the title for this time together: “Men at War: Pursuing an Undistracted Passion for God.” I love the title it’s a great title.
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