I like the timing of certain things.
As you’ll recall earlier I was looking at 2 Peter 2 which encouraged folks to beware of those who are false prophets and false teachers deceiving folks. It also talked about a number of incidents where God rescued a few from a wicked environment.
In a completely unrelated development, on my way home this evening I took it upon myself to read an interview with Muhammad Ali. As I got half way through that it was just fitting to re-visit the biopic on the fighter which starred Will Smith in the title role.
Watching that in the light of what I read in 2 Peter 2 it was apparent that to live for what is true and right is a fight. It’s not just a public fight for certain hot button issues. It’s an internal fight to stick to what is right even when no one is watching. It’s a fight not for rights but for what is right.
It’s the fight for purity when there are enticements and nobody has to know. It’s the fight for honesty when you could do with the extra that could help but requires a little bending of the rules. It’s the fight for sustaining and restoring relationships even when gross act of wrong have damaged them. It’s the fight to be focussed on what the Kingdom means in reaching out to the undesirables when forces continue to be at work to demonise them, oppress them and alienate them all while keeping a veneer of respectability.
It’s a fight every day, it’s a fight every night. It is not primarily my fight. It is a fight that has already seen the knock out blow given at Calvary where a man died but defeated death. That defeat meant anyone in His corner would likewise be in a position to be a victor in the fight as long as they remained in His corner.
In as much as I struggle, knowing that the winner has already been hailed and He now lives inside me, makes the struggle bearable. It means for whatever punch I get, whatever blow to the solar plexus, whatever jab, may have me down, but it won’t have me out.
The truly beautiful thing is that when I rest in Him, He does the fighting. The fight does not call for physical aggression, it does not call for verbal abuse. On the contrary, it takes evil and it gives blessing in return. It absorbs the hurt and by the grace of the one whose wounds made us whole, it enables us not to become offended, bitter and twisted by it.
As He has won the fight, so He invites us to experience the victory in every element of our lives.
A victory only gained in the fight for right.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 