Do YOU have a “FIGHTING FAITH”? Are You Sure?

We’re in the home stretch of our year-end FAITH INVENTORY in December and the final messages are the “tough ones.” This final stretch on the ramp to 2022 demands that we fully open our “honesty valve” and consider where we are on our faith walk with Christ. The subject today is a question:
  

“Do you have a ‘fighting faith’ like the Apostle Paul’s ‘good fight’ in the book of Timothy?”
  

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” 2 Timothy 4:7
  

WASTE: To use or expend carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.
  

Waste is a nasty word in almost all circumstances and settings. But when it’s used to describe a life, it blows past nasty and becomes DEVASTATING.
  

I’ve learned from this ministry’s online tribe that many Christians around the world have a sense they are wasting their lives. It’s not always described with the word waste, but the stand-in terms make the point very clear. Usually it’s something like this:
  

I wish my life had more meaning…and more purpose…and more significance.
  

Lurking in the shuttered recesses of their mind is the haunting thought that they are wasting their life. That there should be “something more” to their walk with God on earth on the way to eternity in Heaven.
  

WHY?
  

Because we all want our life to count and, at the end, KNOW that we fought God’s good fight. To know—without those painful shadows of doubt—that our labor for the Lord was not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).
  

We should want what Paul had at the end of his life—the blessing to look back without crippling regrets despite being an enemy of Christ earlier in his life. Paul KNEW that Jesus had saved him, cleansed him, and equipped him to serve God’s Kingdom.
  

But that ending is not automatic. It takes an intentional commitment by us to follow the infallible righteousness of Christ by connecting to him and his Word every day and following the example of Jesus to serve, rather than to be served (Matthew 20:28).
  

That’s the message for ALL BELIEVERS as we close out 2021 and the goal for us as we head into 2022.
  

I ask God to give me the strength to fight the good fight by WORSHIPPING JESUS above anything and everything of the world. To help me fight the good fight of faith by abiding in his Word no matter how or what I feel.
  

HOW ABOUT YOU?
  

Do you have a fighting faith?
  

“Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” 1 Timothy 6:12