THE FIGHT OF FAITH

THE FIGHT OF FAITH

There is a fight going on in the body of Christ. It is not a fight between the world and the church neither is it a fight between Satan and Christ. It is not a fight which the physical eyes can see nor can the human mind understand. It is a fight from within, an attack by enemies from within. It is not a fight against your health, fame or money. The arrows are not targeted at your career nor your religion neither are they focused on your family. The battle is against something which the physical eyes cannot see, something eternal, a substance, an evidence beyond physical vision. It is a fight against your FAITH.

Every Christian is in a fight of faith but surprisingly many are unaware that they are in a fight. They are ignorant of this fight because their opponents are actually wearing the same camouflage with them and bear the same name “Christians”. They seat together in church halls every Sunday with their opponents and sing songs to God. Majority of the armies in the opposing team are pastors and church leaders with a lesser percentage being church members. You listen to their messages weekly and these messages are targeted at your faith. Faith cometh by hearing but it has to be the word of God. Most of the time what you hear in church are doctrines of men and not the word of God hence your faith doesn't grow. Your faith diminishes as the day goes by and is gradually being replaced by fear. If God has not given us the spirit of fear and the messages you hear weekly make you fear then you ought to ask yourself if it’s actually God’s word or human doctrine. The bible says we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. This means that fear puts you in bondage because fear has torment. Whenever the enemies of your faith preach to you, you are being tormented by fear. This fear is an evidence that you lack the knowledge of how much you have been perfected in love. This your lack of faith has affected your boldness and makes you afraid of judgement day. You are fearfully expecting judgement and anticipating shame and disappointment on that day because you have been told lies about God and brainwashed with human doctrines. You must understand now that you are in a battle and your opponents are fellow Christians who are enemies of the cross of Christ. The most important virtue of your Christian life is obliterated weekly and you must rise up and fight back. It is the only fight you will have to fight as a believer and it is a good fight. Once you gain the victory in this fight you are eternally an overcomer and will have no need to fight any other battle in life. You must fight for your Faith with everything you’ve got.

¹² 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. {1Timothy 6:12}

⁴ For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.{1 John 5:4}

Why must I fight for my faith? Someone may be asking. Well you see, you cannot lay hold on eternal life if you don’t have faith. Your eternal life is a product of your faith and once your faith is destroyed your eternal life is destroyed alongside. So to keep possession of your eternal life you must fight to keep your faith. No faith no life. Those who will live eternally must have faith. Therefore the first reason why you should fight for your faith is to lay hold on eternal life.

 ³⁷ For, as the scripture says,

“Just a little while longer,
    and he who is coming will come;
    he will not delay.
³⁸ My righteous people, however, will believe and live;
    but if any of them turns back,
    I will not be pleased with them.”

³⁹ We are not people who turn back and are lost. Instead, we have faith and are saved.{Hebrews 10 GNT}

Soon the Lord is coming back again and He will not delay. Those who have faith will live. They are the ones whose faith has made them righteous hence they will live eternally.

²⁵ Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me will live, even though they die; ²⁶ and those who live and believe in me will never die. Do you believe this?”{John 11:25-26 GNT}

¹⁶ For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.{John 3:16 GNT}

Another reason why you must fight for your faith is that it is your faith that provokes God to save you. Your faith makes you righteous and that brings salvation to you. So if anyone must be saved such a one must have faith.

⁸ For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

⁹ Not of works, lest any man should boast.{Ephesians 2:8-9}

It is through faith that we are saved and it will take faith to also sustain our salvation. Once you lose your faith in this fight, you lose your salvation alongside. I know many people think that to lose your faith is to fall into sin and they call it backsliding. That is a misconception. To lose your faith is to depend on your works and the laws to make you good enough before God. The bible often contrasts faith with law and works not faith with sin. Hence the opposite of faith is not sin but works and the laws. This means that to backslide is to depend on works and on the laws. It is to lose your faith. It means to draw back. To remove your eyes from Jesus and fix them on yourself and how good you can be by the works of the law. He is the author and the finisher of your faith. The moment you begin to boast of your works and what you could achieve by yourself, you lose your faith and your salvation. But we are saved through faith, not by works so that no man can boast.

The third reason why you must fight to keep your faith is because God will have no pleasure in you if you lose your faith. If you draw back, His soul shall have no pleasure in you. If you draw back you will be lost but if you protect your faith your soul shall be saved.

 ³⁸ And those whose faith has made them good in God’s sight must live by faith, trusting him in everything. Otherwise, if they shrink back, God will have no pleasure in them.

³⁹ But we have never turned our backs on God and sealed our fate. No, our faith in him assures our souls’ salvation.{Hebrews 10:38-39 TLB}

So long as you keep your faith, God will continually have pleasure in you and you are assured of your soul’s salvation. You don’t doubt whether or not you will make heaven. Your faith gives you assurance that you are a citizen of heaven. Any Christian who is doubting his eternal destination has lost his faith and has backslidden. Why are most Christians uncertain of their eternal destination? The reason is because they are gradually losing the faith fight. Their opponents have preached to them that the criteria for them to be eternally saved is to keep a bunch of rules and perform certain rituals. Therefore they not being able to obey all of those rules and religious rituals are afraid and uncertain of their eternal destination. They have their eyes fixed on laws and religious rituals and have sacrificed their faith on the altars of religion. When they first believed Christ, they had all their trust in Him to take them to heaven but as soon as the faith fight started, their faith began to waver and diminish. Their belief in Christ as their righteousness and the propitiation for their sins was gradually replaced by their confidence in the flesh and on external religious ceremonies. They now measure their readiness for heaven by their self-righteousness as those who perverted the scriptures have erroneously taught them. They now doubt the gift of forgiveness and the gift of righteousness. They have lost faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross and are trying to work a work that Christ already finished. As I wrote in my book titled “Trees of righteousness”, self- righteousness is always unstable. Righteous one day, unrighteous the following day. They have faith today and have fear the next day. It is this staggering nature of their faith that makes them fearfully expect judgement. 

Whenever you lose your faith, you have sinned. Sin cannot make you lose your faith but when you lose your faith you have sinned. Why? Because whatsoever is not of faith is sin and the law is not of faith. What does that mean? It means that whenever you start depending on the law and religious rituals to make you righteous, you have lost your faith and that is sin. The bible calls it a deliberate sin. You have rejected the saviour.

²⁶ If anyone sins deliberately by rejecting the Savior after knowing the truth of forgiveness, this sin is not covered by Christ’s death; there is no way to get rid of it. ²⁷ There will be nothing to look forward to but the terrible punishment of God’s awful anger, which will consume all his enemies. {Hebrews 10:26-27 TLB}

Did you notice that the sin of losing your faith is not covered by Christ’s death? It means that there is no way to get rid of it. It is an unforgivable sin. Why unforgivable? Unforgivable because you don’t believe in the gift of forgiveness and the gift of righteousness and hence it cannot profit you. Christ already died and paid for your sins but you don’t believe that He paid for your sins and that your unbelief is in itself a sin that cannot be gotten rid of. Christ cannot come and die again for only you so you can believe. He died once and for all and what is next is judgement.

²⁵ The Jewish high priest goes into the Most Holy Place every year with the blood of an animal. But Christ did not go in to offer himself many times, ²⁶ for then he would have had to suffer many times ever since the creation of the world. Instead, now when all ages of time are nearing the end, he has appeared once and for all, to remove sin through the sacrifice of himself. ²⁷ Everyone must die once, and after that be judged by God. ²⁸ In the same manner Christ also was offered in sacrifice once to take away the sins of many. He will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are waiting for him. {Hebrews 9:25-28 GNT}

He defeated sin, hell and the grave. His return is not to deal with sin again but to save those who have faith in Him and are faithfully expecting Him. Therefore if you don’t believe that His death paid the debt for your sins in full, you are left on your own to face the judgement by yourself. His judgement is fierce and full of fury. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Another reason why you must fight for your faith is because if you lose your faith, you cannot be brought back to repentance again. A believer who suddenly started committing sin intentionally and perpetually can still be brought back to repentance. God’s grace can reach out to him and save him like the prodigal son who came back to his senses. There is hope for a tree says Job; that if it be cut down and its root wax old in the ground, nevertheless at the scent of water, it shall sprout up again. So it is with any believer who keeps sinning. The righteous falls seven times and rises again with his righteousness intact by faith. But a man who has lost faith cannot be brought back to repentance.

⁴ For how can those who abandon their faith be brought back to repent again? They were once in God's light; they tasted heaven's gift and received their share of the Holy Spirit; ⁵ they knew from experience that God's word is good, and they had felt the powers of the coming age. ⁶ And then they abandoned their faith! It is impossible to bring them back to repent again, because they are again crucifying the Son of God and exposing him to public shame. {Hebrews 6:4-6 GNT}.

I hope that by now you understand the gravity of the danger of losing your faith. It means that you cannot repent of that sin. You simply drew back unto perdition. You believed the good news initially when you first accepted Christ but because of false brethren who crept into the church and preached the laws of Moses and religious rituals, you abandoned the goodness of God’s word, forgot that He gave you the Holy Spirit by faith and worked miracles amongst you. You didn’t remember that the gifts of the Holy Ghost He lavished on you were not because you kept some religious laws. You felt the powers of the eternal age. You were graciously running well until you were intercepted by your opponents, the enemies of faith and the race you began in the spirit by faith was now turned into dependence on fleshly perfection. Who has bewitched you apostle Paul cried out?

 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?

² This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

³ Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?

⁴ Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain.

⁵ He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?{Galatians 3:1-5}