The Good Race, the Good Fight

The Good Race, the Good Fight But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. 1 Timothy 6 v 11 It is a great privilege to be called a man of God. But there are no great men of God, there are only men, women and children of a great God. Every believer is a man or woman or child of God. As such, we are called to flee from youthful lusts- lusts that pursue us doggedly not only when we are young or youthful but even when we are much older- sexual lust, lust to possess, pride, egoism, conceit, jealousy, lack of contentment, hatred… On the one hand, the devil sends some of the personal demons we have befriended in the past to pursue us all our lives. We need to flee from these even as Joseph fled from the adulterous wife of Potiphar who was attempting to seduce him. If we fail to do so and entertain such thoughts or desires even for a short while, we will be ensnared. Between bait and bail, we should seek bail. If we cry out to the Lord with a pure heart or a sincere desire to avoid such snares in our lives, He will bail us out of such temptations. These are not figments of imagination but hard reality that the personal demons pursue one lifelong and with such persistence. We need to flee or run faster in the opposite direction, the moment we see or sense these temptations coming our way. The Lord once told me, “ there were temptations coming towards you but you fled in the opposite direction like Joseph.” Even as we increase the pace at which we run away from lusts of the eye, flesh and the pride of life, we should accelerate towards righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience and meekness. We must increase in our zeal to possess these for they constitute the veritable Kingdom of God. We need to be passionate in reflecting these qualities in our lives. God wants man to be God-like in terms of these attributes of character but man wants to be like God in terms of position and power. We begin to be righteous and godly when we fear God but we need to grow into the maturity of Christ to be Christ-like in righteous thoughts, speech and deeds, faithful at all times in good times and bad times and till we reach the finishing line. Our focus should not be on our existential struggles and challenges but on the Lord as we run and as we fight. Scriptures says, “ look to the rock from which you were cut, the pit from which you were dug.” We are cut by faith from the eternal Rock-Christ Himself. We were saved from the pit into which He went on our behalf. We should focus on Him to author or write into our DNA these attributes and depend on His grace to develop or finish it into their highest and fullest potential. Jesus uses the agency of the Holy Spirit to birth in us the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self control. It is a tall order to develop all these spiritual attributes of character at one and the same time. This is the reason the practical fisher of men,St Peter says, “ first focus on your faith with all diligence to strenghthen it, then to your faith add the evidence of goodness, to goodness add knowledge of the Word and the world, to knowledge add God control or temperance or regulation of our lifestyle and habits, to God control add patience or the ability to wait for results to show up in our lives and the lives of people around us, to patience we need to add godliness or as close a resemblance to Christ as possible, to godliness we need to add kindness and finally to cap it all- love as described by St Paul to the Corinthian church- in what we need to follow or pursue and what we need to flee from”. Shakespeare spoke about the seven stages of life in chronological order but St Peter wrote about these nine stages in our spiritual lives. We need to identify which stage of the race we are in. Very often in this race we return to the first stage where we have only faith to show, having failed in the other areas. But the Lord encourages us to pick ourselves up and the baton for the next stage, whether it is goodness or knowledge or self control or patience or kindness or godliness or love. The good race and the good fight that Paul ran all his life was this internal race and internal fight that all of us need to run and fight all of our earthly lives. We cannot do shadow boxing throwing our punches at some phantom or flesh and blood foe out there but practice our moves out there in the real world of our homes, our workplaces and the streets. Prateep V Philip