Fight the Good Fight

BY Bailey T. Hurley

Our societies have always had competing doctrines of faith, hungry idols, and wayward truths vying for our attention, money, and wholehearted worship. Our sinful appetites make it easy to doubt God and wonder, Can we fully trust who God says He is when our culture often celebrates the opposite ideas and values? 

In 1 Timothy 6, Paul warns God’s people about human greed—he doesn’t want the family of God to get lost in the temptations of the world and forget they were not destined to remain a part of it. I very much relate to those who were hypnotized by all the world has to offer. I can easily succumb to wanting good things and believing I deserve them. It could be fancy food or the newest fashion or it could be as simple as clinging to the pleasures of this world and losing my hunger for God. The worst-case scenario is that I suddenly wake up and realize I traded in the true doctrine for the false ones advertised on my social media. What a scary thought! So, Paul calls God’s people to “fight the good fight of the faith” (1Timothy 6:12) and to trust in God’s rich provision over the insufficient riches of this world.

For those of us who confess Jesus as Lord, we must continually fight to keep Him in the position of Lord over our lives. I think of Paul who declared: “I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith” (Philippians 3:8–9). 

Our weapon to fight the good fight is our faith. Trusting and believing that losing everything the world says we need is worth gaining Christ—trusting in His promises over the world’s empty ones. And just when we think we can’t possibly fight this fight, 2 Peter tells us that God will give us everything we require to be able to “escape the corruption that is in this world because of evil desire” (2Peter 1:4). I’m encouraged knowing God will help me supplement my faith with “goodness, goodness with knowledge, [and] knowledge with self-control…” (v.5) so that I stand a chance against those false teachings and tantalizing ideas that are hungry for my soul. 

We stand together and we stand with God, and we fight a battle Jesus has already won. Unfortunately, we may not always walk away victorious from our sin on this side of heaven. Still, our lack of faithfulness never takes away what Jesus defeated in His death and resurrection. Today, let’s fight the good fight of the faith by humbly confessing our faults and failures and taking hold of life found only in Jesus Christ.  

This devotional was updated on May 18, 2022 at 2:05 p.m.