How then do we fight?

Matthew 4:3

And the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God..."

So how then do we fight the good fight for faith in a faithless age? In a soaked age?

It gives me great peace to know that we follow a Man (and God) that was tempted in all the ways we have been... but without getting soaked to the bone. And It seems, as we read, we must fight as our Lord fought while He walked in our shoes by fighting it on the inside (in our hearts and minds) and on the outside (with our lives and words).

For me... I have found that fighting on the inside is an act of clinging to God’s Words, His great and precious promises. I cling (sometimes unsuccessfully) to what I know about God and His provision when what I know does not make sense with what I am currently seeing OR what people around me are telling me to think and feel. Basically I preach to myself. That sounds pretty unpopular today I know. But Jesus Himself did this as He faced these same challenges and He tells us that as His followers we should expect to live the same way He did… to be treated the same way he was treated BECAUSE we are following behind Him in His very footsteps. He faced the temptations… we will face the temptations. He faced the world… we will face the world. It is a part of what it means to be human.

As the fight moves from inside to the outside I find myself speaking the truth about who God is and living out the realities of His (oftentimes counter) Kingdom. The life He created us to live filled with love, humility and compassion. It can feel foreign to my own skin sometimes... but I fight to hold to what I know about God when what I know does not make sense with what I am currently experiencing OR what people around me are telling me to do and how to live. This is very unpopular today. But what I have learned is that these temptations are not primarily about getting me to "mess up"... no, they are an assault on who I REALLY am... just as satan's temptation was an assault on who Jesus REALLY was. It is like our enemy is asking, "If you really are children of God..."

But I am!

And as a child of God... as a servant of the King... I must live as a representative of the new Kingdom. I must fight against lording it over others and the systems that destroy the hearts and lives of my fellow humans. I must fight against the idolatrous self-absorbed kingdoms of me and my comfort-at-all-costs. I must fight against the consumerist plague of profit-at-all-costs...

And I must fight to win!

Inside and outside!

Make it so Lord.