“The Christian life is not a playground; it’s a battlefield.” I still remember the grey-bearded guest preacher who first spoke that sentence in a Bible college chapel service in the late 1980s.
If you think the Christian life is a playground then you’ll never get serious about holiness. You’ll never really push yourself. Instead you will just flit around, here and there. Over time, you might make a little progress toward growing up, but you’ll always find yourself gravitating back to the kiddie jungle gym where life is easy, and there is no real challenge. But every true Christ-follower knows firsthand that there is something more to the Christian life. There’s something more to fighting the good fight of faith.
There’s a struggle…always a struggle…between sin and righteousness. Yes, the struggle between good and evil can exist in an unbeliever, to some extent, unless their conscience has been so seared by repetitive sin that they no longer feel any tinge of guilt or longing to change. But the believer in Jesus, on the other hand, is more aware of the struggle because he has the Holy Spirit living within him. Here’s where remembering the Spirit’s first name is helpful.
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