For those of you who know me well, you know that I love my football. Its something that I will watch if any team are playing, well I draw the line at Birmingham City but always take satisfaction in watching them loose.
I also love to play football, I’ve had many injuries during my playing “career” and I am at the moment trying to type this with a broken thumb… not easy! I was struggling to think of something to write about today and had toyed with the idea of being quite heavy and talking about Jesus’ wounds when he was crucified, not the best reading for a Friday however.
Instead I take my text from:
1 Timothy 6:12 - Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
Part 1 – Preparation.
When I do battle on the football field, or when I prance around to be more precise, there are a number of preparations that I have to take. I need to make sure I’m protected, so I wear my shin pads and put on my boots to protect my legs and my feet. I then need to put my colours on so that I can be distinguished from the other team and finally I need to have a good team talk from the manager to get me fired up for the game.
When we are preparing to do battle in the spiritual sense within the world, we need to do a lot of the same things.
We need to make sure we are protected; the bible speaks about protection as a suit of armour. Ephesians 6 talks of this armour being made up of 6 parts. The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the preparation of the gospel, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and finally the sword of the spirit. I am not going to go into these at this time, you can effectively do 6 sermons on each part, and my thumb hurts as it is!
Once we’ve got our armour on, we then need to make sure we are distinguished from the other teams. I spoke yesterday about this and how we need to acknowledge Jesus by our words and our actions, this is how we show we are different to other people. Subsequently, this is like putting on a football jersey on the football field.
Once we are protected and once we look different we need to have a good team talk from our manager. We have this every time we look at the scripture or when we go to church and in some ways, I hope you get a good daily team talk from me! But the important thing to remember is that God has given us instructions for the game and for the battle, if we ignore them, we will end up being beaten.
Once we’re ready, we can go out onto the field.
Part 2 – The Battle.
God has taught us through the bible that we’re in a battle. Ultimately between good and evil but this is manifested by us and God verses Satan.
When I go and play football, it would be stupid for me to go out there without any preparation or protection, but it would be even more stupid for me to go out there if I’ve never played football or even like the game. I would be made to look like a fool and ultimately I would loose confidence in my playing and give up, or even worse get injured and never play again.
The same can be said for our Christian walk. If we had no support or protection from Satan, we would be in a very dangerous place indeed. During the battle of day-to-day life we need to make sure we still cling on to the teaching and preparation we have been given to make sure that the little skirmishes from minute to minute we face can be overcome.
I don’t know about you, but I would hazard a guess that we don’t always win these battles. I would imagine there are times when we give up the fight and just stand still just letting the war be won. We need to make sure that we carry on fighting, that we look to God for strength to overcome the temptations we battle with everyday.
Corinthians 15:57 - But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Exactly!
Part 3 – Celebration of Victory
Being a fan of Aston Villa, I’ve not had that much in the way of tasting victory, in my lifetime we’ve only won the league cup a few times… nothing to write home about really. Because of this I’ve learned to celebrate in small victories. Winning the games we weren’t expecting to win, and whenever we beat Birmingham City are always party time!
As a Christian, I’m sure there have been times when we’ve won a few major battles but not all the time and in some cases, we might not have won a major battle for a long time. Because of this, we should also celebrate in the smaller victories that we have. The times that we’ve been able to shun temptation, the times we’ve been able to make it through the weak with our faith intact and sit in church praising God and the times when we pray to God asking for his strength,
We should take heart in the minor victories and grow in strength and confidence for the major victories that we need to win. Being a Christian is a war, its not a battle, it’s a season not a match and as such we should always be looking at the hear and now so that we can stay on course to our ultimate aim, winning the war or winning the league.
God says that he can and will give us the strength to over come all things.
Ephesians 6:20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.
God can and will do all things. As I said at the beginning of the week he made the world and therefore can do anything. That’s the best Goalkeeper, striker, defender and playmaker we can have on our team or any team.
Have a good weekend, I may update this again tomorrow but if not, God willing, I’ll be back on Monday.
Walk by Faith, not by sight.
No comments:
Post a Comment