Are you making war… or faking war?
My brothers, I want to encourage you to ‘fight the good fight’ and in the spirit of our process and discussions from Thursday nights, to make war and not fake war.
It can become very easy and tempting, once you have begun a diet or an exercise plan with vigor and zeal, only to wain after a few weeks, to insist that ‘you still run a 4 am everyday and only eat veggies’. It requires humility and honesty to admit that you sneak in a doughnut, do not run every day, and are actually finding the path much more difficult than you had predicted.
Thus, you begin to fake war.
Faking war looks like telling someone you are ‘doing good’, when you secretly and singularly decided to remove that filter from your FB or iPhone. Faking war looks like telling someone you are having ‘good times with the Lord’, when you really should be honest and say ‘Man, this week I didn’t prioritize spending time with the Lord and only really found a few mins to read each day.’ Faking war in this season of your journey might look like rationalizing 5-mins a day with the Lord because you ‘haven’t fallen in a few weeks’ and therefore you are ‘strong enough’ to fight the war for your soul with only 5-mins of training.
Faking war only deceives your friends – it does not trick your enemy! or your God! or lead to freedom!
My warrior brothers, the FREEDOM that Christ purchased at the cross, that you accepted upon salvation, and that your soul was made to experience, is that which comes from MAKING WAR against your flesh (Eph 6:10-16/ Gal 5:16-25). Telling the truth when tempted to lie. Revealing all when you are tempted to withhold what makes you uncomfortable. Choosing to worship when you aren’t “feeling it”. Resisting the devil and LITERALLY RUNNING without fear of what those around you might think.
Decide today that the victory is worth the fight. And the fight is worth looking ‘foolish in the eyes of the world’. And that faking war only dishonors the One who set us Free.
Stop rationalizing. Start being honest. One of my favorite promises from the Lord comes with the biggest IF in scripture: “Seek me and you will find me IF you seek me with all your heart” (Deut 4:29 and Jer 29:13) Are you seeking him with all your heart? You can’t fake it to make it when it comes to your pursuit of the Lord.
And it’s the pursuit of the Lord that makes war on your flesh and the enemy! It’s that simple a revelation that our heart needs. To pursue the Lord, to seek Him alone and to know His voice, is in itself an act of war against your flesh! You can’t serve your flesh and your spirit… to feed one is to neglect the other! How powerful and how simple. How ancient and yet how revolutionary.
