The other day I had my yearly training for Defensive Tactics for work.
One thing that one of the instructors said regarding being in fights was: “If you have not lost a fight, you have not been in enough fights.”
Later in the day I thought about this statement, but this time in light of my Christian faith and what is commonly referred to as “spiritual warfare.” (see Eph 6:10-18) Now by my using the term “spiritual warfare” or “spiritual fights” in the context of this particular blogpost I am not talking about exorcising demons or things along that line… but rather, I am using these terms in the idea of just living the day to day life of faith and those things that might cause us to dwell in despair, give up hope, etc, or even those things that might cause us to turn away from Christ (if even only briefly.)
As I thought about his statement, “If you have not lost a fight, you have not been in enough fights;” I began thinking how the thought Christians sometimes seem to have is: We as Christians do not… will not lose fights in spiritual warfare. Or we at least do not want to think we will lose a fight when it comes to spiritual battles. But the reality is, at least for me, we do and have lost spiritual fights.
But one thing that we should come out of those lost fights with is a lesson of what we could do and/or need to do next time so that we do not lose or get beat up so bad; at least in that particular type of spiritual fight.
So what do you think?
+Do you think that there is any merit to the idea that if we have not lost any spiritual fights, we have not been in enough fights?
+What have you learned from those times that you have “lost” (a) spiritual fights?
still weeding things out 
April 15, 2011 at 9:47 pm |
When I think of “losing fights” I think of times when my mortal ability to cope or to understand or to stand at all were totally depleted and I was forced into complete submission, surrender…defeat in a way, but also victory as those were the times that I had no pride left whatsoever and got through it ONLY by hanging on to the lifeline of my testimony of Christ. There have been times when I felt so spiritual adrift and lost, not clear at all about what my next step could or should be but somehow knew that as long as I continued to hold onto the idea that my relationship to Jesus Christ was real and that it mattered the rest would work itself out even if not in the way I anticipated and almost never on the timetable I longed for.