Fighting

Everything outside my physical life is designed to cause my death. - Oswald Chambers

This morning I read a devotional from My Utmost for His Highest and it talked about fighting. How we fight to stay alive (physical), how we fight spiritually, how we fight morally and how we fight mentally.
I was thinking of the physical and how the elements of this world could take you out, but they don't because we fight them. i.e. snowstorm/cold - if we are in the midst of the cold, we will not live, so we fight to stay warm. the roads, we fight to stay on them. We fight to see in blinding white snow. Hunger can kill you - for most of us it is not a fight to stay fed, for a lot in this world it is. It is a fight to stay healthy and strong. We fight to stay warm and fed.

Morally - now here's a big one. Fighting to be moral. I think Moral and Spiritual fight can be intertwined. Don't a lot of my morals come from spiritual standards? (I think Oswald Chambers would agree, however he did list them seperately.) Moral strength = virtue. If I want to be virtuous, the morals that I believe need to be kept. If my morals go against another's lack of moral (or we differ in morals), I fight to reinforce the moral law rather than letting it go. As O. Chambers said, "moral law does not happen by accident, moral virtue is acquired."

Spiritual - Seems obvious...Eph. 6:12...fighting principalities, not people. In my mind I look at some very evil wars that have gone on and are going on. Situations like Cambodia's genocide, Rwanda and others. For the mind to be in such a state where killing another or killing thousands carries no guilt - how is this merely the human mind? Is that not evil, pure evil spiritual warfare? Principalities of the darkness winning the battle in one's mind. So we fight - that the Spirit - God's spirit, would win and rule in us over the spiritual darkness.

Mental - to be strong and active mentally...I'm thinking this means to engage your mind continuously, renew it, think. Read the paper, read a book, read the Word, think, don't waste the capacity that has been given to you - to think.

Sometimes Christianity is thought to be boring, dull, la de da life. Lately I've been thinking that it isn't and if it is portrayed that way, we are portraying it incorrectly. Jesus life wasn't a walk in the Christian park. He had to fight: physically (for his life), mentally (challenged continuously by naysayers), spiritually (battles with Satan), morally (what he stood for and exemplified). His life was not to be seen by us as a mere example of how to live, examples can be seen in you and me, Jesus wasn't an example, He was IT, He is God in human form who sacrificed his life so that we might live.
Sacrificed, sacrificed, sacrificed - not a passive word.
Then shouldn't we: think, meet the opposition, keep the morals and live strong?
Not being passive
Not letting go of our beliefs
Not being complacent

Then more is required of me.