PASTOR DARRYL BAKER

1 Timothy 6:12
Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

We are called to fight the good fight of faith. This is the only fight for those who are born again. We don’t fight satan, for Jesus has already defeated him. Our fight is to stay in faith, and to live a life of faith (trust) in God every day. There are three areas to deal with concerning this fight of faith. When you understand them and know what to do, through faith you will walk in the life God has already planned for you for scripture teaches us that He has already given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.

The first key area of this fight of faith is seen in the scripture above. Notice it goes on to say to lay hold of eternal life. Paul is not telling Timothy he needs to receive salvation, for Timothy was already saved. Jesus defines for us the term eternal life in John 17:3. Jesus said eternal life was to know the Father and the Son, developing an intimate relationship with them. Faith is simply trusting God. You can’t trust someone you don’t know. You will have to fight against the world’s desires and your flesh to lay hold of this relationship God has for you. You must not allow other things to keep you from daily fellowship with Him.

Next he tells Timothy he had confessed the good confession. A good confession is a faith filled confession, saying what God says and not what your circumstances says. You will have to push back against the flesh to maintain a faith filled confession, declaring what the Word says is already so. Finally James tells us that faith without corresponding action is dead. You will have to fight against what you see, feel, and hear to choose instead to walk by faith and not by sight. As F. W. Bosworth used to say, just act as if you are redeemed because the Word says you are. Address these three areas in your life and you can fight the good fight of faith and live life as the overcomer you already are.

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Hebrews 12:2
We must focus on Jesus, the source and goal of our faith. He saw the joy ahead of him, so he endured death on the cross and ignored the disgrace it brought him. Now he holds the honored position—the one next to God the Father on the heavenly throne.

I was a bull rider for 16 years of my life, and there was a saying we referred to all the time. You are going to land where you look. If you ever watch bull riding, you will often times notice before a bull rider bucks off his bull he turns and looks that very direction. One of the keys to being successful in making a qualified ride is you do not want to take your eyes off of that bulls shoulders. Wherever his shoulders are headed his front feet will go, and you want to be headed that same direction.

You do not look at a bulls head because he may often throw his head one direction while then making a move to go the other direction. And if you look away from him to the ground you are going to wind up there. You have to stay focused on his shoulders in the midst of all the different moves the bull throws at you. So it is for the believer to walk by faith and not by sight. You must get your focus on Jesus and never turn away. Jesus is the Word that became flesh. To focus on Him, we focus on who we are, what we have, and what we can do in Christ revealed through the Word.

Many things in life will try to get you distracted to look at the circumstances you are facing instead of your Savior who has already given you the victory. Notice it refers to Jesus here seeing the joy set before Him enduring the suffering of the cross. Jesus looked beyond the suffering, and He saw the victory that He knew was on the other side. That is what faith does. It looks beyond what is trying to distract you from what Jesus has done to provide victory for your life. So don’t get distracted. Stay focused on Jesus through the Word, and you can overcome any challenge you face and like Jesus be victorious.

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2 Corinthians 3:17
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (emancipation from bondage, freedom).

The moment one becomes born again, the Lord Jesus by way of the Holy Spirit coming into your spirit man liberates us from the sin nature, and all that came as a result of that sin nature. The word emancipation, referring to liberty, is defined as the act of setting one free from the power of another. Just as slaves in our Country were liberated through emancipation, so also everyone born again has been freed from the evil one and given liberty through Jesus Christ.

The word “Lord” means supreme in authority. There is no higher authority than the Lord Jesus Christ. To be born again Jesus must be acknowledged as the “Lord,” the supreme authority in your life. You can have this liberty and yet live as a slave to the old nature’s ways, and to the works that satan brought with it. There are several reasons why some still live like a slave to these things. One reason is a lack of knowledge of what you now have in Christ Jesus. God’s people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6).

But not only do we need to know what is now rightfully ours because we are sons and daughters of God, we need to now yield to the Lord of our life. Choosing to make our own choices apart from the Lord’s way for us brings bondage not liberty. When we choose His way of thinking, His way of speaking, that will change our way of living; allowing the Lordship of Christ to rule over us, in us, and through us, and that leads to liberty.

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Hebrews 9:14
…how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

When a person is born again, they receive a brand new spirit within them for they are cleansed of the old spirit man. The voice of our spirit man is our conscience, that inward knowing deep down inside. When you are born again the conscience is therefore also cleansed because you have a new spirit. Our conscience, this inward knowing, is how God leads us, for the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit man (Romans 8:16).

If we will learn to listen to this inward witness, we can follow God’s leading for our lives. In John 14:26-27, Jesus tells us about the Holy Spirit, our Helper, who will come to us when we are born again. He then tells us that He is leaving with us peace, and that our hearts should not be troubled nor afraid. This inward peace is how the Holy Spirit confirms when we are headed the right direction in life. The words troubled and afraid refer to an agitation or timidity.

When we are heading the wrong direction in life, we will feel agitated or timid, an uneasiness within our spirit. This is how we know the way we are headed is not God’s will for us. But when we are headed in the right direction, we will have a peace, complete calm within our spirit, and this is how God by His Spirit will guide us in life. So, listen to your conscience. If you have unrest in your spirit, know the Holy Spirit is revealing to you this is not God’s will for you. When you have that peace within, you are on the right path.

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Hebrews 12:24
You have come to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant between God and humanity, and to His sprinkled blood, which speaks a greater word than the blood of Abel crying out from the earth.

The moment you are born again you have entered into a covenant between you and God. This word covenant means an obligation undertaken by a single person; a promise fulfilled on the part of God. Jesus is the One who fulfilled all that was needed for this covenant. By the shedding of His blood, He has made available to all everything God has promised to us under this new covenant.

God has given us this promise of a new covenant founded on better promises then that of the old covenant. When God makes a covenant, He is obligated to fulfill its promises. All we need to do is to realize He is obligated to do so because it was a covenant that He established with Jesus for us. Jesus negotiated this covenant with God, and therefore God will fulfill His covenant that He initiated with His Son because of the blood He shed for us.

We have now been given the right to be partakers of these promises solely based on our negotiator, Jesus Christ. All we have to do is to receive these promises by acting upon them in faith. As we put our complete trust in this covenant we have been given, we can walk in what He has provided for us. The promises have already been provided, because Jesus through His shed blood is the One who made this covenant for us with the Father. As Jesus Himself said on the cross, “It is finished!”

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Hebrews 13:15
Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.

Giving thanks should be a part of the believer’s everyday life. Notice it says in this verse we are to continually offer thanks, even as a sacrifice of praise. It’s easy to thank God when things are going your way, but what about when you are facing difficult circumstances. It is in those times you need to thank God the most, when you don’t feel like giving thanks.

As scripture teaches us, we walk by faith not by sight. Colossians 4:2 tells us we are to be vigilant in prayer with thanksgiving. We don’t thank God for the difficult circumstances, but for what He has done to help us overcome them. In all things, in every situation of life, we are to be thanking God for what He has done for us through Christ Jesus.

When believers lose their heart of gratitude, they become bitter not better, and this will only rob you of what God has for your life. Don’t allow the enemy and circumstances in life to take from you the gratitude we should have for God and for all that He has done. Continually thank God for what He has done for you through Christ Jesus, and you can see God bring you through to victory.

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Colossians 1:19-20
19 For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell,
20 and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.

The word reconcile means to bring back to a former state of harmony. The word peace means to establish harmony. If you have ever heard a group of singers, you can always tell when someone is singing out of harmony with the rest of the group. But when they sing together in harmony it not only sounds beautiful, but you also don’t notice individual singers because they sound as one.

So it is when we get born again. Because of the sin nature of our old spirit man, we were out of harmony with God. But once we get born again, we become one spirit with the Lord. This harmony with God is what makes us so powerful in the earth. The devil wants to keep us blind to the fact that we are one with God. If he can do this, he knows he can take advantage of our life through deception.

When a believer realizes they are one spirit with the Lord, and they begin to walk in harmony with God; they can go through life victorious for God will never be defeated and neither will the child of God who knows and walks in the light of their union with Him. No weapon formed against a child of God that knows who they are in Christ will prosper, because they are one spirit with the Lord, and the greater One lives in them.

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Ephesians 4:15
Instead, by truth spoken in love, we are to grow in every way into Him—the Anointed One, the head.

One of the key aspects of love that you don’t hear much about today is speaking the truth, because if you love someone you tell them the truth. We are told by many today that to go to a believer and address any sin in their life is in fact judging them and not walking in love, when in fact to not do so is to not walk in the love of God. If we do not speak the Truth to those who are deceived or seduced into sin they will not walk in freedom, for it is the Truth that sets us free.

Galatians 6:1 tells us that if a believer is caught in sin, those who are spiritual (not flesh ruled) are to go to them to try and restore them, helping them get out of their sin. That is what love does. As scripture reveals in 1 John 4:8, God is love, and Jesus was God manifested in the flesh. What Jesus did here on earth was love in action, and as Ephesians 5:1 tells us, we as God’s children are to imitate Him.

Jesus (Love Himself) told a man who was healed by Him, ” See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” Because Jesus loved Him and did not want to see something worse happen to him, He addressed his sinful actions. He did not condemn Him by doing so, but cared enough to speak the truth. Love speaks the truth. It does not overlook someone’s sin and stay silent. And for those who receive it, the truth will set them free.

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Amos 3:3
Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?

Far too many Christians on a daily basis are choosing to disagree with God. God believes one thing, but they believe something else. This is revealed in how they speak of themselves. Have you ever thought about what God believes about you? What does He actually believe about your life? All we have to do is go to the Word of God to find out, for His Word clearly reveals what God believes about us.

For example, Romans 8:38 tells us that even in the midst of a world filled with challenges that come against us, because of what Jesus has done for us we are “more than conquerors” through Him who loved us. Not going to be, we already are. Yet many believers’ words speak of themselves as defeated and overcome. Yes, we face challenges, but when we speak contrary to who God says we are, we will not walk together with God in the victory He has provided.

We need to agree with God in believing and speaking in line with who He says we are, what He says we have, and what He says we can do. Like Abraham, we are not to consider what we see in the natural, but instead consider what God has said (Rom. 4:19-20). We cannot walk together with God in all He has for us until we choose to agree with Him. When we do, things change.

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Psalms 18:30
As for God, His way is perfect;
The word of the LORD is proven;
He is a shield to all who trust in Him.

It is wonderful to know we have God as a shield in this life we live who will protect us from evil and the works of darkness in this world. How do we get this protection? We must put our complete trust in Him. What does it mean to completely trust in our God? He tells us in the first part of this verse.

As for God, His way is perfect for the Word of the Lord is proven. Think about that for a minute. God’s ways are perfect. That word perfect means complete, lacking nothing. Man’s ways are not perfect. If we choose to do life our own way, we are headed down an imperfect path, and this will give satan opportunity to take advantage of our life. How do we find out about His perfect ways? From His Word.

In Luke 6:46-49, Jesus said if you come to Him and hear His sayings and don’t do them you are building on sand. When storms come you will go down. But if you do what He says, when storms come not only will you stand, you will not be shaken. So many believers say they trust in God, but still do their own thing. God’s ways are perfect. When we choose to stop living life our own way and do what Jesus said, we are trusting in Him, and He will shield us from the storms.

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