Running

(Question) “Is it a common thing to have a passive Christian that knows what he needs to do, he knows he needs to fight the good fight of faith against the devil but he doesn’t fight enough because he becomes passive lazy? I find myself fighting passivity on a regular basis.”


I wish it wasn’t, but it is very common. It happens to a lot of Christians. It’s cool you brought up “fighting the good fight” a well known quote of Paul, a man who though he was a strong apostle he had his times of struggle as in Romans 7, like all Christians do. But Paul also told us how to stay strong in our faith & how not to grow weary & lazy in doing good. “…run in such a way as to get the prize.” (1 Corinthians 9:24) Paul tells us to run to win. Often we just run with no true goal in mind…we’re just out there running. I found out once that running is not my thing; I was a random runner & also realized that if you run a mile away from the house, it’s also a mile back. Who knew? But we often accept Christ like that, & then we get lazy in what it takes to grow & see it as being hard & loose focus on that prize.

Now Paul goes on to tell us that, “Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training”. Look at it this way, when a person is training for a race, he has to eat right & exercise, if he didn’t eat well & he gorged out on junk food & didn’t exercise at all or just half way did it when he did, then he would feel bad physically & would feel more like laying around watch TV than running a race. It’s the same thing with us spiritually. When we don’t read our Bible & spend time in pray or maybe we do but half way do it, then we get spiritually lazy, which in turn often causes us to get physically lazy as well. As Christians we have to be strict in our training, to run the race of the Christian life.

So it often comes down to us having to get with God, & like David, ask Him to search our hearts & show us where we are & then get back to where we need to be with Him to be able to run that race properly. It takes Bible study & prayer for us to grow…the closer we get to God, the more He will teach us, the more He will use us & the more we will be able to run this race through Him & win.




Vern