FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

So on Tuesday night, I get a phone call from my daughter. Dad, I need your help. Okay, why is this, honey? She's like, well, I'm walking over to your house for dinner for moms, and I was in the basement, and it was super cool down there. But now I've realized that it's 100 degrees outside, and all I have on is a sweatshirt.

It's blazing hot. Can you come get me? Now the hysterical part about this is that by the time we finish our conversation she's like, oh never mind, I'm almost there. The reason I share this story is because if you don't pay attention to the weather and the temperature and you just sort of go about your life, there are times in which you are confronted with the weather, confronted with the heat, confronted with the rain, confronted with the cold, whatever it might be, confronted with the wind.

But it has an impact. We've been in this series called the forces of good and evil. And my main premise is that there are forces of good and evil at work in the world. And in the same way, we should pay attention to the weather because it impacts our life. We should pay attention to the forces of good and evil in the world because they will confront us. They will impact our lives. And so what we want to do is we want to be a people who consider them.

What I want to talk to you about today is how to fight the good fight. So most of the scriptures in the New Testament are really about teaching the church. to live its identity, to fight the good fight in the midst of the world, to be a group of people who proclaim that in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, we have seen who God is and what God is about, and that good wins, and therefore we're to be those people.

And Christ has come to rescue us from the forces of evil, sin, and death. So the church is supposed to live battling those things. I want to do, offer you three very practical ways to fight the good fight in your every day. To acknowledge that there are forces of evil at work and there are forces of good and that to fight the good fight means we do three things.

We build community, we focus on the now, and we choose joy. Those three habits in our daily life are going to make a huge difference and allow us to participate in the spiritual battles.

Let me tell you a little bit more. We're going to look at it through Philippians 2. Philippians 2, Paul's writing to the church, and he's challenging them to be of one mind. He's challenging them to take on the identity of Christ, a humble identity. Let's take a look at Philippians 2. And he says that he himself is choosing joy, even in the midst of some of the sacrifice that's being asked of him. And so here we get a picture of the church living and battling and fighting for the good.

Let's start with community. Community is a triumph over evil. It is a relational triumph over evil because what evil always wants is disconnection. Disconnection from God. Disconnection from others. Disconnection from ourselves. In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis describes hell as a place in which people move further and further apart while always complaining that the other person's fault. I don't know about you, but I can see where our world gets like that pretty quickly. And so what we are to do, because we believe in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, is we're to be a people of community. People that are radically committed to things like forgiveness, and mercy, and reconciliation, and patience, and enduring all things, and bearing all things.

And so that we, the way we fight the good fight is to do that in our homes, neighborhoods, workplaces, schools. In your home, how might you fight the good fight this week by being a little bit more patient, being a little bit more kind? How about at the office? Maybe you could do a little bit of that too.

It's really important to us here at Grace Community that we're doing that with each other. We have a diverse group of people that gather together, and we're committed around a few things. We want to be a people who follow Christ, traveling through the messiness of life, choosing hope and loving God in our world. And so that's the way we're doing that daily battle to fight for the good.

The next thing is to work in the now. So Paul in his letter is running to the Philippians and he says, Hey, God has empowered you to will and work for the good is what he says. Now the reason why that's so important is because the only place we can work is the now.

We can work in the now on something to maybe reconcile the past. We can work in the now in order to prepare for something in the future. But we can't actually work in the future or work in the past. We can only do that in the now. And this is important because I think that one of the ways that evil disconnects us is by helping us sort of get too focused on the future.

And that can happen in two different ways. Sometimes it's a optimistic view. It's a, Hey, I will begin when this thing arrives. My life will be great. Once I get this job, I will begin exercising and eating healthy once I get to June. It's a forever and it's a tomorrow. And what happens there is that it disconnects us from the battle. We stop willing and working the good now.

And that's what Evil is always about trying to get us to this place of non-action. The other thing that can happen is that what we are afraid of sits out in the future. And in fact, that future is an exaggerated or a fake or false future. It's really just made up of all our worries and our nightmares and our concerns, and what happens then is that it then fuels the way we act now and we act now in a place of fear.

So in that sense, maybe where we lash out or what happens is it extracts us and it disconnects. Here's the reality. You and I were designed to engage in the present when we are engaged in the present. That's where we find God. And it's also where we feel. our fullest selves when you're doing work you love or you're in a great conversation or you're on a walk and seeing the beauty in those moments you are not aware of the past or the future you're just living in the present and you're experiencing there and so one of the ways that we can in a practical way sort of commit to this battle to fight for the good is to focus on working for the good now in the present How does it lead to action and what maybe is keeping you from acting now?

Maybe you're wishing that something was different. Maybe you're thinking only about all the negative outcomes and it's freezing you debilitating you from acting now, whatever it is. Think through, okay, what does it look like to will and act for the good, now, today? And you'll find it's in small ways. It's being faithful, it's showing up, it's doing the work.

And it's choosing hope. That the resurrection that we see in Christ is the destiny of the world. The resurrection of the world as well.

Okay, so, last thing, choosing joy. The scriptures say, teach us to choose joy over and over and over again. In Philippians 2, in fact, Paul says, Hey, even if I'm being poured out like a drink, poured out on the ground as a sacrifice for your faith, I rejoice in it.

I'm glad. And I want you to rejoice and be glad too. Over and over again, the scriptures say, rejoice and be glad, rejoice and be glad, rejoice and be glad. Why does it say this? Well, joy is the enemy of evil. And joy is the enemy of evil because what it is, is it's It's celebrating the good. Joy is always found in the midst of a beautiful sunset or a relationship that you feel seen and heard.

It's taking care of someone else. It's a painting. It's the laughter of your children. It's you yourself being silly. Whatever those things are, it's not that there aren't other forces that are bad, that are evil, that are sin, that are brokenness, but the call to rejoice is to believe that the good triumphs the bad.

And so we're called to be those people that in the midst of the messiness of life choose hope and rejoice and be joyful. So let me ask you, what prevents you from choosing joy? Maybe you're tired, maybe you're grumpy, maybe you're just sort of caught in this pattern and what are some things you could do maybe this week that would help you choose joy play with your kids make a joke take some time go for a walk whatever those things are when we're able to choose joy in the midst of the everyday we're participating in the spiritual battle between good and evil by rejoicing and proclaiming the life death and resurrection of Christ is the ultimate good.

And this world is good, and this world and the good in it will triumph over sin, evil, and death. Hey, I hope this series has been helpful to you. As you go out this week, build community, focus on the now, and choose joy. Have a great week. See you soon.