Daily Manna · Day 29 · January 29
Fight the Good Fight
“Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.”
You expected faith to be one big decision, and it turned out to be a thousand small ones. Most of them came when you were tired, and nobody saw any of them. Nobody warned you that faith would take this much upkeep.
Paul reaches for a picture from the athletic contests of his day: "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life." Both of those verbs are things you do, and neither of them describes drifting. But look closely at what the fight is about, because it is "the good fight of faith." The ground being fought over is whether you keep trusting Him, which is a different thing from how well you perform. Yet those two battles feel exactly the same at eleven at night. Then Paul reminds Timothy of what he has already done: he has "professed a good profession before many witnesses." The confession came first. In the very next verse Paul sets it beside "Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession." Timothy's public word is placed in the same company as what Christ said before a Roman governor. The fighting does not earn the confession. The fighting is refusing to take it back.
Think of the one thing you are closest to putting down: the prayer, the marriage, the work you believe God gave you, or the person you have carried patiently for two years.
You do not have to settle it today. You are simply invited to stay in it one more day, standing on a confession you already made in front of people who heard you make it. And remember who called you into it. Paul says eternal life is the thing "whereunto thou art also called," and the God who called you is the God "who quickeneth all things," the One who gives life. The invitation stays open tomorrow too.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 29 is Blessed Be the Name (Job 1:21).