East-West Blog

What Is Our Greatest Enemy?

Written by John Maisel | Jan 12, 2024 11:00:00 AM

Most of you reading this are Christians who are engaged in the fight to be the person God has called you to be. If that’s you, how do you know if you are growing and maturing in your walk with Christ Jesus?

The Christian’s life should always be moving forward—always growing, never static. Our Father is constantly revealing truth to us. We should be downloading it into our lives.

Our Father does not bless knowledge. He blesses obedience.

I believe the lack of the personal experience of Christ in Christians today can only be explained because of our lack of obedience. When God gives us His truth and we don’t intentionally act upon it daily, what we have is a dead faith.

Our disobedience limits us from receiving all that God wants for us and from experiencing Him.

When our Father gives us light, He asks us to step into His light, where He meets us with His presence.

Jesus asks us to trust Him with our lives daily. He does not ask us to think things through to see if we have a better option than Him.

The world is filled with followers of Jesus who not only walk but run to the Way, the Truth, and the Life on a daily basis (John 14:6). Quite frankly, these are the people I want to run with because they provoke me with their nonnegotiable love for Christ. They delight in obeying Him—no matter what.

I tell my friends, “My biggest fight on a daily basis is with my own heart.” All Christians are called to engage in this fight of the heart. During this fight, we are pulled in many directions and send messages contrary to God’s ways.

There is no state of perfection for any Christian. Nobody ever arrives on this side of eternity. Our depravity is too real, and we’ll only be free of it in Heaven. But this fight of faith, men and women, is worth fighting.

When we choose Jesus’ ways, the Holy Spirit is free to get involved with our experience of Christ’s abiding presence. His power is always there. His presence is to be experienced. His commands are to be acted upon.

Obedience is never to be feared. When God commands us to move forward in His ways, His joy meets us when we say, “Yes, Lord.”

I challenge all of us to write down one thing that we will do in Jesus’ name that we have never done before. If we make our lives about His glory, it will be filled with His blessings.

The Christian’s biggest enemy is what keeps us focused on ourselves. This keeps us from the ultimate blessing when our hearts say, “Yes, Lord, have Your pleasure with me.”

 

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