Christian, please fight for your faith (Part 2)

A Christian will "hold fast" (I Cor. 15:2) to the gospel of Jesus and continue in the faith to the end, but that does not mean he or she will do so without a fight. As I said in Part 1 here, the war we enter as Christians when we are saved is real, and it has no conscientious objectors who will survive.

I commend to you three vital means of grace God has provided to help us persevere until we are with Christ. While they apply to overcoming a variety of sins, I point to them in this series of posts as weapons in the fight against falling into unbelief. The first is this:

1. The Bible

If we would continue in the faith, we should maintain trust in God's Word. Our deceitful enemy, Satan, would have us question the Bible's infallibility and authority. Once we doubt -- and continue to doubt -- the trustworthiness of any part of the Word, we are vulnerable to a slide into mistrust of all of the Word, including its testimony to the saving work of Jesus. Such doubt left unresolved leaves us prey to the devourer, who will consume our faith and us.

Billy Graham, who passed away Feb. 21, faced a crisis regarding the Bible's truthfulness nearly 70 years ago. How he responded made all the difference for him and his ministry, and it serves as a model for us.

Some of Graham's friends and associates began to reject the inerrancy of Scripture, and he began to question intellectually if the Bible could be trusted. The crisis reached a climax one night, when Graham settled the issue once and for all in a forest. On one occasion, he said of that pivotal evening:

"And I took this Bible, and I said, 'Lord, I don't understand all about this Bible. There are many things I cannot explain.' And I remember laying the Bible out on a stump, and I said, 'Lord, this is Your book. I'm going to accept it by faith like I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ by faith and He saved me and changed me and transformed me. I'm accepting this as Your Word by faith.'"

Graham's trust in Scripture resulted in his constant appeal to its authority in his preaching. He became known for saying time and again, "The Bible says." The salvation of many in his meetings over the decades seems to testify to the power and fruitfulness that comes from believing Scripture's truthfulness.

While there are questions in Scripture we should try to answer, ultimately you and I are faced with this question: Do we trust the Bible's testimony of itself -- that it is the fully infallible, totally trustworthy Word of God? On numerous occasions since becoming a Christian, I have responded to questions that arise in my own mind about the Bible in this way: God, I don't understand this and I can't explain everything, but I reaffirm my belief that this book is Your Word and I will continue to trust that it is without error.

Trusting God means to trust His Word. The Bible is a gift to God's people. Trusting its truthfulness is critical in the life-long war in which we are enlisted. That means believing all God's promises therein and all He says therein about Himself, about us and about His saving work. Let's not waste the powerful weapon God has armed us with in His Word.

(Part 3 will address other means of grace in this battle.)

-- Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash