Today's Passage - 1 Timothy 6:11-12

River of Life Christian Church ︳www.rolcc.net/english I Timothty 6:11-12   But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.  Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.   "Fight  the good fight" refers not to the argument of knowledge, but  a testimony of life which requires  serious work  to accomplish.  Sanctification can never be accomplished overnight.  Although salvation and a new life can be achieved instantaneously, but sanctification is a life-long process.  Paul provided 2 verbs here, " flee" and "pursue"; the former denotes   a passive defense , while the latter refers to an active action.  We need to avoid the temptation of our own lusts in our daily lives.    A brother once gave a testimony that he found his secretary to be very attractive one day, and was filled with lustful thoughts, the first of which lasted only  a second or so, then the second one lasted 2-3 seconds; this thought pretty much took over his mind  the third day and when he finalized realized that was a spiritual war, he immediately rebuked that  this thoughts to depart from him in the name of the Lord and succeeded.  Isn't warfare like this we are facing everyday in our lives?  Martin Luther illustrated correctly, "Perhaps we cannot forbid the birds from flying over our heads, but we can certainly prevent them from nesting over our heads."  The thoughts of lusts may not be prevented, but we can surely forbid these thoughts to linger in our minds.   Not only should be passively stay away from such thoughts, we should be actively pursue righteousness, godliness, faithfulness, love , endurance and gentleness for these are all from God.  Besides coming before Him daily, we should, instead, asked to be filled with the Holy Spirit as well as the goodness and the life of Jesus.   We often feel that we should forsake our old lives first   before the new ones can come in.  In reality, we should first ask that our lives be filled by Him and during this process, our old lives would naturally be removed slowly.  A  cup filled with air initially  will naturally be displaced by water.  In the same token, we need to ask to be filled with God's spirit first so that we no longer live in the darkness of our past, but living out the desire of God in our lives.         Pray with Pastor Tong           Lord, may your Holy Spirit fill our lives with righteousness, kindness, perseverance, and mercy, so that we are no longer belong in our old flesh but renewed with your  m glorious testimonies every day.  With thanks we pray, in the victorious name of Jesus, Amen!