Fight the Good Fight Fight the Good Fight All-Church Retreat 2010All-Church Retreat 2010

Session 3 [Saturday Evening]Session 3 [Saturday Evening]

“BETTER THAN LIFE”

• Session 1: Know Who You Are

• Session 2: Receive Your Marching Orders from God

• Session 3: Fight the Good Fight

• Session 4: What’s Better than Life?

3 RESPONSES DAVID COULD HAVE MADE

1) Secrecy 2) Excuse 3) Repentance 

3 RESPONSES DAVID COULD HAVE MADE

1) Secrecy 2) Excuse 3) Repentance 

3 REASONS FOR FIGHTING AGAINST FLESHLY LUST

1) Our Christian identity demands the fight.

 

Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world,

to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.

1 Peter 2:11

3 REASONS FOR FIGHTING AGAINST FLESHLY LUST

2) Our old nature provokes the fight. 

For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit,

and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.

Galatians 5:17

3 REASONS FOR FIGHTING AGAINST FLESHLY LUST

2) Our old nature provokes the fight. 

Do you mortify?; do you make it your daily work?; be always at it while you live; cease not a day from this work;

be killing sin or it will be killing you. John Owen, 1656

3 REASONS FOR FIGHTING AGAINST FLESHLY LUST

2) Our old nature provokes the fight.

 14I write to you, fathers, because you have known him

who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men,because you are strong, and the word of God lives

in you, and you have overcome the evil one. 15Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—

comes not from the Father but from the world.1John 2:14-17

3 REASONS FOR FIGHTING AGAINST FLESHLY LUST

2) Our old nature provokes the fight.

1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?

2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

Romans 6:1-2

3 REASONS FOR FIGHTING AGAINST FLESHLY LUST

2) Our old nature provokes the fight.

  Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ,

and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

Romans 13:14

3 REASONS FOR FIGHTING AGAINST FLESHLY LUST

3) Spirit-led evangelism motivates the fight.

Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world,

to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.

1 Peter 2:11

3 He was despised and rejected by men,        a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. 

       Like one from whom men hide their faces        he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

 4 Surely he took up our infirmities        and carried our sorrows, 

       yet we considered him stricken by God,        smitten by him, and afflicted.

 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,        he was crushed for our iniquities; 

       the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,        and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, 

       each of us has turned to his own way;        and the LORD has laid on him 

       the iniquity of us all.Isaiah 53:3-6