H-O-W-E-V-E-R....
You and I were born into the kingdom of darkness and evil, under the 'kingship' of a merciless, hateful god. He likes to keep his subjects, and will do W-H-A-T-E-V-E-R it takes to keep them subjected to his plans until we die. This is the only way he can assure we will live a useless life, far from realizing our God-ordained purpose. And for many, this is his way of assuring he will have their company during his God-promised eternal torment in a mercilessly hot, inescapable hell!
So, as you might imagine, ANY effort to break his hold on our lives is picking a really big FiGhT! Even though Christ fought and won the deciding battle against satan's authority over mankind, his (satan's) final punishment is still pending. Until then, we have been charged to ignite a fight -- the good fight of faith, systematically breaking any and all strangle holds our former god still has on us. As is clearly visible in our world, there are many.
Christ paid the price for action-oriented believers in Him to enjoy abundant life, free of such strangleholds. Just as the Promised Land was available to the children of Israel during their 40 year sojourn in the wilderness, they were initially reluctant, but eventually would have to apply their determined, persistent FAITH to possess it. In releasing their faith, GOD, Himself, fought the core spiritual battles for them, En Avance!, but He first required them to "ignite the fight". Once done, the physical victories were absolutely 100% assured, though battles had to be fought, with patience, endurance, blood, sweat and even death of many.
Perhaps you are like me, not the personality type to start a fight, but more inclined to reason your way through conflicts. Our former god is so unreasonably hateful, it will take a real fight for him to let go! Ask anyone who has struggled with addictions of any kind, lustfulness, habitual lying and gossiping, stealing, etc. While God's Grace help is available, and victory is within our reach, the very first step in our 'victory dance' is to ignite the fight. Take a first step of faith, standing on God's promised help. Since earth was established as a "word-rich, word-ruled-and-rocked" environment or realm, then start saying exactly what God, Himself, says about your problems or stranglehold. As you do, you, as I did, will quickly find the battle is too big for you! Like kindling, your "self" will be very quickly drained in the struggle, consumed in the fire, at which point you will hear/perceive the rallying call of God's troops, His holy angels, shouting as they come to your defense and assured victory:
"The Battle Is The LORD's!!!"
