Why you need to fight with yourself.

It means something good.

Have you fought with yourself lately?

You need to. Let me explain.

As I continue to work my way through Thomas A. Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, every single day seems to yield a gold nugget. Today was no exception. This morning’s nugget? The value, benefit, and necessity of fighting with yourself.

Here are Thomas’s words from the second book of his classic work:

A man must fight long and bravely against himself before he learns to master himself fully and to direct all his affections toward God. When he trusts in himself, he easily takes to human consolation. The true lover of Christ, however, who sincerely pursues virtue, does not fall back upon consolations nor seek such pleasures of sense, but prefers severe trials and hard labors for the sake of Christ.¹

That first line hit me hard.

See, I think we forget something really important about ourselves. That important thing is found in Jeremiah 17:9. It says:

The heart is deceitful above all things,

and desperately sick;

who can understand it?

Oh, how true. Our hearts, our flesh as Paul calls it, is untrustworthy. It’s “sick.”

Now, in today’s culture we’re taught the opposite. We’re taught that whatever we feel is the truth. Because “your truth” is the truth. But that’s a load of crap. What the Bible teaches us is that our feelings—our “hearts”—can’t be trusted at all. At least not unless they are seeking after the true source of truth. In other words, align your heart with the will of God (pursue him) and only then can your heart even begin to be trusted. Even so, though, our sin and selfishness tend to get in the way.

I think you know that to be true, even if you don’t want to fully admit it. I do and I don’t.

Friend, that means we need to be constantly fighting “bravely” against ourselves. Our wills, passions, and desires are corrupt. And always will be this side of glory. And the more you fight with yourself—the more you fight against those selfish desires that cloud your judgment—the better off you will be.

Your flesh—what so many call their “heart”—is constantly going to be pulling you away from God. That’s because, as John Calvin said, our hearts are idol factories. They want to put anything and everything on the throne except the one thing, the one person, that belongs there. That’s what sin has done to us.

It’s your job to fight against that.

I know that battle is tough. Trust me, I know. I lost that battle for a long time. I still do at times. But in the process of fighting it we start to bring our selfish desires under control and learn to “direct all our affections toward God.”

It’s a process. But it’s one with undertaking. It’s a battle. But it’s one worth fighting.

Don’t give up.

Photo by Михаил Секацкий on Unsplash

1. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, 1996), 79.