Fighting the Right Fight

Welcome to Daily Devotion with Ken Gurley. Devotions designed to inspire you on your daily walk with God. Here's your host, Ken Gurley.

Hey, good Wednesday morning to each of you, all of you. I just pray the blessings of the Lord upon our daily devotion family. We just gather here. We gather here each Monday through Friday 7:00 a.m. Central. Welcome you here if this is your first day. I um I'm very grateful, very grateful for everybody that gathers here. You You're the one that makes this. I'm just the excuse for everybody to get together and I'm just grateful for each of you, all of you.

I've not forgotten about Tustin. I've been discussing We've been discussing a family reunion of sorts. I'm [snorts] not sure how we're going to pull this thing off. We tried. I don't know if you remember years ago we tried a cruise. Well, I I would tell you this. I I learned I learned on that cruise we get a bunch of us together, we're trouble. That's first of all. Uh second of all, we had a lot of fun. And uh third, we probably needed to organize it a whole lot better than what we did. And uh so we would really need some help if we decided to go the cruise route. Um but somehow somehow we need to get together for a family devotion family reunion. Open to suggestions. If you want to just throw some suggestions out there, we are open. The suggestion box is now open on Daily Devotion. I don't know why I said did that that way. I I have no clue why I did that. It's really probably being abandoned at a child as a child at a fire station. I just made that up. I'm really in a dangerous mood today. Can you tell I'm in a dangerous mood? Yeah. >> [snorts] >> But anyway, the suggestion box is open. If you want to say how we're going to figure out how to do a family reunion. I I don't know. I don't know what it's going to look like, but there there throw throw some ideas out and and I'm sure it'll be well. I'm sure it will be well. Let's figure this out.

Today we're we are having the homegoing service for just an old friend um Debbie Ashcraft Story and uh pastor's wife from down in Victoria, Texas, but but more than that, just a long-term friend, a fixture of our family uh for many, many years. My wife was friends with Debbie for a long time and that family uh just intertwined. And so our hearts and our thoughts go out to the Story family today and um just say a prayer say a prayer for for them and uh be heading south somewhere later this morning and getting down there.

I um We started It was like a trumpet blast yesterday. Standing for righteousness. And we just launched this series of thoughts with the battle for America's soul. We named that battle. We traced it through the words of de Tocqueville who found America's secret greatness in her pulpits aflame with righteousness. Looked honestly at the paradox of our time that somehow we're in a nation that's materially rich and spiritually depleted. We looked at the three spiritual forces pressing against her soul. And we ended yesterday with a question, how shall we fight? We determined it's not as Constantine. We're not looking for a new crusade. Not with the weaponry of the world. Because the battle for America's soul is not going to be won or lost in the political, legal, or cultural realm. It's a spiritual realm. And spiritual battles require spiritual weaponry. And today Paul gives us those weapons. Writing to young Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 2, the Apostle laid out a three-part battle plan that I believe is just as relevant today as the day when it was written. Three things. Three things that will actually move the needle on the spiritual condition of your family, your church, your community, your county, your parish, your nation, your state. He said, "I exhort thee therefore first of all that prayers, supplications, prayers, intercessions, giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty."

Hold on. I I just feel I just feel this. Today this isn't a message about what's wrong with America. That's easy to do. This is a message about what we as the household of faith, as the church, as people of God are going to do about it. I I want you to purpose to loop your prayer group in on this one. Loop your family. Loop people in your small group, your church family. We want to fight the good fight. Fight the right fight. The battlefield God has assigned you is a voting booth. The battlefield God has assigned you is not a voting booth. It's not a courtroom. It's a prayer closet. It's a neighborhood. It's the mirror you face each morning.

The Apostle Paul had every reason to be a pessimist. He wrote to Timothy from a world saturated with godlessness. The Roman Empire was not a neutral environment for the gospel. It was a hostile one. Emperors were worshipped as gods. Corruption was systemic. Immorality was not hidden. It was celebrated. And yet Paul didn't write Timothy a letter of despair. He wrote him a battle plan. Let me reverse Paul's order and build toward his primary point because it carries the most important weight and deserves to land last. Three weapons, three non-negotiables for anyone who wants to stand for righteousness in a nation that is drifting from God. Let's consider this in a verse order.

First of all, win the lost. Paul tells Timothy in verses 3 and 4 that God our savior wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. Not not [snorts] some people, not a few people, not the respectable people, but all people. He wants the educated, the uneducated. He wants those who those whose politics differs from our own. He wants people from every kindred, tongue, tribe, nation. He wants the person who is down and out to be up and coming. He wants the one who has been pushed down and held down to rise up. He wants all to come to a knowledge of him, of his goodness, his kindness, and the great price he paid for their souls. The battle for America's soul is one one soul at a time. This is not my job alone, it's our job. It's the great commission and the great omission of the church has been to forget it.

There's a story I encountered while traveling about a man named Bob who grew up in a Christian home but lost his way in college and became a hopeless alcoholic. He eventually met a stockbroker in New York who was fighting the same battle and the two of them learned to lean on God and each other. From that experience, Alcoholics Anonymous was formed. The early movement was deeply rooted in God and it transformed millions of lives. God wants alcoholics delivered. God wants addicts set free. But he also wants those socially acceptable addictions like anger, greed, lust, and the relentless pursuit of power, he wants those resolved as well. The healing of a nation begins with the healing of individual souls. I still carry the words of a song written by my cousin Marsha who has gone on to be with the Lord. She wrote it in her younger years and it stayed with me across decades of ministry. O Calvary, Calvary, please won't you speak to me? Tell me how much I owe. I want to repay. Then an echo rings so clear from the hills of old Judea. Tell the lost. Tell the lost. Tell the lost. The great commission is to reach the world. The great omission is that we forget it. The preacher Dwight L. Moody was once criticized because of the evangelistic the evangelistic methods he used. Moody replied, "I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it." I've read that 95% of all believers never try to lead anyone to the Lord in their entire lifetime. That means 5% of the church is doing 100% of the evangelism. In which group are each of us? This church, any church, can double overnight if each of us would just win one soul to the Lord. We win the war when we win a soul.

The second strategy Paul gave us in fighting the right fight is to live righteously. That's the second weapon we have. Verse two says we are live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and honesty. God wants us to be godly people, holy people. Not just inside of the church walls, but outside and where the watching world is drawing its conclusion about whether your faith in God is real. Live such good lives among the pagans, Peter said, that although they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God.

A little girl once came to her mother with a question she'd been turning over in her mind. She said, "Mom, in Sunday school my teacher said God is so big he fills the universe." Her mother said, "Yes, that's true." Then the girl said, "And my teacher also said that God can live in our hearts." And her mother said, "Well, that's true as well." The little girl grew quiet for a long moment and then she replied, "But if God is so big and he lives in our hearts, he must show through." Yes, God shows through in our attitudes, in our mannerisms, our conversations, our dress, in the way we treat people who have no power to return any favors to us. A righteous life is not a performance for church attendance. It's the overflow of an encounter with a holy God.

But let me be honest, straightforward. There are three specific temptations that American believers, indeed all Western believers, face and we need to name them. The first is the temptation to enjoy the fruits of citizenship without tending the tree of liberty. A poet once captured it well. We eat from orchards we didn't plant. We drink from wells we didn't dig. We reap from fields we didn't sow. We are warmed by the fires we didn't kindle. We are sheltered by roofs that we didn't build. Most of us have not earned the freedoms that we enjoy. We didn't go to foreign lands and fight for them. We didn't shed blood, sweat, and tears for them. The question is not whether we enjoy them. The question is whether we are tending them. Is this world a better place because you're a citizen of this country? Is your community a better place because you live in it? Or are you just enjoying the fruit and neglecting the tree of liberty?

The second temptation for us is to enjoy the benefits of prosperity while ignoring the voice of conscience. Capitalism without conscience becomes a ruthless competition where success, greed, and materialism cried crowd out compassion. Ann Landers, you may remember her. She once replied to a letter that essentially said a good kid was one who didn't do drugs, hadn't been arrested, hadn't failed in school. Her response was sharp. "You make no mention of achievement, not a word about integrity, a sense of responsibility, decency, morality, or service to others. What a sad commentary on our times. When our standard for goodness merely becomes the absence of a disaster, we've already drifted far from righteous living."

The third temptation for Americans, and perhaps the most dangerous, is to want Christianity without commitment. For too long, segments of believers have been content to gather in their Sunday best, listen to good music and comfortable messages, and leave feeling confirmed in exactly who they already were. But the Christianity of New of the New Testament is not a comfort cult. It's a call to transformation. "Just tell me how nice I am," the culture says to the church. "Give me Christianity, but don't talk to me about conversion." Somehow along the way, we forgot the price Jesus paid to purchase our freedom. A righteous life is evidence of a good memory. You remember what God has done for you and you live accordingly.

But now we arrive in our inverted order at the third strategy to fight the right fight. Pray unceasingly. This is foundational, non-negotiable. Before winning the lost, before living righteously, pray. Pray unceasingly. One translation says it like this, "I urge that requests, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for everyone, for kings and all those in authority." We make war on the floor. We do battle in prayer rooms. We conquer principalities at altars. How was slavery defeated in America? The temptation is to say that it was the superior might of the north, the military advantage, the industrial capacity. But that's not the whole truth. The battle was not ultimately won at Gettysburg or Vicksburg or Ap- or Appomattox. It was when It was won in the souls. It was won in the souls of men and women. Watchmen preached. People prayed. And the preaching and praying became the victory of the soul. Samuel Chadwick said it plainly, "The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless study, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray." Andrew Murray said, "The man who mobilizes the Christian church to pray will make the greatest contribution to world evangelism in history." Charles Spurgeon once said on the other side of the Atlantic, "I would rather teach one man to pray than 10 men to preach." And E. M. Bounds said, "What the church needs today is not new machinery or new methods, but men and women whom the Holy Spirit can use, people mighty in prayer."

Let me tell you what prayer actually does. My wife and I were returning from a ministry trip overseas. Both of us, without telling the other, had been quietly wrestling with the same question. God, is this what you want us to be doing? We were standing in line in Dubai for our connecting flight home. My wife My wife heard two men behind us talking about a church organization she recognized. She turned and asked if they were a part of it. They said, "Yes." Then she asked how we were all connected and they knew our names. Was none other than a missionary leader we had worked with. A man who had just been given responsibility for a nation of more than a billion people. When we told him what we had been doing in that very nation, he said these words. You're one of a dozen churches that God is using to bring together a great revival in that country. And I believe [clears throat] we will see the largest church in the world there. God had answered a prayer we had not yet finished praying by placing the answer in the line behind us at an airport in the UAE. That's how powerful prayer is. When we pray, God moves. When we pray, we sense him giving us the victory. We once used the acronym push pray until something happens.

Pray for our nation. Pray for those in the highest offices of the land. Pray for your Senate, your House of Representatives. Pray for the judiciary, your state, your county, your city, your school administration and the teachers shaping the next generation. Pray for your governor. Pray for the president. Pray at home. Pray at church. Pray while you're driving in your car. Pray while you're doing laundry. Pray while you're going about your day. Pray when you wake up and when you lie down. Never doubt the power of God. Never doubt the power of prayer.

And here's the word of hope I want to leave with you. This war is winnable. I know that many will reject the gospel, but there is an army of people who will heed the call. When Abraham interceded for the souls of Sodom and Gomorrah, God agreed to spare those desperately wicked cities if only 10 righteous people could be found in them. 10. God responds to righteousness. And in this nation, in your city, your community, there's far more than 10. We can win this war. We can win it by winning the lost. By living righteously, by praying as we've never prayed before. The church of Jesus Christ is the most powerful force on earth when she's on her knees. When you pray, when you witness, when you live right, you're not just fighting for America. You're fighting for the soul of the person right next to you.

If we're going to restore this nation to greatness, it's going to take believers who care. People just like you on Daily Devotion who care enough to come out of their comfort zones. Step out of their homes and address the decline around them. It will take people who have enough faith in God not to write off this society. It will take people willing to work for change and stand against unrighteous causes. Willing to fight. To stand for righteousness even when it costs something. I believe that's the call of this series. Not a call to panic. Not a call to despair. Not a call to anger. A call to stand. You've been given the battle plan today. Three win three weapons. Win the lost. Live righteously. Pray unceasingly. Unceasingly. None of these require a platform. You don't need a microphone. You don't need lights and a PA system. You don't need a digital platform or a position of authority or a title or a lanyard hanging around your neck. No. Just requires a willing heart. And I believe you're listening today. I believe that's exactly what you and I have on Daily Devotion. A willing heart. We're going to stand for righteousness. Until next time. I just want you to keep standing. Keep standing. Wow. We're fighting the right fight.

Would you do something for me today? Would you do something for the Lord today? Would you share this with someone? Somebody may be at a pivotal moment in their life. Someone may be just like me and Tessie. We were at a crossroads years ago. And God answered the prayer that was boiling in our hearts. I just believe God's going to answer our prayers in ways that we can't imagine today. We're going to fight the right fight. Don't get sidetracked. Don't get detoured. No. Stay on target. God's going to help you. Would you like and follow on Facebook, subscribe X and YouTube. Share. Share. Share. Share. Check out kengurley.com. Thank you for your support over there. It makes a difference in what we're doing here. Each and every weekday. You're the greatest. Share this with others. God love you. God go with you. I just believe God's going to be with us the rest of the day. Go in the love of the Lord. Thank you for sharing [music] in Daily Devotion with Ken Gurley. We pray this ministry has been a source of encouragement and strength to you. Please be mindful that your financial [music] support enables us to meet with you each day. To give a donation or connect with us, visit our website at kengurley.com. There you will also find the latest [music] books, podcasts, and resources. Blessed: 90 Days to Change Your World is Pastor Gurley's [music] latest book. You can get your copy of this life-changing book at kengurley.com. May God's favor rest on you in every way. Until we meet again. >> [music]