Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

1. Beginnings
A New Status before God
New Relationships with God and People
A Foe of Legions
A Passage to Study

2. Prayer
Deep Calls to Deep
God in Search of Man
Prayer Language
Praying in Public
Hearing God’s Voice
The Bible and Prayer
Daydreaming
The Practice of the Presence
Summary
A Few Suggestions

3. God Still Speaks
Practical Problems
How to Study
Translations and Paraphrases
The Time Factor
Setting a Goal
A Few Suggestions

4. On Being a Signpost
The Nature of Signposts
Salesman for Christ?
On Being Real
How Real Was Peter?
Hostile Reactions
The Need to Know More
Summary
A Passage to Study

5. His Infernal Majesty
Temptation without Dismay
Accusation of the Brethren
Deception Overcome
Warfare with the Devourer
A Passage to Study

6. Faith
Man’s Response to God’s Initiative
The Invisible and Hoped For
Increasing Your Faith
Recalling Bad Times
Remembering the Promises
Getting Rid of Excess Baggage
Being Tried by Fire
A Passage to Study

7. Changed Relationships
The Biological Family
The Family: A Script to Follow, a Score to Dance
The Family of God
Finding a Church Home
Too Many Meetings
The We/They Dichotomy
The Heart of Christian Fellowship
Making It Work
That We All May Be One

8. Guidance
The General Nature of Guidance
Scripture and Guidance
The Persuasive Power of Desire
Guidance and Gifts
Counsel, Circumstances and Fleeces
The Voice of the Shepherd
Prerequisites for Guidance
Passages to Study

9. Holiness
The God Who Is Holy
Peace and Holiness
Crisis or Growth?
God’s Work or Yours?
The Holy Spirit
A Passage to Study

10. Deliverance from Drudgery
Craftsmanship, Technology and Cramming for Exams
Easy and Light
The Secular and the Profane
Witness through Success?
Organizing Your Time
Loaves and Fishes
A Passage to Study

11. The Fight
The Battle with the World
The Battle against the Flesh
The Battle against the Powers of Darkness
The Spirit and the Battle
The Last Enemy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(From the) Foreword

Early on in my ministry someone gave me a book called The Fight by John White. It was so important to me at the time. It presented Christianity as worth the struggle. That spiritual growth was worth the fight for it.

The Fight explained how there was a cosmic battle going on between the activity of God in the world and the activity of the evil one in the world. It helped me understand how those forces are in opposition to each other and where I fit in to that whole cosmic battle.

I probably read that book four or five times. I preached from significant portions of it and did some sermon series out of it. I owe a lot to John White and InterVarsity Press for that book. …
Bill Hybels
Senior Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(From Chapter 1) Beginnings

When you became a Christian, a number of extremely important events took place both in heaven and in your own body.

You may or may not have felt anything. Christians have widely differing experiences, ranging from intense emotions to nothing at all. You may not even be able to say when you became a Christian. All you may know is that at that moment you acknowledged the Jesus of history to be your Saviour and your God.

Yet whatever you did or did not feel and whether or not you know when you became a Christian, the events I speak of took place. As I describe them I shall, in a way, be defining what a Christian is.

Purely psychological events occur in all varieties of conversion. Had you been converted to communism or to any religion or worldview, you would have experienced them. The psychological factors have been long recognized and well described. They consist of temporary “feeling states” and a turn around in a person’s understanding of life.

In Christian conversion, as in any other conversion, you may experience many such psychological events, and you will certainly experience a change in life view. What makes Christian conversion different is that supernatural events also occur. The feeling states in non-Christian conversion are temporary. They are equally temporary in Christian conversion. But the supernatural, and often unfelt, events are permanent. They mark you in the sight of demons and angels as a human who is different. They bring your body into touch with eternity and with the eternal God.

A NEW STATUS BEFORE GOD

In the first place, you have been justified. This is to say that God looks upon you and deals with you as though you were perfectly righteous, as though you had never sinned and will never sin. However difficult this idea may be for you to grasp, it represents an event that has already taken place and will never change.

It is not that God wears blinders and pretends you are better than you are. He knows about your sin. Yet his feelings toward you and his dealings with you are based on a righteousness Christ has given you. God treats you as though you were as righteous as Jesus. You may be uncomfortable with this idea, but as the impact of it breaks over your understanding you will marvel. Far from wanting to sin you will sense how you have been set free to be holy.

Your justification is both a heavenly event and a time-space event. It is a heavenly event insofar as Jesus is at this moment on the right hand of God’s throne acting as your personal representative. It is a heavenly event too in that your name is now recorded in the “not guilty” annals of heaven. It is an earthly event since you, a creature of time and space, may boldly step into the presence of the God of eternity and hold a conversation with him. Indeed you are encouraged to do so. Notice, you are not given permission to crawl into God’s presence but to approach him with your head held high.

A second event that took place in your body is what is known as regeneration or new birth. Eternity invaded space and re-established permanent links between your personality and the Eternal. Again, you may have experienced little or nothing when this most profound event occurred. By a miracle of divine grace a non-biological life was implanted in you. It is a form of life that will enable you one day to inhabit eternity just as your biological life now enables you to live in time-space.

The life that entered you was the life of God himself. Your earthly parents gave life from their living bodies which became your life when you were born. In the same way God, in imparting to you his own life, became your heavenly Father. You are a child of God in a literal sense.

But the life must grow and develop. As it does, you will reflect, more and more, the likeness of the Father from whom the life came. As God’s life within you grows, it will influence both your emotional and your physical development. You will become more mature emotionally. Other things being equal, you will enjoy better physical health. Your new birth does not guarantee that you will never be emotionally or physically sick, but it will move you in the direction of improved health.

For your new life to grow, it must be fed and exercised. The food it requires is the holy Scriptures. Exercise will consist of obedience by faith to the commands of God. You will also need to breathe deep drafts of heavenly air as your prayer life develops.

All of these factors that contribute to your spiritual growth will be examined carefully in the chapters that follow. For the present it is enough to know that you are a hybrid—a being with two types of life and two sets of parentage.

NEW RELATIONSHIPS WITH GOD AND PEOPLE

The events that have occurred to you include dramatic changes in your personal relationships. Once alienated from God, you have changed to being at peace with him as well as being his child. Christ, his unique Son whom you may formerly have ignored, now has a relationship with you, and you with him, which is many-faceted. He is your Shepherd, and you are his sheep. As time goes on you will become increasingly expert at discerning his voice and being able to follow wherever he leads. And he guarantees you refreshment and rest, provided you follow him, and a determination to bring you back to the flock should you stray and get lost.

He is also your Master, and you his slave. …