Am I spiritually strong or am I just fighting myself?

Question

I consider myself spirtually strong, I've never really had a problem with many negative or significant encounters in my life due to my way of thinking. I always keep in mind that time will work out for me and this won't lasts forever and I persevere through hardships. I find it hard sometimes during the struggle. Now when I'm struggling and fighting the negative in my life to persevere, Am I really fighting to survive or am I fighting myself? Reason for this question is because I was told that everything should be done in love and never fight against anything within the universe because the universe we're part of the universe and not apart from it! Next time I'm struggling to keep strong, should I be more concerned with embracing hardship or trying to fight hardship?

Answer 1

Just because we are part of the universe doesn't mean we don't sometimes have to choose to fight. Although, when the option to avoid a fight is available, it's often the best option. But the universe is filled with both good and bad, and sometimes you have to fight the bad.

Answer 2

Be concerned with getting through the storm, not the storm itself.
The focus is the finish of the race, not the travailing. The prize is what you seek, the value of finishing the race.

Unfortunately, Jesus said the floods will come. What foundation your house stands on will determine the future. 1 Corinthians 3 is also a needed Scripture to prepare for.

It helps to have brothers in sisters willing to walk through the storm with you.

Sheltering Tree by Newsong is a great song to listen.

Answer 3

Ecclesiastes 3:1-9 A time for everything.

Answer 4

Fighting yourself. It the ego's attachments that are the cause of our suffering. When we let go of the attachments, we let go and let God, then we feel more peace and do not react to the ups and downs in life as we have no longer become attached to them.

Life gives you circumstances to give you lessons to grow spiritually. Whatever you are going through is a blessing in disguise to help you grow stronger and develop these strengths.

I had one circumstance in my life four years ago I went through the most painful thing. I cried every day for almost a year over this loss. I had become attached to this loss. As a result, I finally over came this attachment and really realized that it was a blessing because it taught me a huge lesson in attachments. And by letting go of this huge attachment, I was then finally freer from my ego and from pain. It was meant to happen.

Answer 5

I think you are spirtually strong. And you can overcome the negative encounters in your life because of your optimism and strong sprit. Thats good for you! really!!
In the Life, you have to fight.!! You have to fight for survival while you are fighting yourself, your greed, your anger and all the dark side of you.
And whatever you believe, you have to place faith on it.
You need faith for your fights. And you should know you have a potential.
You have to fight for what you believe, (just spritually)
Fight In your mind for your faith, (there's no point arguing with others beliefs) Until certain level,
until you get the confidence in your faith,
You'll feel secure and value of your wisdom when you get it,
Then you can enjoy yourself and harmony with your faith.

Answer 6

Life is survival of the fittest. You have to adapt to get through. You have to fight your way through it when necessary.

I suggest you try talking to a real life person, and get some professional help. You need to talk to real people, not Yahoo! Answers addicts.

Answer 7

Much of modern New Age belief systems are fairly confused about the nature of reality:
1) Fighting is part of reality. If all fighting stopped, the Earth would die as all carnivores stopped eating, omnivores got sick, and herbavores and plants grew out of control. Mating rituals amongst things like big-horn rams would end, territorial animals would stop protecting their territories with the resulting changes in their nature as competition for resources increased.

Fighting is not the problem.

2) Reality is. Man has a talent for creating symbols for reality that make it difficult or impossible to deal with the reality directly. One such is "self-image". You have one. If you are "fighting yourself", you are trying to keep an image, perhaps of a person who is "spiritually strong", vs. actually being spiritually strong. Here are the possibilities:

You are: Your self-image is of being:
Spiritually weak Spiritually weak
Spiritually weak Spiritually strong
Spiritually strong Spiritually weak
Spiritually strong Spiritually strong

Which one are you? Can you even see beyond the image? One way to tell is to spend some time pretending that you see yourself as spiritually weak. If you can do so, and admit it to other people, then your original concept of being spiritually strong is not based solely on self-image.

At the same time, all of these are symbols/concepts that are unimportant to actually being "Spiritually strong".

The list of those is very short:
1) Make truth more important to you than ANYTHING (especially your self-image).
2) You determine your feelings. No one has a remote control to MAKE you angry, scared, etc. You choose these in response to what they do, but you CHOOSE them.
3) You are responsible for everything. Oh, they may be responsible, too, but it is not additive! You can't say: "They are fifty percent responsible, and I am 50% responsible." They aren't additive. You are solely responsible for everything in your reality.
4) Love never hurts anything. Neither does desire. Expectation, thinking you are owed is a really deceptive twisting of reality that people confuse with normal desire. Desire is what makes reality. Love is the natural state of being free of artificial masks. Expectation is the idea that "you are owed something" (vs. the other form of expectation such as that the sun will probably come up tomorrow, which is not the same meaning of the word, "expectation" and is of no concern here).

If you are concerned with being spiritually strong, don't worry about being spiritually strong. Just make truth first, love, desire without expectation, take responsibility for all of your reality including your feelings, and you WILL be spiritually strong.

Eventually, you'll come to see yourself as not seperate, reality will not be something "out there", and your desire, due to recognition of the nature of the universe, will narrow more and more on God/nirvana, etc. as you begin or continue to pursue a spiritual path.

Hardships? Just events that require more energy, not comments on your self-esteem or value, since you don't need a "value" for your self. Negative? No such thing. Negatives/evil just the name people have for other things they disagree with, though those things may also be, and often are, symbols for things that interfere with seeing reality clearly (such as: "I hate him," meaning, "He does things I don't like, and they challenge my image in public where someone might see I am not what I pretend and actually try to think that I am".

The Universe fights against itself all the time.

The enlightened fight while loving the fight, themselves, and those they fight. They seek only what is best for all concerned with knowledge that the other owes them nothing, not even to recognize the "rightness" of the enlightened person's side.

Just as you do not owe me to accept anything I say here.

Embrace hardship? Try ignoring it and see how much fun THAT is! Avoiding reality is never the answer. Doesn't work, and most of us don't like pain. Don't embrace hardship. Embrace reality. Embrace all of it as part of you, but in a way that doesn't agrandize you. Just accept it even as you choose what you want. It doesn't owe you to work out. You just move on to the next thing and continue your life.

I could give you the basics more directly, but some symbols are necessary for people to even begin to understand these ideas.

Enjoy. I'll see you on the road sometime. Keep searching.

Answer 8

can you summarize...
you mean your fighting the evil of this world

its good to embrace hardship

it changes you

youre not fighting against yourself if your fighting for a good reason

Answer 9

Paul discussed being content in any situation, whether abased or abounding. But the universe is not what you need to be concerned with, only God's will. I don't think this means you shouldn't try to improve your situation, (I think you SHOULD try to improve things) but that while you are in it, be content in God, and His will.

Answer 10

Sounds like you are having a real struggle there. Is it possible that is your flesh and Spirit warring? Rest in the Lord. His strength is made perfect in weakness. focus on the Lord and His Word.



The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer

Chapter 6 : The Speaking Voice
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1
An intelligent plain man, untaught in the truths of Christianity, coming upon this text, would likely conclude that John meant to teach that it is the nature of God to speak, to communicate His thoughts to others. And he would be right. A word is a medium by which thoughts are expressed, and the application of the term to the Eternal Son leads us to believe that self-expression is inherent in the Godhead, that God is forever seeking to speak Himself out to His creation. The whole Bible supports the idea. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is by His nature continuously articulate. He fills the world with His speaking Voice.
One of the great realities with which we have to deal is the Voice of God in His world. The briefest and only satisfying cosmogony is this: `He spake and it was done.' The why of natural law is the living Voice of God immanent in His creation. And this word of God which brought all worlds into being cannot be understood to mean the Bible, for it is not a written or printed word at all, but the expression of the will of God spoken into the structure of all things. This word of God is the breath of God filling the world with living potentiality. The Voice of God is the most powerful force in nature, indeed the only force in nature, for all energy is here only because the power-filled Word is being spoken.
The Bible is the written word of God, and because it is written it is confined and limited by the necessities of ink and paper and leather. The Voice of God, however, is alive and free as the sovereign God is free. `The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.' The life is in the speaking words. God's word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God's word in the universe. It is the present Voice which makes the written Word all- powerful. Otherwise it would lie locked in slumber within the covers of a book.
We take a low and primitive view of things when we conceive of God at the creation coming into physical contact with things, shaping and fitting and building like a carpenter. The Bible teaches otherwise: `By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. ...For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.' (Ps 33:6,9) `Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God.' (Heb 11:3) Again we must remember that God is referring ere not to His written Word, but to His speaking Voice. His world-filling Voice is meant, that Voice which antedates the Bible by uncounted centuries, that Voice which has not been silent since the dawn of creation, but is sounding still throughout the full far reaches of the universe.
The Word of God is quick and powerful. In the beginning He spoke to nothing, and it became something. Chaos heard it and became order, darkness heard it and became light. `And God said - - and it was so.' (Gen 1:9) These twin phrases, as cause and effect, occur throughout the Genesis story of the creation. The said accounts for the so. The so is the said put into the continuous present. That God is here and that He is speaking--these truths are back of all other Bible truths; without them there could be no revelation at all. God did not write a book and send it by messenger to be read at a distance by unaided minds. He spoke a Book and lives in His spoken words, constantly speaking His words and causing the power of them to persist across the years. God breathed on clay and it became a man; He breathes on men and they become clay. `Return ye children of men,' (Ps 90:3) was the word spoken at the Fall by which God decreed the death of every man, and no added word has He needed to speak. The sad procession of mankind across the face of the earth from birth to the grave is proof that His original Word was enough.
We have not given sufficient attention to that deep utterance in the Book of John, `That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' (John 1:9) Shift the punctuation around as we will and the truth is still there: the Word of God affects the hearts of all men as light in the soul. In the hearts of all men the light shines, the Word sounds, and there is no escaping them. Something like this would of necessity be so if God is alive and in His world. And John says that it is so. Even those persons who have never heard of the Bible have still been preached to with sufficient clarity to remove every excuse from their hearts forever. `Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while either accusing or else excusing one another.' (Rom 2:15) `For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.' (Rom 1:20)
This universal Voice of God was by the ancient Hebrews often called Wisdom, and was said to be everywhere sounding and searching throughout the earth, seeking some response from the sons of men. The eighth chapter of the Book of Proverbs begins, `Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?' The writer then pictures wisdom as a beautiful woman standing `in the top of the high places, by the way in the places of the paths.' She sounds her voice from every quarter so that no one may miss hearing it. `Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of men.' Then she pleads for the simple and the foolish to give ear to her words. It is spiritual response for which this Wisdom of God is pleading, a response which she has always sought and is but rarely able to secure. The tragedy is that our eternal welfare depends upon our hearing, and we have trained our ears not to hear.
This universal Voice has ever sounded, and it has often troubled men even when they did not understand the source of their fears. Could it be that this Voice distilling like a living mist upon the hearts of men has been the undiscovered cause of the troubled conscience and the longing for immortality confessed by millions since the dawn of recorded history? We need not fear to face up to this. The speaking Voice is a fact. How men have reacted to it is for any observer to note.
When God spoke out of heaven to our Lord, self-centered men who heard it explained it by natural causes: they said, `It thundered.' This habit of explaining the Voice by appeals to natural law is at the very root of modern science. In the living breathing cosmos there is a mysterious Something, too wonderful, too awful [i.e. `awesome'] for any mind to understand. The believing man does not claim to understand. He falls to his knees and whispers, `God.' The man of earth kneels also, but not to worship. He kneels to examine, to search, to find the cause and the how of things. Just now we happen to be living in a secular age. Our thought habits are those of the scientist, not those of the worshipper. We are more likely to explain than to adore. `It thundered,' we exclaim, and go our earthly way. But still the Voice sounds and searches. The order and life of the world depend upon that Voice, but men are mostly too busy or too stubborn to give attention.
Everyone of us has had experiences which we have not been able to explain: a sudden sense of loneliness, or a feeling of wonder or awe in the face of the universal vastness. Or we have had a fleeting visitation of light like an illumination from some other sun, giving us in a quick flash an assurance that we are from another world, that our origins are divine. What we saw there, or felt, or heard, may have been contrary to all that we had been taught in the schools and at wide variance with all our former beliefs and opinions. We were forced to suspend our acquired doubts while, for a moment, the clouds were rolled back and we saw and heard for ourselves. Explain such things as we will, I think we have not been fair to the facts until we allow at least the possibility that such experiences may arise from the Presence of God in the world and His persistent effort to communicate with mankind. Let us not dismiss such an hypothesis too flippantly.
It is my own belief (and here I shall not feel bad if no one follows me) that every good and beautiful thing which man has produced in the world has been the result of his faulty and sin-blocked response to the creative Voice sounding over the earth. The moral philosophers who dreamed their high dreams of virtue, the religious thinkers who speculated about God and immortality, the poets and artists who created out of common stuff pure and lasting beauty: how can we explain them? It is not enough to say simply, `It was genius.' What then is genius? Could it be that a genius is a man haunted by the speaking Voice, laboring and striving like one possessed to achieve ends which he only vaguely understands? That the great man may have missed God in his labors, that he may even have spoken or written against God does not destroy the idea I am advancing. God's redemptive revelation in the Holy Scriptures is necessary to saving faith and peace with God. Faith in a risen Saviour is necessary if the vague stirrings toward immortality are to bring us to restful and satisfying communion with God. To me this is a plausible explanation of all that is best outside of Christ. But you can be a good Christian and not accept my thesis.
The Voice of God is a friendly Voice. No one need fear to listen to it unless he has already made up his mind to resist it. The blood of Jesus has covered not only the human race but all creation as well. `And having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.' (Col 1:20) We may safely preach a friendly Heaven. The heavens as well as the earth are filled with the good will of Him that dwelt in the bush (Ex. 3). The perfect blood of atonement secures this forever.
Whoever will listen will hear the speaking Heaven. This is definitely not the hour when men take kindly to an exhortation to listen, for listening is not today a part of popular religion. We are at the opposite end of the pole from there. Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God. But we may take heart. To a people caught in the tempest of the last great conflict God says, `Be still, and know that I am God,' (Ps 46:10) and still He says it, as if He means to tell us that our strength and safety lie not in noise but in silence.
It is important that we get still to wait on God. And it is best that we get alone, preferably with our Bible outspread before us. Then if we will we may draw near to God and begin to hear Him speak to us in our hearts. I think for the average person the progression will be something like this: First a sound as of a Presence walking in the garden. Then a voice, more intelligible, but still far from clear. Then the happy moment when the Spirit begins to illuminate the Scriptures, and that which had been only a sound, or at best a voice, now becomes an intelligible word, warm and intimate and clear as the word of a dear friend. Then will come life and light, and best of all, ability to see and rest in and embrace Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord and All.
The Bible will never be a living Book to us until we are convinced that God is articulate in His universe. To jump from a dead, impersonal world to a dogmatic Bible is too much for most people. They may admit that they should accept the Bible as the Word of God, and they may try to think of it as such, but they find it impossible to believe that the words there on the page are actually for them. Aman may say, `These words are addressed to me,' and yet in his heart not feel and know that they are. He is the victim of a divided psychology. He tries to think of God as mute everywhere else and vocal only in a book.
I believe that much of our religious unbelief is due to a wrong conception of and a wrong feeling for the Scriptures of Truth. A silent God suddenly began to speak in a book and when the book was finished lapsed back into silence again forever. Now we read the book as the record of what God said when He was for a brief time in a speaking mood. With notions like that in our heads how can we believe? The facts are that God is not silent, has never been silent. It is the nature of God to speak. The second Person of the Holy Trinity is called the word. The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God's continuous speech. It is the infallible declaration of His mind for us put into our familiar human words.
I think a new world will arise out of the religious mists when we approach our Bible with the idea that it is not only a book which was once spoken, but a book which is now speaking. The prophets habitually said, `Thus saith the Lord.' They meant their hearers to understand that God's speaking is in the continuous present. We may use the past tense properly to indicate that at a certain time a certain word of God was spoken, but a word of God once spoken continues to be spoken, as a child once born continues to be alive, or a world once created continues to exist. And those are but imperfect illustrations, for children die and worlds burn out, but the Word of our God endureth forever.
If you would follow on to know the Lord, come at once to the open Bible expecting it to speak to you. Do not come with the notion that it is a thing which you may push around at your convenience. It is more than a thing, it is a voice, a word, the very Word of the living God. Lord, teach me to listen. The times are noisy and my ears are weary with the thousand raucous sounds which continuously assault them. Give me the spirit of the boy Samuel when he said to Thee, `Speak, for thy servant heareth.' Let me hear Thee speaking in my heart. Let me get used to the sound of Thy Voice, that its tones may be familiar when the sounds of earth die away and the only sound will be the music of Thy speaking Voice. Amen.