17d • General discussion
Contending for the faith
(Jude 1 Devotional)
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There are some days I wake up and I can feel the weight of the fight before my feet even touch the floor. The battle isn’t always visible, sometimes it’s in the mind, sometimes in the quiet heaviness of the heart, but I know what it is. It’s the war for my faith. The enemy doesn’t need to destroy me; he only needs to distract me, to make me loosen my grip on what I already know is true.
“Beloved, contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”
That word “contend” hits deep. It isn’t passive. It’s not polite or convenient. It means to struggle, to wrestle, to fight for what heaven has already handed me, even when life tries to pry it from my hands. There were seasons when I didn’t even know I was in that fight. When I was drowning in addiction, shame, and loss, I thought I had forfeited the right to faith. But the truth is, grace was fighting for me long before I learned to fight for it myself.
Faith has never been easy for me. It has been the slow rebuilding of a heart that had been torn apart too many times. It has been trusting God when the bills were unpaid and my son was asleep in the next room, and all I could do was pray over him and whisper that somehow, we’d make it. It has been the choice to stay pure when the world tempted me to fill the void with something counterfeit. It has been the decision to forgive when I had every reason not to.
Hebrews 10:38 says, “The just shall live by faith.” That verse doesn’t promise a smooth life. It promises a faithful one. And faith, at its core, is not about comfort, it’s about conviction.
I’ve come to understand that contending for the faith is not about proving anything to anyone else. It’s about protecting the sacred trust that was given to me. The faith that lifted me from addiction. The faith that restored me as a father. The faith that met me on the floor of my own despair and whispered, “Get up. You’re still mine.”
Even Jesus contended, in the wilderness, in Gethsemane, on the cross. He faced every temptation, every sorrow, every ounce of betrayal, yet remained faithful. That same Spirit now lives in me. And that’s what gives me the strength to keep standing when I want to give up.
To contend earnestly is to keep my eyes fixed on Christ, to hold the line when the world shifts beneath me, and to live every day like eternity is already written in my name.
Because it is.
Salvation is not something I earned; it’s a gift I’ll never stop holding on to. And even when my grip weakens, His never does.
So I fight, not with anger, not with pride, but with faith. The kind that still believes in redemption, still trusts in grace, still stands after every fall.
The kind that contends, because it knows the battle is already won.
Hebrews 10:38
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Contending for the faith
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