October 27th, 2026
by Pastor Pendergrass
by Pastor Pendergrass
The Civil War Within: Why Your Spiritual Struggle Is a Sign of Life
There is a quote attributed to Chad Walsh, from his book The Early Christians of the 21st Century, that cuts straight to the bone. He observed that Satan has largely abandoned his efforts to convert people to outright atheism. The strategy is far more subtle now. Rather than pulling people away from Christianity entirely, the enemy settles for something far more dangerous: vaccinating people with a mild case of Christianity, just enough to keep them from the real thing.
That image is worth sitting with for a moment. A vaccination works by introducing a weakened form of a disease so that the body builds immunity against the genuine article. Applied to faith, the implication is sobering. A comfortable, low-stakes, culturally accommodating version of Christianity can actually inoculate a person against genuine transformation. It feels like faith. It looks like faith from the outside. But it carries none of the revolutionary power of the real thing.
So the question worth asking honestly is this: do you have the real thing?
The Revolutionary War
Every human being enters this world on the wrong side of a battle line. This is not a popular idea, but the Bible is unambiguous about it. Paul writes in Romans 5 that before coming to faith, we were enemies of God. In Colossians 1:21, he describes people as alienated from God and enemies in their minds through wicked works. Jeremiah 17:9 describes the human heart as deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
This is not a flattering portrait, but it is an honest one. We are not basically good people who occasionally stumble. By nature, every person is born in a state of rebellion against the Creator who sustains their very breath. The wrath of God, described in Romans 1:18, is not arbitrary anger. It is the necessary and appropriate response of a holy God to genuine evil.
But here is where the story turns. Romans 5:1 describes what happens when a person places their faith in Jesus Christ: we have peace with God. Not merely the peace of God, that sense of calm described in Philippians 4:7, but something that must come first. Peace with God. The hostility ends. The rebellion is over. A genuine revolution sweeps through the soul.
And this is what makes the gospel unlike any other story ever told. In every other conflict, surrender means defeat. Nations do not negotiate with terrorists. Armies do not wave white flags and call it victory. But in the kingdom of God, surrender is the only path to freedom. The moment a person stops fighting against God and yields completely, victory erupts all around them.
That is the first war. And it is glorious.
The Civil War
But the story does not end at conversion. Almost immediately after the revolutionary war concludes, another war begins. This one is internal. This one is personal. This is the civil war of the soul.
Paul describes it plainly in Galatians 5:17, where he writes that the flesh and the Spirit are in direct opposition to each other, in conflict, contrary to one another. The Greek word for flesh here, sarx, refers to that lingering sinful nature that does not simply disappear the moment a person is saved. It remains. It pushes back. It rises up in a split second when someone criticizes you, when traffic tests your patience, when temptation whispers at an unexpected moment.
This is why it is possible to praise God on Sunday and snap at a colleague on Monday. It is why the same heart that trusts God in one moment can be flooded with anxiety the next. It is why Jeremiah, in the span of two verses in chapter 20, moves from singing praise to God for delivering the poor to crying out in anguish, cursing the day he was born. The prophet was not unstable. He was human. He was living inside the same civil war that every believer navigates.
And here is the word that needs to be heard clearly: the conflict is not a sign of failure. It is a sign of life.
Before coming to faith, there was no internal war. Sin flowed freely, comfortably, without resistance. But when the Holy Spirit takes up residence within a person, He will not allow sin to go unchallenged. Every temptation is contested. Every wrong impulse meets resistance. That friction, that daily struggle, is evidence that something real has happened on the inside.
Living by a Faith Greater Than Your Own
Galatians 2:20 contains one of the most liberating truths in all of Scripture. Paul writes that the life he now lives in the flesh, he lives by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him. Not by Paul's own faith. By the faith of the Son of God.
This distinction matters enormously. There will be moments when your faith is too weak for what you are facing. The demands are too great. The struggle is too heavy. The habit is too entrenched. And in those moments, the invitation is not to manufacture more faith but to lean into the faith of Jesus Christ Himself. The faith that said the gates of hell will not prevail. The faith that called Lazarus out of the tomb. The faith that walked toward the cross knowing resurrection was coming.
That is the faith available to every believer, not as a theological abstraction, but as a daily, practical reality.
The Journey Demands Everything
The pioneers who set out from the eastern states toward the western territories left a trail of abandoned possessions across the plains. Pianos. Furniture. Fine clothing. Everything that had seemed essential at the start became dead weight on the journey. The ones who made it were the ones willing to let it go.
Jesus said it plainly. Anything you grasp will hold you back. The journey toward the prize of eternity demands a loosening of the grip on everything else. The struggle is part of the journey. The civil war within is part of the journey. And every moment of resistance, every prayer offered, every morning the Word is opened, every time you return to the altar, is softening the enemy's ground beneath your feet.
Your soul is the prize. Keep fighting.
There is a quote attributed to Chad Walsh, from his book The Early Christians of the 21st Century, that cuts straight to the bone. He observed that Satan has largely abandoned his efforts to convert people to outright atheism. The strategy is far more subtle now. Rather than pulling people away from Christianity entirely, the enemy settles for something far more dangerous: vaccinating people with a mild case of Christianity, just enough to keep them from the real thing.
That image is worth sitting with for a moment. A vaccination works by introducing a weakened form of a disease so that the body builds immunity against the genuine article. Applied to faith, the implication is sobering. A comfortable, low-stakes, culturally accommodating version of Christianity can actually inoculate a person against genuine transformation. It feels like faith. It looks like faith from the outside. But it carries none of the revolutionary power of the real thing.
So the question worth asking honestly is this: do you have the real thing?
The Revolutionary War
Every human being enters this world on the wrong side of a battle line. This is not a popular idea, but the Bible is unambiguous about it. Paul writes in Romans 5 that before coming to faith, we were enemies of God. In Colossians 1:21, he describes people as alienated from God and enemies in their minds through wicked works. Jeremiah 17:9 describes the human heart as deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
This is not a flattering portrait, but it is an honest one. We are not basically good people who occasionally stumble. By nature, every person is born in a state of rebellion against the Creator who sustains their very breath. The wrath of God, described in Romans 1:18, is not arbitrary anger. It is the necessary and appropriate response of a holy God to genuine evil.
But here is where the story turns. Romans 5:1 describes what happens when a person places their faith in Jesus Christ: we have peace with God. Not merely the peace of God, that sense of calm described in Philippians 4:7, but something that must come first. Peace with God. The hostility ends. The rebellion is over. A genuine revolution sweeps through the soul.
And this is what makes the gospel unlike any other story ever told. In every other conflict, surrender means defeat. Nations do not negotiate with terrorists. Armies do not wave white flags and call it victory. But in the kingdom of God, surrender is the only path to freedom. The moment a person stops fighting against God and yields completely, victory erupts all around them.
That is the first war. And it is glorious.
The Civil War
But the story does not end at conversion. Almost immediately after the revolutionary war concludes, another war begins. This one is internal. This one is personal. This is the civil war of the soul.
Paul describes it plainly in Galatians 5:17, where he writes that the flesh and the Spirit are in direct opposition to each other, in conflict, contrary to one another. The Greek word for flesh here, sarx, refers to that lingering sinful nature that does not simply disappear the moment a person is saved. It remains. It pushes back. It rises up in a split second when someone criticizes you, when traffic tests your patience, when temptation whispers at an unexpected moment.
This is why it is possible to praise God on Sunday and snap at a colleague on Monday. It is why the same heart that trusts God in one moment can be flooded with anxiety the next. It is why Jeremiah, in the span of two verses in chapter 20, moves from singing praise to God for delivering the poor to crying out in anguish, cursing the day he was born. The prophet was not unstable. He was human. He was living inside the same civil war that every believer navigates.
And here is the word that needs to be heard clearly: the conflict is not a sign of failure. It is a sign of life.
Before coming to faith, there was no internal war. Sin flowed freely, comfortably, without resistance. But when the Holy Spirit takes up residence within a person, He will not allow sin to go unchallenged. Every temptation is contested. Every wrong impulse meets resistance. That friction, that daily struggle, is evidence that something real has happened on the inside.
Living by a Faith Greater Than Your Own
Galatians 2:20 contains one of the most liberating truths in all of Scripture. Paul writes that the life he now lives in the flesh, he lives by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him. Not by Paul's own faith. By the faith of the Son of God.
This distinction matters enormously. There will be moments when your faith is too weak for what you are facing. The demands are too great. The struggle is too heavy. The habit is too entrenched. And in those moments, the invitation is not to manufacture more faith but to lean into the faith of Jesus Christ Himself. The faith that said the gates of hell will not prevail. The faith that called Lazarus out of the tomb. The faith that walked toward the cross knowing resurrection was coming.
That is the faith available to every believer, not as a theological abstraction, but as a daily, practical reality.
The Journey Demands Everything
The pioneers who set out from the eastern states toward the western territories left a trail of abandoned possessions across the plains. Pianos. Furniture. Fine clothing. Everything that had seemed essential at the start became dead weight on the journey. The ones who made it were the ones willing to let it go.
Jesus said it plainly. Anything you grasp will hold you back. The journey toward the prize of eternity demands a loosening of the grip on everything else. The struggle is part of the journey. The civil war within is part of the journey. And every moment of resistance, every prayer offered, every morning the Word is opened, every time you return to the altar, is softening the enemy's ground beneath your feet.
Your soul is the prize. Keep fighting.
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