A soldier fighting a protracted battle against an enemy will falter if there is no reward in sight. To engage in combat willingly instead of remaining at home in comfort, there must be something the soldier is fight for, striving to gain. They must see the goal and become angry with the enemy for standing between them and it.
"Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 3:8-14
"Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses." - 1 Timothy 6:12
"For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." - 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
The Christian is "fighting the good fight," and "running the race." To use the analogy of the fighter, just as any soldier who leaves the comfort of home to fight on foreign battlefields must know for what he is fighting, so we as Christians, if we are to leave our comfortable, ordered lives to engage in spiritual warfare with an enemy who prowls about like a lion, looking to devour (1 Peter 5:8) and who has demanded to sift us as wheat (Luke 22:31), must know our goal. Paul has made this clear - we press on to obtain the righteousness of Christ, the upward call of God in Christ, and, ultimately, to share in the glory of Christ in eternal life. These are the things we fight for in our spiritual battles. If we keep these verses in our hearts and minds as we wage this war, if we understand as trial and hardship sets upon us what the ultimate goal is, we can rely on Christ to sustain us and thus emerge victorious. We may lose battles here and there, but our ability to fight a protracted war with the enemy, Satan, will be made possible by our focus on the reward.
