The Active Heart by Andree Seu

(parts of her last column in World Magazine that deeply resonate in my heart)
...To be tempted is to enter a cave. It's a deep cave but most of us never find that out. We bail (fail) almost at the entrance, and few ever see the dark parts of the interior, nor feel the full force of the darkness. Jesus ventured in all the way, and wrestled Minotaur and Cyclops.
"Fight the good fight of the faith" (1 Timothy 6:12) has always struck me as a good slogan or political rallying song. I had no idea what it meant. Now I see that it has nothing external about it at all. You will never SEE someone "fight the good fight of the faith." It all happened when you weren't there, alone on a long country walk, just between him and the Lord. That's where the blood and sweat and the dying occurred. By the time you spotted the fellow out in the public--in the visible battlefield, or at a PTO meeting, or pushing away some lucrative job offer, or not leaving his wife--the heavy lifting was already done. One often detects a certain peace in the presence of such people.
All of which instructs me that everything that matters is internal--and so we come full circle to all those biblical teachings about the heart that we passed over as if too obvious. There are no larger battles than the private internal ones. I am almost ready to say there are no other battles at all.
And the corollary is that there is no Christian life except the moment-by-moment kind--more pointedly, the moment-by-moment choice to believe God. The Christian life is not lived on the level of doctrine, or our various observances, or our political action, though these are all required. And what that moment-by-moment faith in God looks like is a brawl. If there is no constant battle, there is probably no authentic life...