Go Lesson in Church

Our pastor today invoked Joshua 5-6 today in the sermon. Before the Israelites entered the promised land, they circumcised their young men and prepared themselves. Not for battle, which was looming over them, but to make themselves right with God. The lesson is that the enemy before us should not concern us. Only the enemy within can destroy you. See also II Kings 18-19. While I don't want to trivialize the Scriptures by analogizing them to Go, I did think of this:

In Go, my opponent is not my enemy. He will attempt to claim the board and will try to thwart my plans but he is not my enemy. My enemy lies within. I must continue to play my best and trust the end result will take care of itself.

The pastor went on to say that the only way to defeat the enemy within is to feed the spirit continually to make him strong through going to church and studying God's word so that daily you can become more Christlike each day. It isn't an overnight conversion and that's it. To grow stronger as a Christian, you need encouragement and training.

Again, I went back to Go. The march to becoming a recognized master is very long.

You'll never achieve perfection in this life. But it is necessary that we strive to imitate perfect examples and improve. At death, the good work begun in me will be perfected by God. Phillipians 1:6.