Flee, pursue, fight and take hold

1 Timothy 6:11-12

But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called.

These verses talk about fighting for faith, fighting to know God better. You could apply them to anything though really, anything worth having is going to take some effort. You will need to flee from some things, pursue others, fight obstacles and take hold of the achievement. 

Flee

From what is going to hold you back. 

Elsewhere in the Bible it tells us to throw aside anything that hinders. This has the same kind of feel here. Run away from the temptations of life. The previous section had mentioned about the love of money being a root of evil, so this carries on from that. Paul is charging Timothy, and so us, not to be blinded by the love of money. In fact, to run away from such things as they take our focus off of God. If we are not looking where we are going, but distracted, eventually we will fall. 

Pursue

Instead, pursue. How can you flee and pursue at the same time? 

Flee - is to run away from something. Pursue - is to chase after something. 

Paul is charging us to flee from temptation, and pursue what? Righteousness. 

We can run away from things that hold us back, how? By being we are focussed on what will bring us closer to God - righteousness. Being right with God as our focus will lead us in the right direction.

Fight

Have you noticed- It all seems quite military terminology here? Fleeing, pursuing, now fighting. Sometimes in this act of pursuing we will come against opposition which we are charged to fight. If we see things we know are wrong, we are to stand up to it. We are to know what we stand for and combat it. 

Take hold

This is where the victory is. Taking hold of the eternal life we have been given through Christ. It doesn't mean to literally grab it, but to acknowledge and secure this knowledge in our minds. This will engage us and energise us for the fleeing, pursuing and fighting we need to do because we know the purpose for which we do it.