by Nathan Buck Kids’ movies sometimes have the most profound moments, and often they are unintentional or accidental in their unmasking of principles and values we really do believe are true, even if we spend a tremendous amount of effort trying to deny them. In the Disney movie Ratatouille, an actual rat named Remy becomes a chef in a human restaurant. He is compelled to cook because of his unique sense of smell and taste, alongside a belief in the slogan spoken by his human idol, Chef Gusteau. Chef Gusteau always said, “Anyone can cook.” Through a bizarre set of circumstances Remy ends up controlling a human being by using his hair like a set of puppet strings, and no one knows the food they find so amazing is actually being designed and prepared by a rat. When the nemesis of the movie – food critic Anton Ego – hears about the food, he makes a visit to critique the food with the intention of writing off the restaurant and deflating the reputation that has begun to build. When Ego arrives there is a brief moment in the movie that is actually quite epic. I am sure it was carefully written and designed for the movie because it is a pivotal moment in the story. But it also reveals a truth we often ignore when it comes to discussing the Bible and truth. When Ego is asked what he would like to order, he says to the waiter, “I am craving, perspective… that is what I think I will have, bring me a plate of well-seasoned… perspective…” (pause) “Fresh out I take it? Then how about this, you provide the food, and I will provide the PERSPECTIVE.” You can watch a clip of this scene here. When we ask questions about morality or truth, we typically ask them and try to resolve them from our perspective. Occasionally, if we are teachable, we may try to see a moral issue from someone else’s perspective. We may even consider that there is truth in any perspective. However, when it comes to absolute truth – we may struggle. Absolute truth by definition is a transcendent truth, that holds true for all people, at all times, in all places. It is immutable, meaning it cannot be undone or disproven – it is absolute, and by its nature it supersedes any other assumptions or opinions. The reason we struggle with absolute truth is because of perspective. Look at Genesis 2:16-17 and 3:1-5. Was God being deceptive and trying to trick Adam and Eve? When God tells them to avoid the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it is actually from a position of freedom to eat from ANY other tree in the garden. They also can freely choose to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That tree simply had consequence attached to it. The Hebrew words God used there to describe “the knowledge of good and evil” can be translated as, “the experience of wholeness/wellness, and brokenness/dismantling.” Adam and Eve are given a choice of the fullness of life with God, or to experience the rollercoaster of life apart from God. The situation was clearly defined and explained, but how could Adam understand what “brokenness” was at that point? He had never experienced it. Perhaps that is why God added, “and you will surely die.” But did Adam know what death was? Maybe his experiential gap in understanding is what lead him to explain it so poorly to Eve. When she repeats what God told Adam to the serpent in chapter 3, it sounds very different than what God actually said. Does it seem odd that God would put that choice in front of them? They are only days old and are faced with choices and consequences they have no experience with. How could God expect them to know the “right” thing to do? How could their choice be wrong if they didn’t know what evil and death were? Check back during the week to explore these questions and whether there is absolute truth, and next Saturday for Part II of this post.
by Logan Ames
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline” (Proverbs 1:7).
This may be a verse you are familiar with from the Bible, but have you ever really thought about what it means? If something is the “beginning”, that means nothing like it existed before. The first four words we read in the entire Bible are “in the beginning, God” to signify that God was here before nothing else was and that everything was made by him (Genesis 1:1). In the same way, the verse quoted above declares that there truly is NO knowledge before the fear of the Lord. Obviously, people who don’t believe in God can still know certain things in the world. The point is that their knowledge might as well not exist because it is pointless. Everything we think, feel, and do must be filtered through the knowledge that we only exist each day because God says we get to, and the knowledge that he does not guarantee us tomorrow whether we worship him or not. What he does guarantee is eternity either with or completely without him, so it would follow that we would want to be on his side.
Fear can be a wonderful motivator. I’ve told the story before of how I faced a dilemma when my younger brother asked me to join him for a skydiving adventure in 2005. My older brother signed on as well, and I was the only one who was extremely hesitant. I have a fear of heights that was certainly making me anxious about jumping out of an airplane, but I certainly didn’t want to be the ONLY one of three brothers who chickened out. When it came down to the decision, I had to decide which fear was greater. I eventually decided to face my fear of heights and accept the challenge to skydive. The fear of being the “chicken” in the family motivated me to overcome a different fear.
I believe that a healthy and necessary fear of the Lord can be a motivator as well. Too often, we assume that because God loves us and is gracious, that he won’t deal harshly with our sin. This is a very dangerous view to accept. While it is true that God loves us and shows grace when we fail, we must remember that he doesn’t OWE it to us just because we “got saved”. The mark of a believer is repentance, not “fire insurance” so we can be spared from hell no matter how we live. We can disregard the reality of God’s sovereignty over our lives if we want, but that doesn’t change the fact that everything we are and everything we have depends on his permission. The religious zealots who didn’t grasp this were the ones that often frustrated Jesus in the Bible, while the sinners who did grasp it glorified God in extraordinary ways.
This week, we’re addressing the question of how to fear the Lord rather than people. In my opinion, this isn’t really a “how to” issue, but a heart issue. It’s not like you can go pick up a “fearing the Lord for dummies” little yellow book. There is no formula to make it happen. Whether or not you fear the Lord really gets at the core of who you are as an individual. When I look at some of the heroes of the faith in the Bible, it’s obvious that the fear of the Lord was central to their lives and choices. You can tell by their language. The Apostle Paul declared, “I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me - the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24). This is what he said to the elders at the church of Ephesus right after telling them he was going to Jerusalem “not knowing what will happen to me there” (v. 22). The threat of persecution and death were very real and Paul later told them in the same passage they would never see him again. Yet, his fear of not doing what God laid out for him to do was far greater than any fear of man. You can find other evidence that Paul feared the Lord rather than people all throughout his letters in the New Testament. Just to name a few, check out Philippians 1:12-26, 2 Corinthians 4:7-18, and 2 Timothy 4:1-8, which was his last letter written just before he was executed.
In the Old Testament, I find the story of Rahab very interesting. At the very least, she is an innkeeper, but the NIV translates the word as “prostitute”. Take a look at Joshua 2. In this story, Rahab is a foreigner living in Jericho, which is located in the land that is the Promised Land that God would give to the Israelites. When Joshua sends two spies into the land to check it out so the Israelites would know what kind of resistance they would get when they decide to push forward and conquer it, the king of Jericho hears of it and questions Rahab to see if the spies are with her. She lies and says the men left and she doesn’t know where they went, when in reality she had hidden them on her roof. What is relevant to this blog post is what she said to the spies as her reason for protecting them: “I know that the Lord has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you” (v. 9). She goes on to explain what she has heard about how the Lord has worked on their behalf so far, then says “for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below” (v. 11). Rahab was not a follower of God. She did not know the Lord. In addition to her well-known shortcomings, she had just become a liar. But we can’t judge her for what she did before she came to knowledge of a relationship with God. What we can and must do is see how she responded when the truth of the sovereignty of a God she previously did not worship was right in front of her face. The fear of the Lord was the very beginning of her knowledge, and she acted appropriately.
Joshua himself has an appropriate response to the fear of the Lord in Joshua 5:13-15. Right before they actually take Jericho, Joshua sees a man standing in front of him with his sword drawn and approaches him to find out which side he is on. The man says, “Neither, but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come”. Joshua immediately falls down in reverence, going from a position of strength and battle to one of humility and surrender. He asks what message the Lord has for him and does everything he is told up to the point that Jericho falls, beginning with the simple act of humility in taking off his sandals. Joshua didn’t care if he looked like an idiot and didn’t try to convince God to be on his side. Because of his healthy fear of the Lord, he knew what really mattered was that he get on the Lord’s side!
We can learn from all of these examples. None of these people seemed to have a formula for how they learned to fear the Lord over others. At their core, they recognized that human beings can only do so much to them, while God is sovereign over everything. Their fear of the Lord was shown through obedience, humility, faith, and repentance. Do those words characterize your life and your attitude? If not, you may need to get to know God a little better until you realize who he is and who you are NOT!
by Bill Seng “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good. His love endures forever.” ~Psalm 136:1 If God is good, why does evil persist? If God created all things, where did evil come from? Theologians and skeptics alike ponder these questions. The theologian searches Scripture and philosophy to understand how evil can originate in a good universe. The skeptic will often dismiss the possibility that a “good” God exists. Is the skeptic right to do so, or is there something mysterious about the existence of evil? Is it possible that understanding where evil came from would help us to understand a little more about ourselves, and even God himself? According to the creation account, mankind had no knowledge of good and evil. It was not until they sinned against God that they acquired this knowledge (Genesis 3:4-7). Without knowledge, I think it can be safely said there can be no choice in one’s actions. Having been created good and not having the knowledge of evil, Adam and Eve would not have known how to kill, steal, lie, or covet. Their lack of knowledge of those activities eliminated them as options from their daily lives. Knowledge of good and evil ultimately originates with God. God is the ultimate standard. Everything he created was to reflect his glory and character (Colossians 1:16, Romans 1:20). The difficulty with this issue is that we know that God was not responsible for sin. In fact, he cannot be responsible for sin. Sin is something that is contrary to God’s nature, and God cannot act outside of his nature. So he cannot sin, cause people to sin, or tempt people to sin (James 1:13). If this is true, where did sin come from? We now look to the angels who are, by nature, ministering spirits (Hebrews 1:14). They have always possessed the knowledge of good and evil, which is implied by their role as ministers. In order to minister, one must be able to discern between good and evil. Granted, this creates more questions, but for now let us stick to what we know. Satan is the angel who made sin possible for mankind. He admired his own beauty and became obsessed with his own splendor. As a result he rebelled against God. Although Adam and Eve are held responsible for bringing sin into the world, it probably would not have happened had it not been for Satan’s involvement. Nonetheless, it was mankind’s free will that allowed Adam and Eve the opportunity to sin. The angels also, apparently, possessed free will but had the knowledge of good and evil as well. Such responsibility proved too much for some of the angels, seeing how Satan was not the only angel to fall away from God. It is ironic to think that the knowledge of good and evil is what led to sin, was granted as a result of sin, and is also instrumental in repentance from sin. There is much more to this topic than what I can cover in such a small space. Let it suffice that the “problem of evil” is really not a problem from a truly Biblical perspective. It is clear that God was not responsible for sin and that it was the abuse of the knowledge of good and evil that led to sin. Once again, despite the wickedness of the first sin, God made a way for the first sin to also lead to repentance.
by Katie Erickson
Last week, we wrote on whether fear and worry are real. They are both definitely real, but that doesn’t mean we have to give in to them - as far as earthly situations go. Logan wrote last week about taking our fears captive, and how the only way we can do that is through the power of God’s Holy Spirit.
This week, we’re taking that one step further. We do need to fear God, because He is so much greater and more powerful than us - after all, He did create us. We need to have both a fear of God as in reverence or awe, and also a fear of God as in a terror of His almighty power. He is the almighty God of the universe, and I’m just a poor little human; I should definitely be afraid of Him!
But, how often are we also afraid of people on this earth? We are all created in God’s image and loved by Him; there is no hierarchy of people in God’s eyes. He doesn’t love certain people more than others, or say that certain ones are more important. From God’s perspective, all people are on a level playing field.
So why do we fear people? We fear people when we are not fully trusting in God. Yes, people can do awful things to each other. They steal, slander, murder, torture, and all sort of other bad things - to their fellow humans! Why do people do these things? Because they are working out of their own power and desires, not God’s. If a certain person thinks he or she is better than others, he or she will feel power over them and feel like they can do whatever their evil heart desires - giving no consideration to God’s desires, or the fact that all people are created in the image of God.
Psalm 118 is a great example of fearing God, not people. I encourage you to go read the whole thing. In this post, I want to highlight verses 6-8: “The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me? The Lord is with me; he is my helper. I look in triumph on my enemies. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in humans.”
Like the Psalmist says, God is with me, so what can mere mortals do to me? Well they can do all sorts of things, but none of that is important when God is our focus and we are fully trusting in Him. God is with us, and we should take refuge in Him rather than trusting in humans and what they could do to us. Yes, humans can act toward us in evil ways; but that doesn’t matter when we have God on our side.
There are many stories of martyrs (people killed for their faith) dying with confidence and courage because of their amazing trust in God. The book Jesus Freaks by DC Talk is just one such collection of stories like this, and more can be found on the Voice of the Martyrs website, just to name a few. Why could these people face death with such amazing courage? Because they believed that God was with them, and that anything mere mortals did to their bodies was inconsequential, knowing that their spirit would be with Jesus forever. They had an amazing fear of God, knowing that He is in control.
But this doesn’t just play out in situations of possible death. What about in everyday life? What about walking down the halls of your school or job, and doing or saying certain things so others will like you and accept you? That is fearing people, because you are worried about how they will judge you. But we don’t have to worry at all what others think of us, even in these everyday situations. Why? Because God is ultimately in control! If we trust God with our whole lives, then it doesn’t matter if people ridicule the clothes I’m wearing or the way I act. God still loves me, as long as I am being obedient to what He wants me to do with my life.
Personally, while there are times I do try to conform to those around me, often times it just isn’t a big deal to me. Am I a 33-year-old woman who wears her hair in pigtails on the weekends, and goes barefoot as often as possible? You bet! Do I care if others think that’s silly? Nope! I am going to be the person God made me to be, whether that conforms to the world or not. There are a lot of little things in my life that I just don’t care what other people think. My confidence is not in myself, but in the God who created me and gives me life.
Do you have that kind of faith? Do you fear and trust the Lord, knowing that He is fully in control of your life? Or do you worry about what other people may think of you or do to you, rather than trusting in God’s ultimate plan?
by Nathan Buck “What will people think?” How many times a week do you ask that question of yourself or say it out loud to your family, friends, children, etc? Should we even be asking that question at all? We have all felt the tendrils of fear mixed with stomach acid churning that comes when we know someone is mad at us, or we are about to face confrontation. Sometimes we have had it suddenly crash upon us and overwhelm us, when someone takes an unexpected opportunity to lob a grenade of years of frustration or offenses that they have stored up against us. It can be paralyzing to us. No matter how much we try to realize they may have been having a bad day, or may not have even meant half of what they just said, the truth of the matter is that we care and are impacted by every word they spoke. How do we avoid being held hostage by what others think of us? How do we be humble ourselves and care for others, without being captive to anytime they disagree or choose to be offended by a choice or comment we make? Take a moment to read Matthew 10:16-33. See what Jesus did there? He sent his followers out to share God’s love and grace, to heal the sick, to cast out demons, etc. They are on a great mission, and they should expect everyone to just embrace them right? Not according to what Jesus says next. Apparently, Jesus realizes that when people begin to live the truth and demonstrate God’s love, it will impact and dismantle the carefully created illusions, myths, lies, and personal protections that people create for themselves. Some do it for profit, some do it for a sense personal safety/security, and others are simply deceived by untruths and a captive to shame, lust, etc. And when truth enters those places, imprisoned people may be set free, but profitable or safe feeling people are suddenly uneasy. Jesus knows that people will attack, argue, or belittle one another for all kinds of reasons. Where does he leave His disciples’ focus? What does He share with them to help them realize where their real concern should be? Look at verses 26-33. Jesus changes the focus and the meaning of the word “fear” from a people based fear that tries to avoid conflict or threats, to a God based fear that is about awe, reverence, respect, and understanding that HE alone is the one who can do the most harm or the most good to any living creature. Notice how Jesus caps that refocusing. Instead of leaving with “fear God,” like we should cower and run and hide from his power cause he might fry us with a lightning bolt and destroy our soul, He leaves it with an expression of God’s compassion. He reminds them that God knows them and cares about even the hairs on their heads (if you are bald, God still cares about you). Jesus finishes the thought with a play on the word “fear.” He remind his followers that they should not be “afraid” (terror or alarm) of people or any circumstance because God loves them, by re-using the same word “fear” in a different context. The first context when he talks about fearing God it is about worship and reverence, and the second – when he tells them not to be afraid – is about being scared or terrified. Let that thought sink in for a moment. You don’t need to be afraid of what people think, because God’s opinion of you and His care for you matters more than any earthly relationship. Now that doesn’t mean you ignore negative feedback from people – because you may have legitimately acted like a jerk, or mistakenly said a hurtful thing. And it is good to check your motives and learn from when others point out your mistakes. If you are a follower of Jesus, you should be mature or maturing to be able to take negative feedback or confrontation from others and grow with it. You should also never let someone’s opinion or offense toward you define your worth, direction, or decisions – those are reserved only for God. Check out the other blogs coming this week as they continue to discussion on “fear of people.”
by Charlie Wolcott
Last week, I gave you a story of the River Moe and what happened when the Volcano Raw erupted. Please review it here before continuing on. As I mentioned last week, each of the elements in this story is a metaphor of what could happen when we erupt with anger. The river is a metaphor. The volcano is a metaphor. The pool is a metaphor. The waterfall is a metaphor. The land is a metaphor. The marshland is a metaphor. For those who either have not learned what a metaphor is or have forgotten what it is, here is a refresher. A metaphor is an object or a picture that uses what the reader does know and understand to represent or explain something that is more abstract or foreign. In order for a metaphor to work properly, the object being used needs to accurately paint a picture of the abstract or foreign concept. The metaphor needs to be used universally. I cannot change what the same object is going to mean. And I need the object I am using to be understood by the reader. If the reader does not understand the picture being used, then its purpose as a metaphor is useless. So now let’s dig deeper into the story of the River Moe.
I picked the name Moe to represent “Metaphor of Emotions.” The river is a picture of how our emotions ebb and flow. It can feed others and provide life giving sustenance to the land, which is a metaphor for our soul, or our life. Emotions come and go in a fleeting moment, just like the waters in a river come and go in a moment. There are times where we have an abundance of rain that fills the river. Likewise, there are times where we have an abundance of emotional happiness and excitement. There are times of drought and there are times where we really don’t feel much of anything. But there are also times where a river can also get violent when feed by anger.
The Volcano Raw means “Release of Anger and Wrath.” How many of us feed our emotions based on how others treat us? How many of us have been hurt by someone else and we let that hurt drive us forward? We may vent our anger in places to try to subdue it, but at some point, that anger is going to erupt like Raw did. When that anger, when that wrath, erupts, there is nothing that can stop it and the damage it leaves is permanent. The fruit in our lives may grow back like the plants and wildlife may return, but there is a permanent scar that will always remind us of the hurt done.
The waterfall represents how we accept or embrace the emotions that come our way. Normally, it is calm and gentle and fills of pool where we can enjoy fellowship and peace. But when the river gets angry, it will throw everything in its path over the edge, which can cause serious damage, if not being fatal. Only the tower stood and only by being in the tower could we withstand the violent force of the Moe.
The marshland is a metaphor for our work ethic and our energies that we put into what we do. And very often that is fed by our emotions. It’s interesting to note how after a major emotional breakdown, we will feel empty and drained. Like the River Moe redirected because of the eruption, our energies for life and our regular duties can be blocked. Our emotions, without us realizing it, can be re-directed and focused on something they should or should not be doing. And in areas where our energy becomes stagnant, it makes us lazy and is representative of slothfulness, one of the seven deadly sins. A marshland turns into a bog when water flow ceases. There is no outlet, so water cannot be refreshed. Our emotions can be fed, but without a proper outlet, they become stagnant. And in this story, all of this is a result of a violent eruption of wrath.
Anger and wrath are not necessarily bad things, but they need to be directed the right way. God is full of emotion too, and he had some moments of anger when his people rebelled against him. Genesis 6-8 gives us a historic account similar to what happened to the River Moe and the volcano Raw. Noah’s Flood left the earth permanently scared. Everywhere I look around, I see the evidence of this scarring, even though much of the land has healed. God has not damaged the earth like that since, but he will as depicted in Revelation. One of the images I’ve seen people suggest of the final bowl judgment of Revelation 16 is of God literally grabbing the earth and shaking it. When God erupts, it is for the purpose of cleansing us. Water does an amazing job at cleaning out the land.
But we rarely display the anger and control of it that God does. While God does get angry, he is full of mercy and he seeks to restrain it. Only one person so far has experienced the full force of God’s anger: Jesus Christ when he hung on the cross. God re-directed his wrath so that Jesus took it, so we did not have to. And it left Jesus permanently scarred. He will always have the holes in his hands and feet and a gash in his side. That anger, that scarring, was heading for us. The tower in this story is Jesus. God’s wrath and his force of judgment are coming. On our own, we will be swept over the edge of the waterfall and plummet to our doom. But if we take refuge in Jesus, who stood in the middle of that judgment, we will be protected. The Ark was a picture of that shelter. It protected Noah, his family, and the animals in the real Flood that took place. Likewise, Jesus is the shelter from the Flood of God’s wrath. Everything outside the shelter of the Ark perished; likewise, everything outside the shelter of Christ will perish.
After an eruption, the volcano usually subsides because the pressure of the magma is spent. But sometimes it will keep on erupting as long as the magma keeps coming. The small venting of steam and ash in the volcano won’t release the pressure within. And in our lives, the only way we can effectively deal with our anger is not to vent it out a little at a time; the pressure builds up too quickly. With a real volcano, when we see the small vents awakening, that’s a signal that the big one is coming. The only way to prevent the massive eruption is to give it up. Empty the volcano of the magma pressure. Empty yourself of the anger by giving it to God. Let him deal with it and he will in the perfect way.
by Logan Ames
“We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.” Some of you reading this post may understand these words from personal experience. The quote is attributed to Jim Morrison, the legendary lead singer of The Doors, who passed away at the young age of 27 years old in 1971 after a life filled with dysfunction and tragedy. He was heavily into drugs and alcohol and many believe his death was due to an overdose. According to Wikipedia, his own father did not approve of his work and told him that he had a lack of talent. In addition, his parents’ primary method of discipline was the military tradition known as “dressing down”, which meant they berated him for his mistakes until he was reduced to tears. Evidently, the result was that Morrison was held captive by his own fears and feelings all the way to his death.
In contrast, I heard a woman speak just last week who likewise had a rough childhood, but is allowing God to use her past to touch the lives of many rather than be held captive by her fears and feelings for even one more day. Barbara Freeman, who was honored last year as a member of YWCA’s Women of Achievement, is a survivor of human trafficking and drug addiction. Abandoned by her stepfather and placed in a homeless shelter by her mother at the age of 16, she turned to the streets to try to meet needs that were not met at home. She connected with the wrong guy, who got her hooked on crack cocaine and eventually forced her into prostitution. After 23 years as an addict, victim, and prostitute, God rescued Barbara. She admitted during her talk that she still deals with fears, but is willing to move forward anyway doing what God has called her to do in sharing her testimony.
The two responses to fear that I’ve outlined above are pretty much the only two options you have when you encounter something that scares you. You can either allow it to enslave you or you can accept that it is there and take it captive as you press on. But there is something else that is needed in order to take a fear or worrisome thought captive. You need something that is more powerful. I’ll get to that later. But first, I think we need to understand where fear comes from and why there is one fear that cannot be taken captive.
When man was first created, there was no fear because there was no reason to fear. Without sin, man was able to talk directly to the Lord, hear from him, and walk with him (Genesis 1-2). But once sin entered the world through the disobedience of Adam and Eve, their very next feeling was that of fear. Whereas before sin they could be with God and feel no shame or fear, after sin Adam himself said, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid” (Genesis 3:10). Think about it. There was no difference in what God did. He had placed man in the garden and spoken to him there before, and now he was talking to him again. The difference is in what man did. Before, he had obeyed God fully and knew ONLY good. Now that he disobeyed God, he had the knowledge of evil as well. Where do most of your fears come from? I’d be willing to bet that at least a good many of them come from your knowledge that evil exists, whether it be from personal experience, the stories of others, or tragic events you see through the media. If you lived in a world where people didn’t ever go against God, you’d have no concept of evil. God would still have that knowledge because of Satan’s rebellion, but without seeing the effects of it on earth, you’d have nothing to fear!
Once sin entered the world, the first fear Adam had was an appropriate one. He was afraid of God. We are often taught in the church that our fear of the Lord should be that of “reverence and awe”. While that is true, the implication is that we don’t have to really be “afraid” of God. I believe that, based on Scripture, our fear of the Lord is determined by whether we are walking with him and obeying him or not. Read Luke 12:4-7 on your own. These are the words of Jesus as he was teaching his disciples while many others were listening. He first tells them that, rather than fearing those who can only kill the body, they should fear the one who can destroy the body AND throw them into hell (v. 5). He’s talking about God, who is sovereign over this life and all of eternity. Yet, just a few verses later, he assures them that they need not be afraid because they are worth more than many sparrows, and not even the sparrows are forgotten by God (vv. 6-7). I believe that Jesus is teaching that based on the principle that we are sinners and the God who created us and can destroy us in a second is holy, we have reason to fear God. But at the same time, we can understand that God does not desire to destroy us. We have great worth in his eyes and if we walk with him, we will not be destroyed. Our fear of God is not like our fear of evil, because God is not evil. The fear of evil causes us to worry about evil, while the fear of the Lord motivates us to obedience and trust that he is truly sovereign over EVERYTHING. By trusting him, we go from the things that bring fear and worry to “the peace that passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:6-7).
In order to have that peace, you must take your fears and worries captive. But since fears and worries are powerful, you need something that is more powerful. For this, we turn to Paul’s words to the Corinthians. I encourage you to read these words over and over until they sink in and apply to every area of your life that right now brings you fear: “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). The more you walk with God, the more you KNOW him. And the more you have knowledge of him, the more ammunition you have against that which “sets itself up against” him.
If you are finding yourself paralyzed by fear and worry, get to know God. I’m not just talking about some kind of prayer and meditation. I’m talking about getting to know him by obeying him as your Creator. The more you choose to live as his Word commands, the more you realize how much he loves you and does not want to see you destroyed. Fear is a natural reaction that is in us because of sin, but getting to know God means having the power on your side that can take captive all sins, fears, and worries. They won’t completely go away until we are made perfect in heaven, but they will be CAPTIVE and you will be FREE instead of the other way around. God has power over you, but he loves you and wants to be on your side. Will you let him?
