More than My Fear

Have you ever sensed panic rising in you, wanting to run from a situation as fast as you can or to find a place to hide? I remember facing major surgery for the first time in my life about 15 years ago and feeling possibly the worst fear I had ever known. Waiting outside the operating room, I trembled, my breath coming in short gasps! I survived and learned a whole new lesson about overcoming panicky emotions.

Fear can be conquered with faith! Jesus' disciples who were in a boat with Him as a storm rose on the Sea of Galilee. When they panicked, they turned on Him and accused Him of not caring for them! Mark tells it this way – The disciples said, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

He asked them to think about their reaction to the storm, to consider the totality of their resources, wondering why they gave into fear so quickly.

Emotions are a wonderful gift UNTIL they are allowed to rule us.

Fear can become a panic, running wildly through our thoughts, if we do not speak faith to it.

Anger can turn into a roaring blaze of rage if we do not restrain it.

Desire will turn rapidly to all-consuming lust, greed, or gluttony if we do not invite the Spirit to rule in us.

So, David teaches us by example when he talks to himself! He says, "Praise the Lord, I tell myself, and never forget the good things he does for me." (Psalm 103:2, NLT)

There is an attractive myth of our time, widely believed, that tells us that every thought must be spoken, every feeling explored, every desire fulfilled. In truth, self-discipline, that wonderfully valuable tool for successful living, teaches us to rein in our thoughts, or redirect our emotions, and to restrain our desires. Those choices may cause us some discomfort, but none of them will be fatal!

Ever see a fully grown adult throwing a tantrum? Not pretty, is it? Then, too, some make poor choices to satisfy some urge today and in the process sabotage tomorrow, immaturely blaming the mess they create on someone else. We try to excuse ourselves by saying, “I just could not help it,” but in this we lie. People enslaved by ‘living in the moment’ are often unaware of the deepening chaos they are creating. So we must learn to speak to our own soul with the voice of reason and in the power of God's Spirit.

Spirit-filled Christians who speak Truth to their inner storms gain greater freedom with each victory. They grow in godliness. The Spirit produces a wholeness of life that makes them the overcomers God desires them to be.

We do not gain this victory by ignoring the inner tumult, or by denying negative emotions, or by repressing unpleasant feelings. We know what we feel, but we also know that God gives the power of choice and promises us His Spirit lives in us to help us be over-comers! We can fully acknowledge our emotions without letting them take control.

Jeremiah, called 'the weeping prophet,' faced calamity and felt the crushing weight of sorrow. His example is powerful. Here is how he spoke to himself - “My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the LORD." I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness, and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassion never fails. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:18-23, NIV) Oh, how I love that passage as it gives me courage to face reality and to overcome my first responses.

Here is a truth to take with you today. “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 10:5, NIV)

A contemporary paraphrase of the holy Word, The Message, enlarges the thought. Let these words become part of your resources to overcome fear. Learn to live in faith, and to see what God can do with the challenges of your life.

Read and rejoice! "The world is unprincipled. It’s dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn’t fight fairly. But we don’t live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture.

We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity."  (2 Corinthians 10:3-6, The Message)

Lord, help us to become ‘more than overcomers’ so that we live for Your glory. Amen.

Sorrow’s Possibilities

I visited Bev’s grave yesterday, remembering. 10 years ago we were facing the approach of death as the deadly cancer in her body advanced. Sitting there, grief settled over me like a wet, grey fog.

And then, too, I thought about the assassination of Charlie Kirk and his Memorial service held on Sunday. My heart ached with sorrow for a life ended too soon, for a young wife left alone with little ones. And, my sadness was compounded by the too often awful words stirred up by his death – some criticizing his life and others praising him – using harsh and hateful words in the process. Could we not just agree that a good man died in a terrible way?

My melancholy widened to take in the sorrow of millions in this world who live under despots, in desperate time of war, and with great fear! It was not a good day.

But, I found great comfort in remembering that there is One to Whom I can turn Who understands, Who does not turn away, Who will not judge me weak for my tears. Yes, I am talking about my Savior, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Isaiah wrote of the Lord’s Servant, our Savior, describing Him as “despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;  it was our sorrows that weighed him down.”  (Isaiah 53)

Joy is a great gift and thankfully there is much in my personal life for which I am joyful. Like most people normally I would do almost anything to avoid sadness. Should I find myself sorrowing I sometimes look for a way to exit that emotion as quickly as possible. And yet we should know that … there is a kind of maturity that grows in our sorrow that cannot happen otherwise.   C. S. Lewis wrote that “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  

Levi Lusko, a young pastor from Montana, wrote, Through the Eyes of a Lion, in which he tells the story of his daughter’s death. Lenya went to visit her Grandparents for dinner and a few hours later, her life here on earth came to an abrupt close during a severe asthma attack.

Told without self-pity, the story urges us to grab onto God’s promise of eternal life and the Resurrection. Levi does not gloss over his grief, nor does he diminish the real struggle that accompanies loss. His words are not clichéd or empty triumphalism. He offers, instead, a template for applying the Word of God to life, signposts to the path of faith that will protect us from letting sorrow descend into utter despair.

He writes of the new parts of his life that emerged after Lenya’s death. I could identify with his realization that his pain had broken up hard places in his life and made him much more tender. It has happened to me, too.  I was once a man who resisted tears, but I am now touched easily by pain, much more empathetic than I once was. It was pain, awful loss, that broke my heart, in a good way.

Levi points out that a new touch of the Spirit, an ‘anointing,’ can result from being crushed. He explains- in the Bible priests and kings were ‘anointed’ in a ritual that involved having olive oil poured over their heads. Here’s a reference - “…the anointing oil that was poured over Aaron’s head, that ran down his beard and onto the border of his robe.” Psalm 133:2 (NLT) This olive oil that marked that person as God’s own, as one prepared for service, as one empowered by the Spirit was the product of a crushing.  

A press applied great pressure to the olives and it produced the oil that was used for anointing.  Now it gets good. “Jesus, who is both King and Priest forever, when to Calvary, but first he went to the Garden of Gethsemane. Gethsemane means ‘olive press.’ …. Beyond the ceremonial oil, there in the Garden, Jesus knelt down and was in such agony (of spirit), under such great pressure that He sweat drops of blood. There He was crushed before He went to the cross. … You cannot get to Calvary without going through Gethsemane.”  (Lusko)

My greatest desire is to be used by God to do His work. More than money, fame, or fun times I want to know Him and make Him known. But, I cannot do that without an anointing of the Spirit. Nor, can you.

At least a part of the cost of that anointing is crushing!

We need look no further than the life of Jesus. Isaiah says that “he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.”  His crushing released the beauty of our salvation!

Do you desire to be an intimate of God, ‘anointed’ for service? Pain is part of the process!

A. W. Tozer writes that “It is doubtful whether God could ever bless a person greatly until He has hurt him deeply.”  You may have to think about that for a while before you add your agreement.

If you are walking in a hard situation, if you are wrestling with pain, grief, rejection, loss, temptation – whatever is actually so common to the human experience – offer it to God for His purpose. Ask Him to make you tender, to sharpen your spiritual hearing, and to release the sweet fragrance of His anointing in your crushing.

And always remember – Jesus Christ knows sorrow and walks with you in those moments.

Amen

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Video of this blog

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