Tag Archives: Christianity

Overcoming Fear: The Empowering Benefits of Knowing God’s Love

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We’ve all heard people say, “If God is love, then why do bad things happen?” They seem to have difficulty reconciling life difficulties with a loving God. They are saying, “How does it benefit me if God is love and I still have to suffer?” In other words, “God is love, SO WHAT?”

There are numerous empowering benefits to truly KNOWING a loving God. The key word here is “knowing.” It’s only when we truly know God that we can recognize and experience His love towards us. This knowledge of His love is what empowers us, giving us the strength to face our fears and overcome them.

1 John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear.” Perfect love can only come from God; therefore, when you know God, fear is removed. This doesn’t mean we aren’t concerned or that we don’t wrestle with insecurity or anxiety. It means that because of our experiences with God in various circumstances, we KNOW that we can trust Him. This trust is what keeps our eyes focused solely on Him, not on what is frightening us. It helps us keep everything in perspective: God is greater and more powerful than whatever is causing our fears.

As Christians, we are not meant to live our lives in fear. “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline” (2 Tim 1:17). This power, this love, this confidence is what empowers us to live a fearless life. How do we tap into this power? How do we stay focused on the all-mighty God rather than the “what ifs” of life?

The answer is recognizing our fears and knowing the truths about God and how He is greater than our worries. With that in mind, let’s look at some of our concerns in light of God’s greatness.

The Fear of Failure

Let’s talk about the fear of failure. I’ve met too many believers who were so exhausted from their constant struggle with sin that they just gave up and settled for a defeated life. Can you imagine living in such a state? It’s not what God wants for us. He wants to give us freedom from and power over sin. He doesn’t want us to feel weak and helpless. So, simply giving up and giving in isn’t the answer.

I read of a baseball player who set the major league record for strikeouts with 1,316. This same player set a record for five consecutive strikeouts in a World Series game. The holder of both records was the great slugger Babe Ruth. His lifetime batting average was .342, which means his average of not reaching base was .658. He failed almost two-thirds of the time, yet he is known for what? Hitting home runs. He never gave up and is still talked about even though he retired almost 90 years ago.

When Satan attacks with the fear of failure, when he brings up all our sins, when he accuses us of our fleshly weaknesses, we need to run to God and let Him remind us of what He considers to be true about us. That is, God “has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault” (Colossians 1:22).

All our failures (yesterday, today, and tomorrow) were placed upon Christ when we put our faith in Him. Now, we live in an eternal state of forgiveness. No one, including ourselves, put the mantle of “sinner” back on us. We have been forgiven once and for all time; therefore, if a holy, sinless God can forgive us our failures, then who are we to not forgive ourselves?

The Fear of People

Next is the fear of people. Fredrick the Great said, “The more I get to know people, the more I love my dog.” People can be scary. They try to dominate, manipulate, and intimidate us, using these tactics to control us with fear.

Proverbs 29:25 warns us that “the fear of man is a snare” that will trap you and steal your hope for freedom. They will use their wicked maneuvers to guilt, scare, or browbeat you into submission. Usually, they do this because they are afraid of not being in control.

We cannot allow people to bully us to get their way. We cannot allow fear to keep us from being who God wants us to be. Paul asked the Galatian church, “Am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ” (1:10). Paul never let his fear of what people could do prevent him from obeying God.

In Acts 5:17-33, the disciples are imprisoned because they were preaching about Jesus in the temple. God freed them from jail but instructed them to return to preaching in the temple. The following day, the temple guard discovered they had escaped the prison but were back preaching.

Upon their arrest, they were brought before the High Priest. The religious leaders wanted to kill them but ended up flogging and then releasing them. The disciples were not afraid of what happened to them physically. They knew the very instant they left this life, they would be ushered into Christ’s presence (2 Cor 5:8).

Jesus encourages us not to “be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt 10:28). People can harm your body, ego, and reputation; however, nothing they do can separate you from God’s love, plan, and salvation.

That doesn’t mean we go out with a chip on our shoulder. It does mean we confidently live life knowing what God KNOWS to be true of us!

The Fear of Troubles

Thirdly, there is the fear of trouble. Romans 5.1-5 says, “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.”

“We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”

Clearly, all troubles are not bad. Hebrews 12:7 tells us to “endure hardships as discipline.” Notice it doesn’t say hardships are discipline, but to “endure” or consider hardships as discipline. My son has a list of chores. They are not a form of punishment but are to teach him responsibility, character, and hard work.

God wants us to trust His plan when troubles arise. God promises in Zephaniah 3:17, “The LORD you God is in your midst, a victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.” Jews took this verse to mean those without troubles were outside God’s will. The writer of Hebrews declared that God disciplines those He loves, so if you are not disciplined, then you are not legitimate children of God (12:5-11).

We may not like the discipline, but we must trust what we know about God—He is loving, kind, merciful, patient, perfect, and His plan for us will not be denied.

Focusing on our difficulties and trials can cause us to question God and eventually grow angry with Him for not helping us the way we want. There is nothing wrong with honestly talking with God about your plight. But in the end, we must be willing to submit to His sovereignty. Remember, God’s will and plan are what we would want if we knew all that God knows!

The Fear of Separation

Finally, there is the fear of separation. This is the accumulation of all our fears coming down on us at once. Fear that isn’t dealt with is like a giant boulder rolling downhill and about to crush us. It will eventually catch up to us, and the results will be devastating.

Undealt with fear obscures our vision of God. Why? Because we become myopic about our fears even though they are much smaller than our God! It’s like the moon blocking the sun’s light during an eclipse. The sun is 400 times larger than the moon, but when positioned just right, the moon appears larger and more dominant.

Our fixation on what frightens us makes it appear large and in charge. This means we must exercise spiritual maturity to remember, believe, and rest in the fact that God is in control regardless of our finite view.

There are several ways to overcome fear. First, call out to God. He already knows, but tell Him what’s happening and how you feel. Don’t try to hide your feelings from Him. He knows everything, so just be honest with Him. There is something about being vulnerable, transparent, and sincere that helps us move from fear to faith.

Next, quiet your spirit and thank God for being there with you. Spend time praising Him for His past help and how it will help you get through your current crisis. Then worship Him for who He is: holy, righteous, gracious, merciful, loving, forgiving, all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present, omnibenevolent, and so much more. The Bible declares that God inhabits His praise, so when we praise and worship Him, HE SHOWS UP!

Another thing you can do is read Romans 8:31-39. “What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.”

“Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, ‘For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.’) No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.”

“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

What can separate us from God? NOTHING!

Lastly, remembering the cross is the best way to calm our fears. There is no more extraordinary proof of God’s love for us than the giving of His Son as an atonement for our sins. It is impossible to see Jesus rejected by His own Father because of our sinfulness and not feel God’s overwhelming love for us. If you find yourself doubting God’s love for any reason, go to the Gospels and read the passion narratives. Look upon Christ’s wounds and remember they were necessary for your forgiveness and future home in Heaven.

The fear of separation is real, but if we take the proper steps, we can confidently face our fears because we know, have experienced, and are assured of God’s love, presence, and plan.

“The Keeper of the Springs” by Chuck Swindoll

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Read Matthew 5:13–14

The late Peter Marshall, an eloquent speaker and for several years  the chaplain of the United States Senate, used to love to tell the story of “The Keeper of the Spring,”¹ a quiet forest dweller who lived high  above an Austrian village along the eastern slopes of the Alps.

The old gentle man had been hired many years earlier by a young town  council to clear away the debris from Continue reading →

Can You See Me Now? (Part 1)

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In Genesis 1:31, God has finished all the work of creation. Moses tells us that “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” He saw the beautiful green grass and trees and said, “It is good.” He heard the sweet melodies of the birds singing and said “It is good.” He looked at the planets, the stars, and the sun and said, “It is good.” He found pleasure and satisfaction in all creation, and He gave it as a gift for humanity.

His gift was not just for us to enjoy fishing, boating, skiing, climbing, swimming, sunning, camping, or any other of recreational activities. He did not give us sites like the Grand Canyon, Mt. Everest, tropical islands, beautiful lakes, beaches, or any other part of nature just to behold its beauty. He did give us all of creation to enjoy; however, the main reason for all of creation is found in Romans 1.19-20, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (ESV). God gave us creation as a gift to reveal His power and divine nature that we would be drawn to Him and know Him.

As we close out 2020, please stop and look up, look down, look all around at the creation of God around you. Ask Him to open your eyes that you might see His invisible attributes revealed in creation. Would you ask Him to let you know Him more deeply than ever before in 2021. Ask Him to help you not let another day go by without seeing Him through His creation.

“Can You See Me Now” Part 2

“Can You See Me Now” Part 3

Is Christianity Dying?

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Dying ChurchIn his post “Is Christianity Dying?” Dr. Russell Moore gives Christians another way to look at the secularization of America.

Dr. Moore writes:

Christianity is dying. At least, that’s what major newspapers are telling us today, culling research from a new Pew Center study on what almost all sociologists are observing these days—the number of Americans who identify as Christians has reached an all-time low, and is falling. I think this is perhaps bad news for America, but it is good news for the church.

The lead editor of the report tells The New York Times that secularization—mainly in terms of those who identify as “nones” or with no specific religious affiliation—isn’t isolated to the progressive Northeast and Pacific Northwest. He notes, “The change is taking place all over, including the Bible Belt.”

This is precisely what several of us have been saying for years. Bible Belt near-Christianity is teetering. I say let it fall. For much of the twentieth century, especially in the South and parts of the Midwest, one had to at least claim to be a Christian to be “normal.” During the Cold War, that meant distinguishing oneself from atheistic Communism. At other times, it has meant seeing churchgoing as a way to be seen as a good parent, a good neighbor, and a regular person. It took courage to be an atheist, because explicit unbelief meant social marginalization. Rising rates of secularization, along with individualism, means that those days are over—and good riddance to them.

Again, this means some bad things for the American social compact. In the Bible Belt of, say, the 1940s, there were people who didn’t, for example, divorce, even though they wanted out of their marriages. In many of these cases, the motive wasn’t obedience to Jesus’ command on marriage but instead because they knew that a divorce would marginalize them from their communities. In that sense, their “traditional family values” were motivated by the same thing that motivated the religious leaders who rejected Jesus—fear of being “put out of the synagogue.” Now, to be sure, that kept some children in intact families. But that’s hardly revival.

Secularization in America means that we have fewer incognito atheists. Those who don’t believe can say so—and still find spouses, get jobs, volunteer with the PTA, and even run for office. This is good news because the kind of “Christianity” that is a means to an end—even if that end is “traditional family values”—is what J. Gresham Machen rightly called “liberalism,” and it is an entirely different religion from the apostolic faith handed down by Jesus Christ.

Now, what some will say is that the decline in self-identified Christians is a sign that the church should jettison its more unpopular teachings. And in our day, these teachings are almost always those dealing with pelvic autonomy. First of all, even if this were the key to success, we couldn’t—and wouldn’t—do it. Christianity isn’t a political party, dependent on crafting ideologies to suit the masses. We received this gospel (Gal. 1:11-12); we didn’t invent it. But, that said, such is not the means to “success”—even the way the sociologists define it.

The Pew report holds that mainline denominations—those who have made their peace with the Sexual Revolution—continue to report heavy losses, while evangelical churches remain remarkably steady—even against some heavy headwinds coming from the other direction. Why?

We learned this answer 100 years ago, and it reminds us of what we learned 2,000 years ago. Two or three generations ago, Christians who held to the Virgin birth of Christ were warned that their children would flee the faith unless the parents redefined Christianity. “If you want to win the next generation,” they were told, “you have to make Christianity relevant, and that means dispending with miracles in favor of modern science.” The churches that followed that path aren’t just dying; they are dead, sustained by endowments and dwindling gatherings of nostalgic senior adults with a smattering of community organizers here and there.

People who don’t want Christianity, don’t want almost-Christianity. Almost-Christianity looks in the mainline like something from Nelson Rockefeller to Che Guevara at prayer. Almost Christianity, in the Bible Belt, looks like a God-and-Country civil religion that prizes cultural conservatism more than theological fidelity. Either way, a Christianity that reflects its culture, whether that culture is Smith College or NASCAR, only lasts as long as it is useful to its host. That’s because it’s, at root, idolatry, and people turn from their idols when they stop sending rain.

Christianity isn’t normal anymore, and that’s good news. The Book of Acts, like the Gospels before it, shows us that the Christianity thrives when it is, as Kierkegaard put it, a sign of contradiction. Only a strange gospel can differentiate itself from the worlds we construct. But the strange, freakish, foolish old gospel is what God uses to save people and to resurrect churches (1 Cor. 1:20-22).

We do not have more atheists in America. We have more honest atheists in America. Again, that’s good news. The gospel comes to sinners, not to the righteous. It is easier to speak a gospel to the lost than it is to speak a gospel to the kind-of-saved. And what those honest atheists grapple with, is what every sinner grapples with, burdened consciences that point to judgment. Our calling is to bear witness.

We don’t have Mayberry anymore, if we ever did. Good. Mayberry leads to hell just as surely as Gomorrah does. But Christianity didn’t come from Mayberry in the first place, but from a Roman Empire hostile to the core to the idea of a crucified and resurrected Messiah. We’ve been on the wrong side of history since Rome, and it was enough to turn the world upside down.

The future of Christianity is bright. I don’t know that from surveys and polls, but from a word Someone spoke one day back at Caesarea Philippi. The gates of hell haven’t gotten any stronger, and the Light that drives out the darkness is enough to counter every rival gospel, even those gospels that describe themselves as “none.”

_________________________

For more on this, see my new book Onward: Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel.

SOURCE: Moore to the Point

I Don’t Know What to Do!

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Prayer (2)Have you ever been in a situation where you didn’t know what to do?  You’ve tried to straighten things out but regardless of your efforts things seem hopeless. All you want is relief, so you ask the simple question, “Now what do I do?”

In 2 Chronicles 20, Jerusalem is surrounded, and Jehoshaphat knows that he is powerless to stop the enemy. What did he do? In 20.6-11, he reminds God of all His promises and then in 20.12 he prays, “…we know not what to do, but our eyes are on you!” He didn’t look at the size of his problem, he looked to the One Who is greater than any problem and trusted Him to take care of everything.

Jehoshaphat gives us a great example to follow. Before trying to fix things, put out fires, or clear our name we need to pray, “Father, I don’t know what to do but I am looking to You.”  This prayer reminds me of a song we sang growing up:

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.”

It is amazing how simply looking to Jesus puts everything into perspective.

Don’t know what you’re going to do next? Try looking to Jesus!