Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it; for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success. Haven’t I commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be dismayed, for Yahweh your God is with you wherever you go.
Joshua 1:8-9 (emphasis added)

Two things. First, the section this is from (Joshua 1:5-9) is a map of success. It delineates exactly what you need to do to have success in life: Be strong, have courage, lead others with wisdom, be obedient to God and love Him with your whole heart — turning neither to the left or right but standing your ground and staying your course. If you do it, you’ll be righteous in His eyes (Deuteronomy 30:19-30). That’s the whole point behind choosing life (Deuteronomy 30:6). But there is some question as to whether you actually CAN keep the Law and follow God with your whole heart all the time (Ecclesiastes 7:20).

Second, you may point out that we are not under the law of the Old Covenant. That is true. However, as Paul pointed out in 1 Corinthians 9:21, we are not outside the law of God but under the law of Christ (Jesus). And Jesus said in Matthew 5:17 “Don’t think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy, but to fulfill.” The Law has value. The rightness of the ordinances has not changed. The righteousness at the core, has not changed. What was wrong under the Law is still wrong today, but we have a different Covenant to deal with it — the Covenant of Grace, where we are given the Righteousness of Jesus by Grace, through Faith; which is the ONLY way to fulfil the Law’s right ordinances. Jesus is the only one who did it. In Him, we can too because He’s already MADE the path. We simply WALK it because we’re spiritually circumcised into Jesus and have His Spirit (Deuteronomy 30:6).

The Law has value and is right. But what exactly is that law that we need to have on our mind and in our hearts and meditate on it all the time so that we can follow it and then be prosperous and successful? Do we mediate on the burning incense part or the don’t murder part? Well, in Matthew 22:37-40 “Jesus said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”“

We have commands from Jesus. He wants us to love. As He loves. As we love ourselves (the idea being we don’t hate or harm ourselves – boy has the enemy worked hard to corrupt that idea!). If we do this, we will follow all the commandments in the Word. Because everything we are to do or not do is based on and around love. You aren’t going to covet your neighbour’s wife if you love them as Jesus loves them. You won’t steal or murder. You’ll respect your parents. You’ll focus on the Word and spending time with the Lord.

Yahweh wants to bless us and keep us from harm. He wants us to bless others and keep them from harm. Telling someone that God says something is wrong is love. Berating someone and making them feel like trash is NOT love. There is a huge difference. It is possible to present the truth without hate or judgment – WHEN the Holy Spirit leads us AND our method of delivery lines up with Him, it will never be wrong.

How do you know if you’re doing it with love? The Holy Spirit will tell you. Don’t know what His voice is like? Read the Word. Think on it. Wrestle with it.

Investigate what it says, and WHY it says it. Get it inside yourself to where that still small voice speaks and BANG. You RECOGNISE it. You’ll start to hear from God and know what the Spirit is saying about what you’re doing. REMEMBER: The Holy Spirit does NOT convict us of wrong-doing, only of our trust (or lack of trust) in Jesus. This isn’t about guilt or oh-boy-are-you-going-to-get-it. But the Holy Spirit DOES correct us. He TELLS us when we are going wrong and INSTRUCTS us on how to go correctly. To show us how we are not trusting in Jesus, and how to start doing it. Receive the rebuke and change your behaviour.

Loving someone is about wanting the best for THEM. Striving for THEM to succeed. Making choices not based on what is best for US, but what is best for THEM. Affording them the SAME opportunities that we would want for ourselves. Never thinking of it as an inconvenience. Serving THEM. This doesn’t come naturally.

We are naturally selfish because that is the flesh condition. And we have taken it in. From the cradle to salvation we taught ourselves to put ourselves first — in our hearts if not in all our actions. The world is built around the idea that you have extraordinary value and should be treated as such. That you deserve that holiday. That you deserve that bonus. That you deserve that drink. You deserve that video game break. You deserve to feel put out. Put upon. Taken advantage of. Because it’s YOUR time, YOUR stuff. Survival of the fittest. It’s hard to put off. Hard to avoid thinking. It takes JESUS to do it – and do it DAILY (Luke 9:23).
“The LORD your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your offspring, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live” (Deuteronomy 30:6). God does it. Jesus does it. The Holy Spirit does it. We may be able to keep the Law on the outside, but on the inside we won’t. Until God circumcises our hearts and cuts out that training we gave it. Cuts out that spirit of weakness and susceptibility to sin that is our heritage from the first Adam. Until we are given the righteous spirit of the Last Adam, we are hopeless cases.

But God changes us from the inside out. God enables us to walk the walk by changing our hearts. By giving us a spirit who loves the Lord our God with all its heart and all its soul. No self. All Jesus. The process by which God does this is renewal. He does all the work, but we need to give Him permission. We need to plug in to get the advantages of all He has to offer us. We need to DAILY sacrifice the old in order to embrace the GRACE of the new. You can’t hang onto something in your hand and also use that hand to grab something new.

This is what we are to do: get the Word in our hearts and heads. To think on it. Investigate what Yahweh says about Himself. It will renew us and transform us if we let it become more than words across pages. Ask Yahweh to reveal Himself before you read. Look at the footnotes of the verses. Read more than one translation and see how they compare. No time for reading? Get the Bible on audio-book and listen while you do chores or commute. Find yourself Word-based teaching and listen to it.

Praise God and spend a LOT of time singing to Jesus. Not a singer? Recite the Psalms of praise. Make up words. Tell Him how great He is – it isn’t grovelling or buttering God up because everything you can say is just plain TRUE. Use the Word to guide what you do. Or simply ask Jesus what He wants you to do today. Listen to the Spirit guide you, correct you, and teach you. Feel the love. Spread the love.

When you’re doing all that, there isn’t room for fear or dismay or terror or anxiety or depression. Perfect love casts out fear. This isn’t a simple takes it from us and throws it away. This is total renewal of the original host to make the environment hostile and incompatible with fear. This is terraforming our spirit, our mind, our emotions, and our heart. When we seek His righteousness and follow His ways, He inhabits us and dwells in us and creates within us an environment of that righteousness that He is – because of Jesus and how Jesus transforms us.

This is God being our high place, our fortress and shelter from the storms of life. This is roosting under His wings. This is Armour of God under His protection stuff. How can fear thrive? How can we be dismayed when we see Jesus looking at us every day in the mirror? This is an atmosphere of victory because we’re placing Him first in all things.

Think about His perfect love and how you can apply it to your words and actions every day. All those negative feelings that come at us are children of fear. Stop raising them. Raise words of praise to God instead. Praise Jesus. Let His love shine. Let Him become your thoughts, your heart, your desire. In Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). Let’s be renewed into a new thing. A Jesus thing. A Holy thing. Let God do His work. Get into the Word and let your renewal begin today.

Daily Affirmation of God’s Love: Ephesians 3:16-19

God’s love is big and deep. To be honest, you won’t understand it on your own. I don’t understand it. It is beyond natural human comprehension. It’s coming to us from a being who has always existed outside everything we can experience and in fact MADE everything that we experience. How can we understand that? We can’t. But praise God we can be shown it. He can unveil within us His unlimited riches of glory and favour. If we consistently use our faith – in big and small things – the life of Christ will be released inside of us. We will rest in the secret place. In His love. That love will become the source and root of our life. Our minds will be transformed by the Word of the Lord. Then – and only then – will we be in a position to be shown the great magnitude of Jesus’ astonishing love in all its dimensions. We need a piece of Jesus inside us fully operating and rested on to understand God’s love. But the Word says we can achieve it. The Word says we can make that journey. And what a journey! What love.

Your Daily Confession of God’s love to YOU:

Today God loves that I _______.