Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the NET, netbible.org, all rights reserved)

Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is diseased, your body is full of darkness.
Luke 11:34 (emphasis added)

I like stained glass. It is colourful and the light shining through always makes great colours and ambience. Even the lead came (the narrow strips of lead that hold the glass together into panels) can be beautiful. Intricate pieces that help to define the glass. Although lead was chosen because of its adaptability for fitting the glass together into those intricate shapes. It lets the light in, which creates that great mood and lovely coloured light patterns. But if that lead came was too prevalent, if the ratio of lead to glass was tilted in the wrong direction, then we would NOT get that light, or colour, or ambience. What we would have is dark, muddy, broken pinpoints of light. It would NOT have caught on, NOT be worth anything, and NOT desired by ANYONE.

We think of light as big, open, and wide stretches. We open the curtains to maximise the light in a room. We use many lightbulbs or more powerful lightbulbs to maximise the light in rooms. We’re almost obsessed with getting as much light as we can. It is an interesting thing, because physiologically our pupils actually dilate the more light that they get. The pupil acts like the aperture on a camera, dilating or contracting to regulate the amount of light coming into the eye. The more light there is, the smaller that aperture. The less light there is, the larger it is. Even cooler, the change in the size of the pupil occurs when we EXPECT lighting conditions to change. For example, when we take our eyes off the screen and look down at the keyboard there is a light change. Our pupils start to dilate several seconds BEFORE we move them to be PREPARED for the lighting condition we are about to encounter.

Interestingly enough, darkness makes the pupils get WIDER and light causes them to CONTRACT. The eye doesn’t need too much light, so in high-light areas it contracts and focuses the light. In low-light areas it expands and tries to collect all the light that it can. This is also a spiritual principle. Those in darkness are seeking any light they can – which is why they can easily led astray with just a little reflected light. Those in the light are focused, narrowing their view so that they have as little darkness as possible in front of them.

Adonai doesn’t want us wandering around in the darkness. He doesn’t want us stumbling and blindly doing things in the hope that there will be some success. “Then Jesus spoke out again, “I am the light of the world! The one who follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). “Let nobody deceive you with empty words, for because of these things God’s wrath comes on the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be sharers with them, for you were at one time darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live like children of light—for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth—trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:6-10). We should be in the light as He is in the light. Adonai IS light, so there is light wherever He is. It is a hallmark of the Kingdom. We become light, reflecting Him to this world (Matthew 5:14-16).

Anyone who does not walk in the light is walking in darkness. Spiritually, anyone who is not being righteous is being wicked since wickedness is anything that isn’t righteous. When we act in faith, we are acting according to Adonai’s righteousness. When we do NOT act in faith, we are acting in accordance with wickedness. This is a GUARANTEED stumble. “The way of the wicked is like gloomy darkness; they do not know what they stumble over” (Proverbs 4:19). Believers are not built for sin (wickedness). That part of us which was a sinner is dead (1 John 3:9). When we are consciously placing ourselves into Jesus – humbly submitting to His Word – we will not sin. So how is it that we all sin (Romans 3:23-24; 1 John 1:8-10)?

The brain is full of pathways. Everything you have ever learned is inside your brain. As we use a given pathway we strengthen it. When we do not use a pathway, it atrophies or weakens. Everything we know is locked behind pathways we don’t use anymore. Your elementary school math lessons. Foreign language articles from High School. That book you read once over a long weekend because your friend said it was good. When we need to access them on a regular basis it is easy. The paths are strong. But when we leave them alone for a long time or have an accident that affects the brain, we have to re-learn them or learn new ways to access old information.

When we were saved, our spirits were instantly renewed to their fully righteous form. They are sealed by the Ruach HaKodesh (Ephesians 1:13-14). We are 100% righteous in our spirit. Sin cannot touch it. Sin never gets in or comes out. We have the same spirit we will have when we stand in person before the Throne. It is out eternal spirit forever. Our body remained the same. Our mind is in the middle. It CAN be renewed to Adonai’s ways. Being mortal, it will want to fall back on those old paths. The ones we strengthened throughout our lives. The selfish ones that took a LOT of darkness and downloaded it into our hearts (Mark 7:21-22). In order to prevent our MINDS from choosing old paths or looking to the darkness for guidance, we need to continually let Adonai renew our minds.

It is the same idea as cleaning our windows. If we do not regularly clean them they get smudged. Dirty. Dusty. It impedes their ability to let light in. If they get dirty enough, it is like living in a room of perpetual twilight. Or worse, no light. You see it in movies all the time when the heroes enter the home of a recluse. Or when the police finally get into the lair of the bad guy they’ve been tracking. It is ingrained into the human psyche that bad things happen in dark places. Even when the bad guys have created the illusion of light and happiness to fool people into entering their trap, the worst things always happen in darkness. Even superhero movies can change their whole tone depending on whether their costumes are filtered for bright and shiny or duller and grim.

Right from the beginning Adonai warned us to keep the Word before our eyes. Not to stop seeing it, thinking about it, hearing it, and discussing it. It wasn’t on a whim. It was because He knew how the brains He had created work. They are meant to be ever-renewing, ever-reinforcing, and ever-present on the things of Adonai. We are beings of movement just like He is (Genesis 1:2). We will be constantly exposed to new territory. We were meant to bring our light with us. We were meant to focus our spiritual pupils on Him. We were meant to be ready and prepared as we travelled around, bringing His light to new places and seeking His light where we haven’t seen it before. The more of His light we have inside, the more focused we are on Him. We are meant to have VERY, VERY narrowed pupils. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set out for him he endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2). Keep your spiritual pupils constricted. Keep your eyes on Jesus.

Daily Affirmation Jesus IS Messiah: Psalm 89:27

“I will appoint him to be my firstborn son, the most exalted of the earth’s kings.” The Messiah would be named Emmanuel. Messiah would be higher than earthly kings. Messiah would be coming to establish a kingdom where other rulers would look up to Him because of His very nature AND because of His position of authority on Earth. This is one of the greatest hallmarks of Messiah. Gabriel, Messenger of Adonai Elohim proclaimed “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will never end.”” (Luke 1:32-33). It was proclaimed over Yeshua, son of Miryam (Mary), Yeshua was ALSO Son of Ha’Elyon (God Most High). Her cousin’s baby leapt in her cousin’s womb when Yeshua came near as a further evidence of Yeshua’s parentage. Jesus IS Son of God Most High. Jesus holds authority over all the kings of this earth (Matthew 28:18-20). Jesus IS the Messiah!

Your Daily Confession of Jesus/Yeshua’s Identity:

Yeshua is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Matthew 16:16b