Fear No Fear

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

“If you indeed obey the Lord your God and are careful to observe all his commandments I am giving you today, the Lord your God will elevate you above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come to you in abundance if you obey the Lord your God: You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the field. Your children will be blessed, as well as the produce of your soil, the offspring of your livestock, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and your mixing bowl will be blessed. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. The Lord will cause your enemies who attack you to be struck down before you; they will attack you from one direction but flee from you in seven different directions. The Lord will decree blessing for you with respect to your barns and in everything you do—yes, he will bless you in the land he is giving you. The Lord will designate you as his holy people just as he promised you, if you keep his commandments and obey him. Then all the peoples of the earth will see that you belong to the Lord, and they will respect you. The Lord will greatly multiply your children, the offspring of your livestock, and the produce of your soil in the land that he promised your ancestors he would give you. The Lord will open for you his good treasure house, the heavens, to give you rain for the land in its season and to bless all you do; you will lend to many nations but you will not borrow from any. The Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always end up at the top and not at the bottom, if you obey his commandments that I am urging you today to be careful to do. But you must not turn away from all the commandments I am giving you today, to either the right or left, nor pursue other gods and worship them.
Deuteronomy 28:1-14 (emphasis added)

Sickness is a universal human condition at minimum and a universal condition period if you look around in nature. It’s funny to me that NOBODY has an issue with sickness being universal, but if you claim sin is universal three-quarters of the world start talking about individuality, and ‘their truth’ not being our truth, and how not everything is for everyone so how can we say sin is universal when there are religions that don’t have guilt as part of their modus operandi. So let’s not deal with the sin side of the Fall. Let’s look at the natural world of sickness. They say everyone has it and that Adonai allows it to teach us things.

I really disagree with that viewpoint, but for argument’s sake let’s say it might be true. We have to ask ourselves what Adonai wants to teach us. I thought about it all day. I did some searching. And this is the list that I have compiled (I might have missed one or two):

Patience
Reliance
Suffering as a not always the worst thing
Humbleness (to prevent conceit)
Bring you to repentance
Remind you of your mortality
Keep you thinking of the rewards of heaven (no sickness and disease) in order to stir your hope
To stir up our prayer lives
To bring us back to reliance on the Word for comfort
Remind us of the necessity of a Saviour
Empathy for others
The need to care for ourselves
Appreciate health
Test whether our profession of trust is true or only words

These are all good lessons. I have to ask whether they are lessons that can only be taught in or with sickness? I suppose some of them (appreciating health, for example) are hard to teach if you haven’t seen or experienced sickness. Sickness would really help with that one. So I can certainly see where the church picked up this idea that sickness has benefit. My favourite one though is using sickness as a way to test whether our trust (faith) is real or not. Because it takes a lot firmer trust based on REAL relationship to believe the Word on healing than it does to believe sickness has benefit. There are literally hundreds of instances in the Word of people who needed to trust in Adonai in a VERY real life-or-death way. There are dozens of ways that our trust is tested by the devil. Each time we have a victory, he tries to sow a doubt. That Adonai would need sickness to let us prove that our profession of trust (faith) is true seemed to me to be laughable. As I thought about this, I was asked a question. The question Adonai asked me was this:

Do these lessons change if God isn’t sending/allowing the sickness? Can He teach you the same thing if the devil sends it?

The answer is of course it wouldn’t matter if Adonai sent the sickness, the devil sent the sickness, or natural causes from a fallen creation caused the sickness. Adonai can take ANYTHING and turn it to good for His children (verse). If we are in a circumstance (good, bad, or sick) there is something that He can teach us in it. He meets us where we are. He teaches us with everything around us – just like human teachers. Any homeschooling parent can tell you this universal truth: ANYTHING can become a lesson. EVERYTHING has something to teach us. Which of course means that Adonai doesn’t have to SEND the sickness for us to LEARN from it. Adonai gives free will to the human inhabitants of this planet. The Word teaches us that not everything happens how Adonai wants (the Israelites and the Promised Land, for example {Hebrews 3:19} & Jesus not being able to do miracles because of unbelief for another{Mark 6:5}), Free will means that not everything is ‘allowed’. Some things are CHOSEN that can lead to sickness – directly and indirectly. Adonai doesn’t have to ALLOW sickness for us to LEARN from it.

Adonai’s lessons ALL boil down to one master lesson: trust in Adonai. Because it is ALL about trust (Hebrews 11:6). Trust is how the Kingdom works. By TRUST we get saved. By TRUST we enter into Grace. By TRUST we get everything that the Father has for all (Ephesians 1:3-6). It is the core of EVERY lesson He teaches. Now objectively ask yourself this: does the God who Created EVERYTHING need sickness to teach us? Of course not. He’ll use it. But He doesn’t NEED it.

The devil wants us to learn his lesson: you cannot trust Adonai. It is the core of EVERY temptation. Right from the beginning. If we shift our trust, we shift our allegiance. This lesson of not trusting only gets learned when he sends you stuff, free will humans do stuff, or circumstances generated from the Fall come on you. Because otherwise there would be nothing for him to point to and say ‘Look! It doesn’t work!’ He must have unfavourable circumstances to tempt you with that.

Adonai’s lesson is you can trust – and it doesn’t matter who sends you the circumstance that challenges that truth. It doesn’t matter if you are having good times or bad. Sickness or health. Prosperity or poverty. Blessing or famine. Adonai can teach you, will teach you, and ALWAYS seeks to teach you about trusting Him in all circumstances, at all times, without ceasing. Ever.

Messiah’s character is goodness. Messiah is intimately connected to Adonai, an offshoot of the Creator, the Son of God. So if Messiah’s character is goodness, then Adonai’s character is goodness. Why would someone who is GOODNESS itself put on ANYONE or ANYTHING sickness as a lesson? Look at today’s verse. At a pivotal point of Jewish history, the Hebrew people were being instructed on how things should be in their covenant with Adonai Elohim. What do we see? His will is BLESSING! Blessed children. Blessed possessions. Blessed servants. Blessed property. Blessed food. Blessed employees. Blessed dwellings. Blessed people. Blessed EVERYTHING. And WE have a BETTER covenant (Hebrews 8:6).

Yes, it is conditional on obedience. But if you love Him you’ll WANT to obey Him (John 14:23). How would He need or want sickness to be part of that covenant model? The Word proves that He does NOT. He wants GOOD things for us because He is a Good Shepherd (John 10:11-15). He is a Good God (1 Chronicles 16:34). He is a Good Father (Deuteronomy 1:29–31). He has a Good Son (Mark 1:11; Matthew 19:17). You know what isn’t good? Sickness. Look through the Word and you will see the truth of that. Don’t bring up Job. He was trapped in a different covenant. We have what Job was desperate for: a mediator. We have Jesus who paid the price of sin, broke the curse, and redeemed us into Himself and through Himself, the Kingdom.

Don’t let human thinking bind you up. Accept the freedom The Blood and The Name offer. Don’t turn down Jesus’ Holy Communion. Take, and eat. Take, and drink. Get the Word into your heart and let even the begats heal you (Proverbs 4:20-23). Sickness is NOT a universal experience. It has no place in the Church. No place in the Body of Christ. Not figuratively. Not literally. Not spiritually. Let sickness go. We don’t need it. We don’t want it. We can learn the lessons from a better shore. Under better trees. With better harvests (Revelation 22:2).

You can come against it. You can deny it. You can run from it. You can reject it. But it is TRUTH nonetheless. Adonai does NOT send sickness. If you can’t handle that, take heart. He can use even sickness for Good. But no matter what, it will never change that His heart is for your life and health. You have a choice. Choose life. Decide which lesson you want to learn. Adonai’s lesson that He can ALWAYS be trusted? Or the devil’s lesson that Adonai can’t? I think the track record is 1120% on Adonai’s side at the bare minimum. But it is YOUR choice. Just like Adam’s. Who are YOU going to listen to?

Daily Affirmation Jesus IS Messiah: Psalm 100:5

“For the Lord is good. His loyal love endures, and he is faithful through all generations.” The Messiah’s character would be GOODNESS. It would be part of who He was and obvious in ALL that He did. He would follow the commandments of His Father who is ALSO Good. It would be something that only Messiah – with a pure and righteous spirit – would be able to accomplish. “Now someone came up to him and said, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to gain eternal life?” He said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:16-17). Only Jesus, who was without sin, could claim to be good. He was only able to claim it because He was ONE with the Father, God Almighty (John 10:30). Jesus was and is THE Good One. 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