Fear No Fear

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

They will forget their shame and all their trespasses by which they have trespassed against me, when they dwell securely in their land. No one will make them afraid
Ezekiel 39:26 (emphasis added)

Shame is a terrible thing. It clouds so much of our lives. Shame is a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety. It’s a condition of humiliating disgrace or disrepute. It is something to be regretted. These are all true definitions of shame. But shame is not where we are called to live. Shame is meant to be the point of swivel. Repentance is more than just I’m sorry. Anyone can be truly sorry and shamed by their behaviour, but go and do it again and again — ask any addict. We’re called to swivel, to turn around, to repent. It is meant to be the point we realise what our behaviour looks like from God’s point of view and because of that we choose to repent. By repenting, we turn back. Go in another direction. We change our thinking about the behaviour – no matter HOW it feels to us. Fleeing from that which caused shame and entering the refreshing of the Spirit of God (Acts 3:19-21). We can live in a place where we have no sins left. Sin blotted out so much that we will forget the shame part of what we did and dwell fearlessly in total reverence of Yahweh God.

We were not created to be sinful. It was not part of our design. Like a screen door on a submarine, the evil intent that permeates this world sinks us. By choice, again and again, we let our actions be determined by the flesh. We let the evil intent advise us. And sin gets in. We are not sinners by nature, we are those in whom there is sin (1 John 1:8). That sounds like gobbledygook, I know. But think about it. We are not sinners. It is not a state of origin like being African or Asian or European. It is not a state granted to us by an act of government like being Swedish or German or American. We were created perfect. But we lost a component of our nature when humanity fell. We lost the righteousness we had been granted by an act of God. Without that righteousness, we are susceptible to our fault. The genetic fault we inherit through the first Adam’s lineage: evil intent.

In our hearts we have it. And it speaks to us 24/7/365 and 1/4. We exchanged our righteousness granted by God with the idea of Self. We have free will. But our flesh is selfish. It will choose the evil intent every time we let it. It is a strong habit. Because it is all about us. Our desires. Our wants. Our needs. Our thoughts, designs, and imaginings. It isn’t hard. We don’t have to give up anything. We don’t need to be retrained. We don’t need to be renewed. There is no birthing process. We can give ourselves over to all that our hearts can think up and call it right because it came from us. It is unbridled feeling. It is sensory input made to be content. Like a random assortment of ingredients in a bowl for baking or hours of footage shot for entertainment. The stuff in that bowl won’t make an edible cake without curating what goes in. That footage will not make a great video if it isn’t edited. Our flesh doesn’t curate or edit. It feels and then does with nothing standing between the two but our free will.

Free will takes effort. Our default setting is ‘yeah, do it’. Like a toddler. Or the parent of a newborn being asked for things by their three year old at 6am. We let things move along at whatever rate they are coming to us and without doing anything to alter it. Because an object at rest has a tendency to stay at rest. Once you are coated with mud, it is hard to tell when more mud gets on you. When you are convinced A is true, it is hard to conceive that B might be the truth. It seems foreign. It seems wrong. We are creatures of appetites because that is how the machine of our body survives and functions. But if we let our world be run by appetite, we aren’t going to do well. Just look at your cupboards when you went shopping hungry versus when you went feeling satiated.

We as people have no issues training ourselves to conquer our feelings and not let them control us — but only when in the service of other feelings. To take an example, polyamorous relationships are individuals who feel attracted to more than one other person and create a group dynamic (individual relationships with multiple people, not orgies). They constantly need to fight feelings of possession and jealousy. They re-train their natural feelings and thoughts to accommodate the feelings and thoughts that they want to promote within themselves. The world approves of this. The world says, ‘good for you. You do you. No judgment’ and pats them on the back. But talk about re-training the mind to follow God or wanting to change to accommodate Godly values and you get a VERY different response.

But we are not called to be as the world is. The prayer that the Israelites pray every day (Deuteronomy 6:4-5, taken from the Lexham English Bible) is “Hear, Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh is unique. And you shall love Yahweh your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your might.” That’s all of our mind and all of our inner selves as hard as we can with all the strength we can muster. If you feel you don’t have the strength or the willpower, remember Romans 10:17 “So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” We gain strength and depth to our faith by hearing the Word of God. By meditating on it day and night (Psalm 1:1-2). This is why we are told not to party and dance and play all the time but to daily take up our cross and follow Jesus (Matthew 16:24-26). It isn’t a life without joy or play or parties. But it IS a life of choice. Of intent. Of walking in His ways. As a child we put on the shoes of a parent and walk around. But we have to walk around carefully. Slowly taking each step or we fall. Our walk with Christ is much the same.

Instead of letting shame consume us, we can turn and walk in His ways as repentant, obedient children. Carefully taking each step. And with each step we take we become more and more aware of all that He has done for us — but we also get farther and farther away from the shame. The power of repentance is that we know what we did wrong, we know the weight of the sin which Jesus removed from us, but we don’t have shame about it. We gain a complete knowledge of our unworthiness, which helps us to kill Self. It’s hard to have an ego about things you’ve done that you know are wrong. It’s hard to have an ego when you can’t accomplish anything by yourself. It’s easy to be humble when you’re telling everyone that all the good about you is a gift from the Father and it is really the Father they should thank — not to appear holy or humble or spiritual, but simply because it is the unvarnished truth. Jesus did the same thing. You see Him again and again acknowledging the wonderful and awesome things about Himself by stating unequivocally that it was the Father who originated them, enabled them to come to be, gifted them, and was the one who did the works in the first place. Jesus never once took the glory on Himself.

This is brokenness. Thanks to the work of Jesus, we can go boldly before the Throne of the Father (Hebrews 4:16). But at that Throne of Grace we are not coming to say ‘lookit me!’ We are coming to see the Father and tell Him we love Him. To thank Him for doing all the everything. To be profoundly repentant of all we do that isn’t in faith. To thank Him for His outpoured Spirit. To acknowledge and affirm that we only prosper in ANY way when our faces are set on the Lord. And then worship Him because that is where we have set our face. On Him. “This is the message which we have heard from him and announce to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in the darkness, we lie and don’t tell the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:5-9).

When we remain broken before Him, there is no reason to fear. How can we fear recrimination and guilt when we are truly repentant? They can wail and moan and scream, but we are secure and at peace because we are blameless in His sight. “You, being in past times alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil deeds, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and without defect and blameless before him, if it is so that you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the Good News which you heard, which is being proclaimed in all creation under heaven, of which I, Paul, was made a servant” (Colossians 1:21-23).

That’s security. That’s peace. That’s the Lord as your refuge and your strength (Psalm 91). Your high tower and solid rock (Psalm 27). Why should we be afraid? Why should we be anything but confident? If we aren’t worthy and we cannot accomplish it, then it is Jesus in us who does. And if God does the thing, then the thing will be done. We can be confident because the Lord is trustworthy. The Lord is Gracious. The Lord never fails. We know this, and so we have no fear. We are far from shame and terror. But in our repentance and brokenness, we have peace. The peace of the Lord that passes all understanding. Amen.

Daily Affirmation of God’s Love: Revelation 22:1-5

A pure river of life. Leaves that heal more than ailments. No more curse. Seeing God face to face. Our faces gazing full-on into His. Sustained and built up. No more curse. Illuminated by the Lord Himself. When we are having a baby, we nest. Not only getting around us the select group of trusted humans we can rely on for protection and support, but also preparing the space that the new child will inhabit. Laying plans that are sometimes far-reaching and at other times more immediate. From college funds to extra sleepers and boxes of diapers. If we get excited about the possibility of little us’s running around, how much more does our Father in heaven get excited? How much more does He nest for us? Preparing us a place to live, worship, feed, refresh, and dwell? How eager is He, looking down from heaven and laughing in glee that soon and very soon He will be able to talk to us face to face? To be bathed in knowledge and breathe in wisdom? The conversations He has rehearsed. The wonders He has prepared. It can boggle the mind. But if we can lay hold of a bit of that vision. If we can truly understand just a part of it, then we will have something to build our realisation of the love the Father has for us onto. Because He does love us. More than anything. Next time you lie down, start to imagine all that the Father has and is preparing for you. Feel His excitement at every move you make. We will see Him soon, and man, what a smile is awaiting our arrival!

Your Daily Confession of God’s love to YOU:

Today God loves that I _______.