Fear No Fear

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

but he answered his father, ‘Look! These many years I have worked like a slave for you, and I never disobeyed your commands. Yet you never gave me even a goat so that I could celebrate with my friends!
Luke 15:29 (emphasis added)

Have you ever been to a dinner party or holiday celebration? Do you arrive, all smiles and warmth, entering the home only to stand in the entrance? Is your complete experience the foyer alone? What about your own family’s home? Is your entire experience the foyer? Coats and shoes off and then milling about. Hearing the laughter, smelling the cooking meals, hearing the television, seeing the lights, but not leaving the welcome mat? Spending your life there, knowing that one day you’ll enjoy all that the home has to offer, but not THIS day? Of course not. You’d be sent to counselling by your family and friends. Yet that is where many of us spend our lives.

The generous and welcoming father had two sons and they acted completely differently. “The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them. After a few days, the younger son gathered together all he had and left on a journey to a distant country, and there he squandered his wealth with a wild lifestyle. Then after he had spent everything, a severe famine took place in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and worked for one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He was longing to eat the carob pods the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. But when he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have food enough to spare, but here I am dying from hunger! I will get up and go to my father and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired workers.”’ So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way from home his father saw him, and his heart went out to him; he ran and hugged his son and kissed him. Then his son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Hurry! Bring the best robe, and put it on him! Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet! Bring the fattened calf and kill it! Let us eat and celebrate, because this son of mine was dead, and is alive again—he was lost and is found!’ So they began to celebrate. Now his older son was in the field. As he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the slaves and asked what was happening. The slave replied, ‘Your brother has returned, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he got his son back safe and sound.’ But the older son became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and appealed to him, but he answered his father, ‘Look! These many years I have worked like a slave for you, and I never disobeyed your commands. Yet you never gave me even a goat so that I could celebrate with my friends! But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and everything that belongs to me is yours. It was appropriate to celebrate and be glad, for your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost and is found.’”” (Luke 15:12-32).

Both sons knew they were related to the father. One threw away his identity, but came to value it – although he never felt worthy of it. One did NOT throw away his identity, but that was because he never knew who he was. The older son worked hard. He worked at being a model son. He valued what his father had. He ENVIED what his father had. He ALSO did not feel worthy of the full fortune of his father’s generosity (he complained about not having a goat, not a calf). Neither walked in that fullness until the end, and then it was the YOUNGER son who was poised fort success and blessing, not the older.
The younger son had made a mistake and realised it. He knew he had been foolish. He came to the end of himself and knew where life was: with his father. He didn’t feel worthy of being a son. He didn’t feel like he deserved to return to his place. He DID acknowledge that even the servants in his father’s home were treated better than those outside the home. He knew his father was a good master. He knew his father was generous and kind. He thought he had a good chance to go back, but as a servant. Essentially trading the position he was currently in (manual labour for a master taking care of livestock in poor conditions) for the same position in his father’s house (manual labour for his father doing whatever was needed – probably livestock – in excellent conditions). He was willing to accept a lateral move. Not a RETURN, but a going back. He was humble. He wasn’t afraid of work. He simply wanted to be back in the home.

The older son never left. He worked hard. He didn’t approve of unwise use of resources (squandering inheritance, for example). He seems to have assumed that those who spurned work were out for physical pleasure alone. He certainly wasn’t willing to make that trade. However, he also wasn’t willing to take advantage of his position. I’m not referring to abusing his position. He wasn’t willing to USE his position. Not even for reasonable, deserved celebration. He was aware his father had much wealth and many resources, but he didn’t avail himself of them. It wasn’t that he was turned down. He didn’t even ask. We don’t know if he hinted, sighed, moped, or otherwise try to cajole his father. We DO know he never ASKED. He was the older son, but he didn’t act like it. He acted like a general labourer, or perhaps one with a lot of favour.
When you are the child of a rich family, there is a lot of resources that you cannot touch. Things that are being used for something else. Things that are set aside. Things that are tied up. But the rest? You have access to it. It is one of the many perks of being the child of a rich family. If there wasn’t any access, then you would be in the same boat as everybody else and what would the point of that be? Rich children know they are rich to a certain extent. They know what they can have. They know what they have access to. They know that they are different. But that doesn’t mean they are using it. They may be content with simple things. But sometimes they want and don’t ask. Then they can get bitter. Seeing all that wealth, but not utilising any of it. This was the older son. He wanted, but he didn’t ask. He was waiting for it to be offered to him. He was waiting for the generosity of his father to manifest itself automatically.

This is the place that so many believers are in today. We are saved. We’re part of the family. But we are standing in the foyer of the Kingdom waiting to die so that we feel welcome in the rest of the house. Which is, if you think about it, crazy. Why wouldn’t we be welcome in our Father’s house? Sure, there ARE places we cannot get to with this body. But they are in the minority of the experience that we have been informed about. In fact, it seems like there we were only told about those places so that we had something left to look forward to. You know what that means? That what we DO have is so WONDERFUL so LIFE-CHANGING that we might stop looking to heaven, being SO SATISFIED with what we have RIGHT NOW. Is that your experience? The experience of your church? Other churches in your city? Is this the experience of the Body of Christ as a whole, today in this world? I think, no. I don’t think it does. I think too many of us are hanging out in the lobby wishing someone would toss us a goat.

The nature of Elohim is love. He is merciful. Grace giving. Generous. Kind. Patient. Long-suffering. But only in heaven, is that it? We have to wait to get any of that? Oh, or is it sin? We’re such horrible, terrible sinners that the only way we can get these things is to be in heaven? Like we’re SAVED, Jesus PAID for sin, but the check hasn’t cleared so we need to just wait? Or the influence of the flesh is too much and since we’re constantly carnal, immoral, and falling that we have to wait until we’re 100% perfect before we can have benefits beyond salvation? None of that seems like Elohim to me. He was so desperate to save us, He sent His only Son to die, resurrected Him to life, offered us salvation through His Son, and then made us wait years to decades before giving us the benefits of our salvation? It does not seem consistent with His character. It does not seem consistent with His compassion. And it IS NOT consistent with either Jesus’ life and ministry on Earth OR the Word as Ruach HaKodesh recorded it.

‘Hey, this is what salvation is’. That was Jesus’ message and the church added ‘we can be just like Him more and more each day until finally we’ll be face to face and perfected’. “because those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Romans 8:29). That means we’ll become like Jesus. When? “And we all, with unveiled faces reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another which is from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). ARE BEING not will one day start to be. Are we now all we’ll be? No. That waits until we are face to face with Jesus in physical contact, not visions (1 Corinthians 13:13). But it has ALREADY started. Elohim didn’t wait for us. He’s already started transforming us. THAT is in accordance with His nature, His Word, and Jesus’ message and ministry.

Leaving us in a place that doesn’t look different from the rest of the world is a terrible testimony. Leaving us sick, injured, diseased, full of conditions (mental and physical), handicaps, lacking, and in any other way in the same boat as unbelievers will NOT transform their opinions. It will not make them interested in how we got to be the way we are. All it will do is convince them we’re just another man-made religion because we look exactly like every man-made religion there is. If we want a testimony, we need to want to be transformed. We need to want things to be different. We need to want to experience a life that is unlike every other life outside Jesus. Otherwise we’re proclaiming ‘come to Jesus things will be exactly the same, but sometimes we have these really cool t-shirts and slogans you can wear’. Not exactly something to get the crowds banging on the church doors.

But what if doctors can’t help them and pandemics are spreading, but they’ve noticed no believer gets sick? What if the economy is in flux and near-crashing and investments are tanking, but they’ve noticed no believer goes bankrupt? What if the grocery shelves are getting low on supplies and people are fighting in the aisles over toilet paper and baby formula, but they’ve noticed believers running neighbourhood soup kitchens and dropping off food and supplies to homes around their cities and there’s always something in their closet or pantry for you when you drop by to say hello? What if there are lines at gas stations, but believers are never in them? What if all the ‘rules’ that apply to monetary systems, supply chains, and the law of supply and demand didn’t apply to believers? Simply because they believed? Because they trusted that the Word wasn’t lying when it said ALL our needs are and will be met (Philippians 4:19; Psalm 37:1-40; Matthew 6:31-33)? What if we believed Psalm 23 in that we, His children/flock, would see NO LACK/WANT. What if Elohim was good for it? THAT would be a witness so powerful and so demonstrable that only Jesus Himself could top it. That isn’t lobby living. That is robe and ring living.

You know what human thinking says? You have to expend effort to get something. Even cheaters have to think of a scam and then enact the scam in order not to work, which is itself work but maybe not as demanding. Scammers steal money, but they work hard at it. People meditate, spending effort and energy to force themselves to change or to follow a pattern of thinking and behaviour that is supposed to earn/get them peace. Humanity has pointed that toward religion too. Worship this with this much effort and receive. Give money to get a blessing. And even with that some don’t know if they’ve failed or succeeded until they die and justify themselves/discover which way the scales were tipped. It’s very human thinking. You know what ISN’T human thinking? A God who does it for you, gives you the strength you need to work at things, gives you the tools you need to work at things, and brings you unquenchable peace about what you’re doing and where you’re going as long as you submit to His plan of action. That’s almost ANTI-human thinking. The proof that Yahweh is not a human invention is the system Yahweh setup by which everything gets done. It is – thankfully, mercifully, and wonderfully – beyond humanity to invent.

Why are we teaching each other to stand in the lobby? Why aren’t we teaching each other that our Father will give us a robe? A high standard of living? A standard of living above the average? Why aren’t we teaching each other that our Father will give us a ring signifying our ability to buy, sell, trade, and represent the family to the world? That we have that authority to use in His Name according to His guidelines in His Word? Why aren’t we teaching that though we may have been astray and been apart from Him, when we got saved we were welcomed into His family? Rejoicing happened? And it is as if WE are each one of us (male and female) His precious child? And a child worthy of being healed and whole – “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we may cease from sinning and live for righteousness. By his wounds you were healed. For you were going astray like sheep but now you have turned back to the shepherd and guardian of your souls” (1 Peter 2:24-25).

If this is the God who called us to Himself (2 Timothy 1:10; John 6:44), why wouldn’t He give us a form of living that WE would call abundant? That is what Jesus said He came for (John 10:10). If lies, sickness, lack, and death are the enemy; and abundant life is the opposite of that, then shouldn’t we expect as our BARE MINIMUM truth, health, plenty, and life? As in, we’re not going to be dropping like flies but enjoying full life with all our faculties, ageing but not becoming infirm like Psalm 91 promises and the lives of Abraham, Moses, and Caleb show us? What kind of God could claim that He has no favourites (Deuteronomy 10:17; Romans 2:11), but not give us all the same kind of life? Well, a just one. Because the Blessing is contingent on obedience. And obedience is contingent on knowledge.

If we don’t KNOW we can have it, how will we KNOW what to expect? If we don’t KNOW the restrictions, how will we KNOW what obedience is? We can live holy like Moses, Caleb, Abraham, and Jesus. The reward of Blessing that each of them walked in was in proportion to the reward of Blessing each of them knew existed – and their behaviour bears that out. If we follow the example of Jesus, we can have the blessing Jesus had. We can do the things Jesus did. We can have the prosperity Jesus did. We can have the health Jesus did. We can be overcomers like Jesus was. We can have all of that. We don’t HAVE to live in the lobby. We can choose to be humbly submitted to the Will and Word of Adonai. We can choose to be yoked to Jesus. We can choose to obey the Father in all things, living according to the Spirit, and letting Him renew our minds with Jesus’ own mindset. We CAN have it. We do NOT need to stand on the mat, waiting for our goat.

Daily Affirmation Jesus IS Messiah: Isaiah 53:10

“Though the Lord desired to crush him and make him ill, once restitution is made, he will see descendants and enjoy long life, and the Lord’s purpose will be accomplished through him.” Messiah would be THE offering for sin. “But Jesus called them and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions use their authority over them. It must not be this way among you! Instead whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”” (Matthew 20:25-28). Jesus gave His life. “Jesus replied, “You would have no authority over me at all, unless it was given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of greater sin.”” (John 19:11). “No one takes it away from me, but I lay it down of my own free will. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it back again. This commandment I received from my Father” (John 10:19). Jesus willingly went to through the cross, paying the price for sin. He did it to get to the tomb, where we lay down OUR lives in HIS payment to be resurrected into HIS Covenant by the Father through the Ruach HaKodesh (Romans 8:11). Jesus paid that price for us. Jesus IS Messiah!

Your Daily Confession of Jesus/Yeshua’s Identity:

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

Matthew 16:16b