Fear No Fear

(All scripture from Lexham English Bible, Copyright 2012 Logos Bible Software)

“And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and concerning righteousness and concerning judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me, and concerning righteousness, because I am going away to the Father and you will see me no more, and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.“

John 16:8-11

Follow through is your ability to do what it is that you say you will do. It is our ability to continue the motion until the end – instead of stopping partway and being unsuccessful. It’s easy to promise we’ll do something, it’s not always easy to keep those promises. Most parents learn early on not to make binding promises because of the MANY factors that come up in life that can prevent follow through – and will not be understood by a young child. That’s where we get to saying someone has good intentions. We are acknowledging they WANT to do things, but are NOT going to have follow through. They start strong, but fail to finish. We all have those moments that we experience it. I had my big moment in intermediate school.

Not quite in secondary, not quite elementary, that awkward in-between. We were having a kind of race. It was really more of a low-key marathon in support of a good cause. We had all raised some kind of money and now we had to run the ‘race’. We were to start at the school grounds, head down the LONG hill, run through the surrounding neighbourhoods, go up the less steep slope on the other side, run through more neighbourhoods, and end up back on the school grounds. One of the many giant almost squares that school kids have been running near their schools for decades and will probably continue for decades more. It beats having to run around a school field seventeen times. So there we were, organized by class, waiting for the gun to go off (or flag to wave, I don’t remember. We had both at the school.). When it did and we all started, I was with the whooping, fast running starters. The ‘come on let’s go’ crowd. Encouraging the others and going full speed. Which lasted about as long as it took to get off school grounds. It was a cringe-worthy moment because I had no follow through. I was CAPABLE of athletics, but confined mine to stalking the woods with toy guns or climbing trees. Endurance was not in my repertoire. I was in the loudmouth hurry up you guys crowd at the start, did well downhill, and almost immediately after that fell back and back and back. I was one of the slinking, panting, and very last ones to arrive back at the school. No follow through.

Paul exhorted Timothy about follow through. “I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all patience and instruction. For there will be a time when they will not put up with sound teaching, but in accordance with their own desires, they will accumulate for themselves teachers, because they have an insatiable curiosity, and they will turn away from the hearing of the truth, but will turn to myths. But you, be self-controlled in all things, bear hardship patiently, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Timothy 4:1-5). In order to run our race in full, reaching the finish line, we need to be ready at all times to run it (2 Timothy 4:6-8). When I ran way back when, I was NOT ready. I had done no training. I hadn’t even prepared by doing a few laps properly in gym class. Consequently, when I ran I did not do well. We are to have the love of Jesus in our minds all the time. We’re meant to shine it into the deepest parts of ourselves. We’re meant to have revelation of His love so that we can love Him back in those areas through our obedience from love and devotion to our bridegroom. We say we agree when the Word exhorts us to do that. We say we love Him. We MEAN to obey Him. But how do we have follow through? Ruach HaKodesh.

Ruach HaKodesh consistently speaks to us about righteousness. While it is true that He encourages us to follow righteousness and practise righteous behaviour (by learning the Word and feeding on it daily). He ALSO speaks to us about the righteousness we ARE: Jesus’ righteousness. Through the miracle of the Resurrection, we can come to Him and join Him in His resurrection to life. We can participate in it by being connected to Him through Him. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. And all these things are from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ, and who has given us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors on behalf of Christ, as if God were imploring you through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made the one who did not know sin to be sin on our behalf, in order that we could become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:17-21). We are more than we appear. We are more than our actions. We are more than our appearance. We are more than our personalities. In JESUS, we are the righteousness of God. Because of that, we can be more and do more than we could alone in ourselves. We are NEW. We aren’t sinners covered by Jesus in the sense of Him standing before us, blocking the Father’s view of us. We are sinners washed clean inside and out so that we stand before the Father and all He sees is the perfection we are in Jesus. We are NEW, but we forget that.

Ruach HaKodesh is our REMINDER. He is always pointing to us to show us that Jesus is there. Jesus is there and we are there and together we are ONE. Because we are one with Jesus, we are one with the Father who is one with Jesus (John 10:30). Through the cross and the resurrection to life we become part of that oneness. Perfected in our spirits (Ephesians 1:13), becoming ever more perfected in our soul (2 Corinthians 3:18), and soon to be perfected in the renewed flesh that awaits us when we see Jesus face to face and get this fallen meat sack off of us (1 Corinthians 15:52) – no matter where on the timeline that occurs. Spirit, soul, and body we are becoming evermore like Jesus. We can’t SEE what is happening in the spirit, but we CAN engage and access it. We CAN see what is happening with the flesh, but that needs NOT to be our focus. We need to focus on what is happening in the spirit (oneness with Adonai) and not our existence here on Earth (2 Corinthians 4:18). We don’t IGNORE life here, but we need to remember we are experiencing MORE THAN life here – because Jesus is MORE THAN ENOUGH and we are in Him.

I don’t know about you, but I suspect you are like me. This reality is NOT what I see in the mirror. Yet it is TRUE because the Word so clearly declares it. I am not an old sinner saved by Grace as a current present-tense identity. I WAS an old sinner. I WAS saved by Grace. And NOW I am MORE THAN in Jesus. This is why John is able to tell us a hard-to-grasp truth about ourselves: “Everyone who resides in him does not sin. Everyone who sins has neither seen him nor known him” (1 John 3:6) and “We know that everyone who is fathered by God does not sin, but the one fathered by God, he protects him, and the evil one does not touch him” (1 John 5:18). When we love Jesus as He loved us and when we abide in that love, we seek to please Him from love and so we do not choose to disobey Him and sin. This is TRUTH. The struggle then is to pull down the strongholds in our minds and hearts that are PREVENTING us from fully loving Jesus (2 Corinthians 10:4). Our fight is not with the world, but with the broken thinking that we learned at the devil’s knee. Ruach HaKodesh is our REMINDER that in Jesus we have follow through. In JESUS we are empowered to prosper spiritually and in every other way (3 John 2). In JESUS, as we seek Adonai first and foremost, we can process Jesus’ character and start leaning into Him so that His character becomes our character and thereby we change our behaviour (Romans 12:2). We NEED the reminder so that we keep our eyes on Him who is our prize! When we keep our eyes on Jesus and our intent to emulate Him as it is written we should, we get coached, led, corrected, and guided along the Way. We get the conditioning we need to run our race and finish where Jesus is: HIS strength (Nehemiah 8:10). Amen.

Daily Affirmation of the Goodness of Elohim: 1 Peter 2:21-25

“For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his footsteps, who did not commit sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth, who when he was reviled, did not revile in return; when suffering, he did not threaten, but entrusted himself to the one who judges justly, who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we may die to sins and live to righteousness, by whose wounds you were healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but you have turned back now to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” We often complain to Adonai about how life is going. This struggle and that struggle. How we are attacked on the left and the right. It is proper for us to converse with Adonai and let Him know what’s on our hearts and minds. We should WHINE, but we should tell Him. Once we’ve told Him, we need to LISTEN to Him. Because Jesus went through it to (Hebrews 4:15). In fact, we should have a little moment of rejoicing when persecution comes our way simply because Jesus said that it would when we are emulating Him. So it doesn’t feel good to have persecution, but we have it because we’re doing some things right. Better than that, we can take heart and joy because Ruach HaKodesh is right there with us. Jesus is right there with us AND Jesus went through the same kind of things. Jesus can guide us through it. He KNOWS the answer. He made it available to you BEFORE you were in the situation. Before there was an issue. And we can walk in His solution because Ruach HaKodesh will reveal it to us. We are not alone! We are not unequipped! We are READY, ABLE, and in JESUS overcomers! What a GOOD God!

Your Daily Confession of Elohim’s Goodness:

I taste and see that Yahweh is good; I am blessed because I take refuge in Him.

Psalm 34:8