Fear No Fear

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

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your worries on him, because he cares for you.
1 Peter 5:6-7 (emphasis added)

What is repentance if not the renewal and supreme redemption of humanity? Is this not to be our goal? We cannot achieve it alone. It MUST be achieved within the framework of the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. The death to pay the cost and the resurrection to open the door. We must be truly humble and repentant in order to go through that open door and receive restoration. We can do this because God loves us enough to have made a solution for the problem we caused (Genesis 3:15, John 3:16-18). We do this because THIS is seeking the Lord and seeking the Lord is a commandment. You cannot seek Him if you’re not humble (Proverbs 3:34).

It is a hard thing to say that you cannot do something. We see it in ourselves (if our memory goes back that far) or in our kids when they are little. That child who is struggling to get on their clothes. Desperate for independence. In fact, they are often willing to wear clothes that don’t fit, clothes that are on backwards, clothes that are inside out, and sometimes not all the clothes that are needed JUST to do it themselves. To be INDEPENDENT. And they’ll throw the fit of fits when you try to step in and help them. Because they can DO IT even when they can’t. We all have it. It has gone nowhere. We STILL want to do it. People reject help all the time. Big things. Small things. Emotional things. Mechanical things. It doesn’t seem to matter. We have to train and educate and work at learning to be a team. There are people who specialise in helping us learn how to work together. That is how independent we like to be.

Right from the beginning, God had a different opinion. “Yahweh God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him”” (Genesis 2:18). God wired us to be with each other. For our strengths to balance and our skills to mesh. He meant it to be between those in a relationship together as well as within the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-13). He meant it for His Chosen People, the Jewish nation too. “Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens his friend’s countenance” (Proverbs 27:17). “See how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live together in unity!” (Psalm 133:1). They were to live together, worship together, and spread responsibility around as well (Exodus 18:17-21). We’re always meant to keep us together. Encouraging each other and building each other up. “Let’s consider how to provoke one another to love and good works, not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24-25).

We can help each other stay humble in positive and godly ways. “Put on therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and perseverance; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, if any man has a complaint against any; even as Christ forgave you, so you also do. Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord” (Colossians 3:12-16). We’re to walk together in love (Ephesians 5:1-2). Each of us humble before the Lord and servants of love one to another. Everyone willing to accept help.

The Holy Spirit is THE helper. He points to Jesus. He helps us see Jesus in every circumstance. He helps us identify the behaviours, attitudes, thoughts, and words that keep us walking out of step with the Lord. He corrects us and works with us to get us into the place we are called to be: humble and broken before Christ Jesus. He helps us to know what our identity is in Jesus. Without that, we don’t know who we are and what we are capable of in Jesus. We don’t even know what we can walk in without the Spirit. This is important because the Lord God Almighty is all about the Kingdom of God. He wants us to walk in it. He wants it to renew our minds to it. He wants us to receive it. When Jesus was here, the Holy Spirit descended on Him in fullness (Luke 4:1). During all His ministry, He walked in that fullness and there was nothing that was denied Him. Jesus’ focus was on prayer, fasting, and seeking the face of His Father on a daily, constant basis. Because Jesus sought His Father and valued His Father before all things, Jesus never had to walk in failure. Because Jesus did it, we are called to do it (1 John 2:6).

‘When God bestows wealth, prosperity, influence, and honor, the recipient must know how to employ them; how to turn these precious gifts into fruitful, creative powers, how to include others in his happiness and greatness, and how to tender loving-kindness with the divine kindnesses that emanate and issue forth to him from a never-ending font. If an abundance of good does not bring a man or woman to absolute subordination to the Holy One…’ (from Kol Dodi Dofek, The Righteous Suffer, David Z. Gordon, 2006). You can see where that man or woman is stepping wrong, can’t you? Isn’t this why John prayed “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be healthy, even as your soul prospers” (3 John 1:2)? Isn’t this what James exhorted us to remember every time we prayed? “You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”?” (James 4:3-5). Prosperity isn’t a bad word. It isn’t a teaching about getting what you want. It is a teaching about submitting to the Lord and receiving what He has ready to bless you with. It is a teaching of humble, broken, obedience to the Lord God Almighty before all things. It is a teaching of blessing everyone around you because you are blessed. It is a teaching of walking like Jesus did. Total reliance on the Lord for everything you need, then enjoying everything good because you rely on the Lord. Read through the gospels and you see it again and again in Jesus’ life. Jesus cast ALL on the Lord and relied on the Lord for ALL.

The Greek word for ‘all’ in today’s verse means all and every. The whole. Every kind of. It means all in the sense of each and every part that applies. The emphasis is on the total picture first, and then one piece at a time, focusing on then making up the whole again — viewing the whole in terms of the individual parts. It is an intense looking, which includes both straightforward looking AND extensive examination. I know that sounds very wordy, but if you re-read it again slowly you’ll see that it just means a completeness to the ALL that leaves nothing un-looked at, nothing unexamined, and nothing ignored. It is an ALL that means ALL. This is a completeness of motivation that everyone should look to. It is the principle that gave birth to Romans 14:23 – whatever is not of faith is sin. Faith needs to be part of EVERYTHING we do! We cannot escape it, nor should we be trying to. “If you love me, keep my commandments. I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, that he may be with you forever: the Spirit of truth, whom the world can’t receive, for it doesn’t see him and doesn’t know him. You know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more; but you will see me. Because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. One who has my commandments and keeps them, that person is one who loves me. One who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will reveal myself to him” (John 14:15-21).

We need to submit to the Holy Spirit. Keeping ourselves humble so that we’re not seeking to put ourselves first. Keeping humble so that the end result of what the Lord wants is more important that whatever feeling is being kicked up in us. So that we will not only listen to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but that we will search for it. We will seek it out in every thing. Asking whether this is the right spices for our food, the right clothes to buy, the right decisions for when to walk the dog and where to go. This is NOT being hung up or in bondage so that we cannot function without hearing from the Lord. This is being so closely in tune with the Lord that we hear what He says about everything. That still small voice that speaks to us about everything we think, everything we say, and everything we do. When we do that and pay attention to the Lord, we never get steered wrong (Genesis 50:20). When we do that, we won’t wander to the left or to the right (Proverbs 4:27).

The mighty hand of God shelters us (Job 12:10). His hand delivers us (Psalm 31:15). His hand satisfies us with good things (Psalm 145:16, 104:28). His hand is full of His power (Habakkuk 3:4). His hand does valiantly and is exalted (Psalm 118:15-16). His hand is full of justice (Deuteronomy 32:41). When we look to all of creation, all the works of humanity within it, and all that we see and do and hear, we are looking at the Lord God’s work. “For my hand has made all these things, and so all these things came to be,” says Yahweh: “but I will look to this man, even to he who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my word”” (Isaiah 66:2). It is under THIS HAND that we bow our knees and worship. It is under THIS HAND that we bow our knee and admit that WE cannot do it. That we NEED Jesus. That HE is the ONLY one who can take all our cares, all our worries, all that is based in fear and turn it into an opportunity for faith. When we are faithful in the throwing of our cares, He is free to bless us because we are relying on Him. Because with our cares gone, our desires remain on Him.

When HE is our desire, there is nothing to keep us from following it all the way to the Throne. Humble, committed, and resting in Him. Waiting on the Lord for whatever the Lord wants, whenever He wants it. Checking in with Him for everything, every time. THIS is true freedom: being guided into good things in Jesus’ victory by Jesus’ Spirit.

Daily Affirmation of God’s Love: James 4:10

Being humble is an act of worship. It is removing all of the crowns, honour, glory, accomplishment, and everything else that we have and laying them at the foot of our Saviour. Not because we are being forced to. Not because we HAVE to. Because we want to. Because it is the right thing. Because Jesus is WORTHY. He is the All in All of ALL THINGS because the Father put Him in that place. The Lamb of God. The Lamb sacrificed for our sins. His blood spilt on the Mercy Seat enabling His mercy to have a place in our lives. Every time we pat each other on the back, we are doing the opposite of humbling ourselves. But what if we actually accomplish something? Ask yourself how hard it is to say ‘I thank the Lord for enabling me to do this’. To give Him honour. Not to say that it wasn’t an accomplishment. Not to say that we didn’t do a good thing. But to ALWAYS say that it is the Lord who made it possible. That it was the Lord who guided you. To give opportunity to give thanks to the Lord – and not forget to give it. Our humbleness is worshipping the Lord as we admit that we need Him. For in HIM we have life. In HIM we have freedom. In HIM we have accomplishment. We have His Spirit within us. Do what the Holy Spirit does in EVERY circumstance: point toward Jesus. Humble yourself and lay your crown down at His feet. Worship Him and point to Jesus as the source of ALL your victory, ALL your accomplishments, ALL your ability, and ALL your EVERYTHING.

Your Daily Confession of God’s love to YOU:

Today God loves that I _______.