Fear No Fear

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

“‘You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them, that the land where I am bringing you to dwell may not vomit you out. You shall not walk in the customs of the nation which I am casting out before you; for they did all these things, and therefore I abhorred them. But I have said to you, “You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess it, a land flowing with milk and honey.” I am the LORD your God, who has separated you from the peoples.
Leviticus 20:22-24 (emphasis added)

Separated means to set or keep apart. To disconnect or sever. To make a distinction between. To disperse in space or time. To set aside for a special purpose. To block off. To isolate from a mixture. To sever an association. Do you see the running theme? God wanted His people separate from two things: the peoples that did not put God first and sin. God has a very simple idea for us to grasp: deal severely with sin that we might remain clean. Now Jesus paid the PRICE of sin, but what about the attitude? Our attitude toward sin? In the New Covenant we’re to deal with it as severely as we can. To not give it any place. Any hole to hide in. To sweep open the doors of our hearts and our minds until the Lord’s light is shining into every shadowy corner that exists within us. Until we are beacons of HIS light through and through.

You remain clean (in any arena) by not being polluted. If you stay out of the dirt, you don’t get dirty. When we follow what God says, we stay clean. When we start to compromise, when we mollify sin, when we ease off things and start saying it’s ‘just’ this or that, we give place to sin. All we can do is put sin down. When we do not, we give it a place. If we give it a place, it will rule over us. That is NOT the instruction we were given by the Lord God. “If you do well, won’t it be lifted up? If you don’t do well, sin crouches at the door. Its desire is for you, but you are to rule over it” (Genesis 4:7). “God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth”” (Genesis 1:28). We were told to rule over sin. We were told to subdue whatever we found on this earth. To subdue is to bring under control especially by an exertion of the will. They are in essence two sides of the same command.

If you deal severely with violating thoughts of temptation, there will be few thoughts with enough strength and stamina to get through. Why? Because the only way to deal with temptation is with the Word. It’s as simple as that. We are NOTHING on our own (John 15:4-5). When we abide in Jesus and get the Word in our minds and hearts, then we have what we need to defeat the devil, temptation, and anything unrighteous that comes across our path. It is that simple. James 4:7 says “Be subject therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” That’s it. That’s how it is done. We subject ourselves to God when we live governed by the Word. The Word should sustain or assume the form of our thoughts, of our consciousness. We should mould ourselves to be in the image of the Lord. We don’t try and make the Word fit our lives, we change our lives so that we fit with the Word. Our ego? Nothing. Our mind? His. Our knowledge? His. We act on the Lord’s Word. On and in His will. Not ours. His. The Lord before all. The Word before all. Our guide and counsellor. Our Lord and Sovereign.

“So Jesus said, “Do you also still not understand? Don’t you understand that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the belly and then out of the body? But the things which proceed out of the mouth come out of the heart, and they defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimony, and blasphemies. These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands doesn’t defile the man”” (Matthew 15:16-20). Out of whatever is in our heart we speak (Luke 6:45). Jesus said it in Matthew 12:34 too. Proverbs tells us to guard our heart with ALL VIGILANCE (Proverbs 4:23). Paul even warns against corrupting TALK (Ephesians 4:29). And we have all heard that life and death are in the power of our tongues (Proverbs 18:21). What is in our hearts is significant to our well-being, both physical and spiritual, and our heart is attached to our mouth. “For with the heart one believes resulting in righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made resulting in salvation” (Romans 10:10). If the heart-mouth connection is part of the mechanism of salvation itself, then don’t all those warnings take on more significance? What is in our hearts MATTERS.

In the Old Testament alone the heart is mentioned in connection with our thought life. How we think affects everything else in our lives. We are creatures of thought and those thoughts are to be expressed in and through our words. As we think, so we are (Proverbs 23:7). It comes back to one of the rules of our existence. We don’t think of those kinds of truths when we look at the bible, but that is because religion trains us to believe the bible is all symbolism and allegory. It helps keep our responsibility to conform to righteousness down. But the Word is FULL of truth and principles for living that the Lord MEANT for us to conform to (1 Peter 1:14). The Lord destroyed everything that lived on the face of the earth because it was all corrupt. Don’t believe EVERYTHING could be corrupt? Think of a virus. It doesn’t care if you’re male or female. It doesn’t care if you’re a baby or an older person. It doesn’t care if you’re fit or infirm. It doesn’t always care if you are human or animal. It will spread and spread until everything is infected and then it will run its course until everything is dead. THAT is what happened to the earth. The Lord destroyed it – all but what was on the ark. When they came out, the Lord renewed His covenant with humanity by stating (among other things) this principle of life: “While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease” (Genesis 8:22).
Seeds get planted. They germinate (to begin to grow and come into being). They get vegetative, growing leaves to feed more. They bud, preparing for flowers. They flower, to encourage pollination. Then they ripen into full maturity, that pollination helping them produce fruit. That’s a lot of stages. The plant can come to harm at any of those stages. It can cease to be a functional plant. It can be interrupted in its growth and end up stunted or not produce any fruit. It can also be fed, watched over, and produce good fruit after its own kind – continuing the species. This is the process of seed time and harvest. We seed, time passes, and we get a harvest. It is true in the wild. It is true in cultivated farming. It is true physically. It is true mentally. It is true spiritually. It is a Law of the Universe that nothing and no one can avoid.

What we put in front of our eyes and what we let get into our ears is the raw material that our brain has to chew on. That raw material is turned into seed when we speak words and think words. Every word – purposeful or idle – is a seed. Every thought – purposeful or not – is a seed. The words we speak we seed into the world. They affect other people and can bring into activation spiritual principles. They can attract things that are godly and they can attract things that are ungodly – this is NOT karma, this is beings who love God approaching words of God and beings who rebel against God approaching a fellow rebel. Like gravitates to like. They can also be general words which speak things that set up patterns which come to pass simply because that is the harvest of the words you seeded. They are not always a direct correlation, but they are always related. David was pursued by Saul, spared Saul’s life, and Saul parted with him in peace (1 Samuel 24). David stayed outside Saul’s view. He stayed hidden (1 Samuel 26:1). Saul, who had David outside his rule and not troubling him in ANY way, came after David again (1 Samuel 26:2-3). Why? David was constantly bemoaning that Saul was going to kill him. He was always negative about Saul and asking for deliverance. He was dwelling on Saul’s persecution. Now, Saul was going to not be happy with David and anyone can see that. But did all the pursuit over all the years all rest on Saul? Or was some of it an opportunity taken advantage of? Was some of it the harvest of the seed of fear?

The seed we sow with our thoughts (those we dwell on long after we have identified them) are the seed that we sow into our hearts. The enemy cannot see them. The world around us cannot hear them. They are silent seeds. They are also the most deadly. Because God can see into our hearts. HE is not fooled. You cannot hide bad from the Lord. Jesus explained it this way. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery;’ but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28). The mental thought – once identified – that is dwelt on produces sin in your heart – even without doing the deed. This is tremendous. Think of the seed we put in our hearts watching certain scenes of movies and television shows. The seed we put into our hearts listening to certain lyrics. Seeing the costumes and outfits that society, fashion, and the entertainment industry come up with. Seeing all the advertising. All the ‘catch your eye’ products that are produced. They plant something in you.

If you see an advertisement often enough, you want that thing. That is why in some regions of the world it was illegal to have a cartoon character on your breakfast cereal box for the longest time. It was deemed unfair targeting of a youthful audience. Look at the explosion of cartoon television shows in the 1980s. It was because regulations got relaxed and companies could produce shows that went along with their toys to increase sales. There are ‘cultural icons’ of entertainment that were merely twenty-five minute commercials. But look how bent out of shape people get when they get re-envisioned. It’s crazy. We see advertisements and programs and we start to want them. We might even think it’s stupid when it first comes out. But we see it and see it and sooner or later, we want one. We NEED one. And then… yup. We have one.

All thoughts. ALL THOUGHTS are that kind of seed. The kind that germinates, grows, buds, pollinates, fruits, and harvests. We must guard our hearts by guarding our thoughts. How do we guard our thoughts? Well, one way is to let the Word renew your mind to the things of God (Romans 12:2). The more purposeful time you spend in the Word, the more God thoughts you’ll find percolating down into your heart. Another way is to capture your thoughts. “For though we walk in the flesh, we don’t wage war according to the flesh; for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds, throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being in readiness to avenge all disobedience when your obedience is made full” (2 Corinthians 10:3-6). Every thought taken to Christ and evaluated in the Light of His Righteousness – we have the Holy Spirit to help us.

We fight in our minds first and foremost. Do we put the things of the world in front of us willy nilly? Do we follow their customs? Their social rules? Their feelings? Is that what we teach to our kids? Or do we take a stand in our minds and say no. Far enough. You may encroach no further. The Lord says… The Word says… Jesus said… The Holy Spirit just reminded me that… This is what we are to say and do. Use the sword of the Spirit along with all the armour of God (Ephesians 6:10-18) to strike down these thoughts. Drag them to the foot of the cross and leave them there. And declare them defeated. When they try to rise, take them there again. When they come at you, refer them to Jesus – that’s who has taken possession of those thoughts. Listen to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit DOES SPEAK. He speaks to us. God speaks to us. You will KNOW WHEN HE DOES (John 10:27-28). You will hear it ring true in your spirit when the Spirit speaks. You CAN be guided by that voice. It will NEVER go against the Word, so it will ALWAYS agree with the Word, so you can ALWAYS test it and prove it to be TRUTH (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

We are to be separate. We are NOT to do what everyone else does. We are to divide ourselves out and into the flock of the Lord Jesus our Good Shepherd (John 10:11-18). We shall NOT walk in their ways. We shall NOT be guided by fear. We WILL be guided by faith. We WILL be perfected in His love (1 John 4:17). By Jesus, through Jesus, in Jesus, and for Jesus we walk. When we walk in love, we know we are abiding in God because this world is not running on love (1 John 4:16). Live in Jesus. Walk in faith. Test every thought. Seed the Word and throw out the bad seed. Don’t trust your feelings, trust God. Feelings are temporal and shift faster than the wind. God is eternal, trustworthy, and stable (Hebrews 13:8, Psalm 111:7; 62:6-9). Love Him. Listen to Him. Be obedient to Him. Stand on the Word.

Daily Affirmation of God’s Love: 1 Timothy 1:15-16

When you are down in the dumps. When you feel that you have endured all you can. When you are feeling impatient and alone and abandoned. When you are asking when, Lord, when, when, WHEN. You might be an example to someone else. Paul wrote two thirds of the New Testament. Founded several churches. Ministered to many more. Made a HUGE accomplishment while on this earth and continues to make a difference with his writings that are so rich and full of lessons, analogies, expressions, and descriptions. He felt he had been one of the worst sinners to have walked the earth and that Jesus displayed ALL HIS PATIENCE in saving Paul. That’s a lot of patience. A LOT of patience. How much do you think you use up? Some? A lot? Or ALL? No matter OUR view of ourselves, Jesus ALWAYS has the patience to save us. To talk us through our folly. For God to give us faith and show us grace. God loves ALL of us. Always has. Always will. He came to get us out of all of this. He came to save us. To restore us. To give us all the best that He has to give (John 3:16-18). When you feel that things aren’t going your way. When you feel like you have waited long enough. Think of Paul. Think of the patience of Jesus. Think of yourself. And know beyond all doubt: however long, however hard, however testing it is… God is there with you. God won’t leave you. And God has more than enough patience to see it through with you. Trust Him. Obey Him. He’ll get you through to harvest time.

Your Daily Confession of God’s love to YOU:

Today God loves that I _______.