Fear No Fear

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

So then, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all sinned—for before the law was given, sin was in the world, but there is no accounting for sin when there is no law.
Romans 5:12-23 (emphasis added)

Have you heard this: God is so cruel. No God who ‘loves’ would let all those hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people who were on the planet before Jesus came go to hell just because they didn’t know about Him! Sounds bad for Elohim, doesn’t it? Thousands of years of recorded history and none of those people knew Jesus, right? Well, The Father IS love. He is NOT unfair. He is JUST and RIGHTEOUS and LOVING. What about those people? He wasn’t holding their sin against them. They were committing it, but He wasn’t holding it against them. Why? Because they didn’t KNOW any better, that’s why. Will He do that for everyone? Anyone who hasn’t heard. But the message has been going out since the days of Moses (around 1446-1406 BC). With the advances in technology, especially in communication, it has been going out more and more and more. You reading this on a device accessing a global information net is proof of that. There are people who haven’t heard the message, but that number is shrinking RAPIDLY. Fewer and fewer people have the valid excuse of not hearing the Gospel message of reconciliation with Adonai Elohim.

There is a mercy and long-suffering-ness to Adonai that we really can’t comprehend. We look at things like Sodom and Gomorrah, the Flood, and the slaughter of the Amorites as bloodthirsty judgements by a Wrathful God. But Adonai’s heart HURT for it. He wasn’t wrathful. He was saving the rest of us. A cancer called sin had gotten into the marrow of those who were judged. They were cut out like an amputation to save the patient. They underwent divine chemotherapy to kill the cells that would spread and kill the ‘host’ (the people of the Earth). Adonai is always and consistently patient and loving with us. He doesn’t call sin’s price due – which He would be Just to do. But that isn’t what He does. He lets things go just as far and as long as they can, delaying judgment as much as He can. Out of love. Out of patience. Out of mercy. Showing us GRACE.

Why do we fight it? Why do we insist on looking at things from OUR point of view? Why do we fight to NOT see things from His point of view? The Word is FULL of His point of view. The Word IS His point of view. But we like to hang onto our dirt, don’t we? The Father is seeking to flood us with LIGHT. His light. That light is full of His Love, full of Jesus’ Blood, and full of His Life – His Fire, and Blood, and Water. The more we let in, the better off we will be. We won’t necessarily ENJOY the process, but it will be the best possible thing for us. He IS the Refiner and we WILL be put into fire for the process to work (Zechariah 13:9; Malachi 3:2). That isn’t pleasant. But He isn’t doing it out of anger. He isn’t the one sending us unpleasant circumstances. He isn’t sending us sickness – not of mind, body, or spirit. He isn’t about to smite the nations because they haven’t repented. He LOVES us. Why can’t we see it? Why can’t we embrace it? Why can’t we give up on how we see things and look at them from HIS point of view?

Adonai’s plan of salvation began BEFORE creation (Revelation 13:8). It was written into the Word RIGHT from the beginning (Genesis 1:1). The Hebrew letters that make up Bereshit [בְּרֵאשִׁית‎] tell the story of: The Son of God with thorns on His head hangs on a tree as a gift to give covenant. It runs throughout the Word and culminates with Jesus coming NOT in wrath and judgment, but in Mercy and Grace. “For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God” (John 3:16-18). It CONTINUES when this salvation was opened up to the Gentiles. The whole WORLD and EVERYONE in it can operate with this message. No matter the creed, colour, nationality, political viewpoint, job, financial worth, or location. It doesn’t matter if you are a male or a female. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been keeping the Ten Commandments or not. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been saying your prayers or not. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been reading the Word or not. Jesus chose to come and die for you and me before anything existed, so our PERFORMANCE has nothing to do with it. “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, since we have been reconciled, will we be saved by his life? Not only this, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation” (Romans 5:10-11).

We have TWO choices. We can believe or we can not believe. It isn’t magicked up. It isn’t forced on us. It just IS. It is a CHOICE. It is UP TO US. It is like choosing to vote or not. Or who to vote FOR or not. We CHOOSE. He loves us BEFORE we choose, WHILE we choose, AFTER we choose, and if we REFUSE. That’s right. Jesus loved Hitler as much as your grandmother who gave cookies to anyone who came to her house and never forgot to support the homeless. But if Hitler didn’t repent from an honest desire to get right with Adonai, He’s going to be judged for not believing in Jesus. So is your grandmother. It is NOT our personal sins – no matter how heinous – that put us in Hell. It is our CHOICE to reject Jesus as Saviour and Lord. That’s not just being saved, but submitting in humble obedience to Him after we are saved. Everything else is handled by the Blood of Jesus. Our sins are forgiven and forgotten because of our desire to repent and get right. It means shifting thinking, saying sorry, and turning around to do it Adonai’s way – including dealing with any human fallout or consequences of our sin as He guides us through it all. This is EXACTLY how we deal with our own children. We forgive them, hug them, kiss their boo-boos. And then we teach them or re-teach them what should be done. Acceptable behaviour. And we help them learn it, walk it, and make them positive habits. We mentor them. We lift them. We do it all. And we DON’T do it because we hate them, but because we want them to be the best THEMS that they can be. Our Father in Heaven is the same way (Matthew 7:9-11; Luke 11:11-13).

Our Father wants HIS best for us. Not the best of this world. Not the best WE can do. Not the best our country can do. Not the best our relatives can do. The best that HE can do. That means NO bad things. We will need to be with Him in heaven to walk in the fullness of that. But we can experience a whole BUNCH of it here on Earth. That is what SALVATION means. Saved from sickness. Saved from mental conditions. Saved from our past. Saved from shame. Saved from disability. Saved from deterioration. Saved from toil (not work). Saved from misery. Saved from depression. Saved from PTSD. Saved from Alzheimer’s. Saved from Down Syndrome. Saved from Cancer – any stage. Saved from skin conditions. Saved from broken, missing, or misbehaving limbs. Saved from bad eyesight. Saved from EVERYTHING BAD. If it isn’t perfect human health – body, soul, or spirit – then we have been saved from it. We can retrain our minds to think about it the way our Father thinks about it, the way our Saviour thinks about it, and the way our Comforter/Instructor/Supporter thinks about it. The Father sees us with no sin. No sickness. No effects of it. The Father sees us the way we CAN BE. Now. In this life. On this Earth. You know what that is? It isn’t the fullness of what we will have in heaven. It is the BARE MINIMUM of the PROMISE.

We are NEW and we should start thinking of ourselves as NEW. We can ONLY do that if we start looking at things from HIS point of view. We need to shift our perspective from Earth to Heaven. From seen to going to see any day now. From failure to success. From not going to get it to it will physically arrive ANY moment now. From the effects of the curse to the benefits of His BLESSING! It is OURS if we can learn to see it. NOT from positive thinking. NOT from something the universe has been showing us. NOT from something we worked for. NOT from something we have to work for. It is ours ONLY because the Father PROMISED us. Check out the Word. See for yourself. We talk about it again and again, and we are going to keep going. But YOU seeing it will be more effective than me telling you. The Father does NOT lie. He wants to BLESS you because He LOVES you. Always. Forever. No matter what. He has made a Way, through Jesus, for EVERYTHING to be handled. Start cooperating with Him. Let His light in. Shift your perspective to gain His perspective. It is WORTH seeing.

Daily Affirmation Jesus IS Messiah: Daniel 9:24

“Seventy weeks have been determined concerning your people and your holy city to put an end to rebellion, to bring sin to completion, to atone for iniquity, to bring in perpetual righteousness, to seal up the prophetic vision, and to anoint a Most Holy Place.” Messiah would holy. Holiness is part and parcel of who Elohim IS. The Anointed One would also be holy as Elohim is holy. “The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). ““Leave us alone, Jesus the Nazarene! Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”” (Mark 1:24). “For indeed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, assembled together in this city against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do as much as your power and your plan had decided beforehand would happen” (Acts 4:27-28). Angels, evil spirits, and human beings all saw Jesus and recognised who He was and WHAT He was. Jesus was holy. Jesus IS the Messiah!

Your Daily Confession of Jesus/Yeshua’s Identity:

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

Matthew 16:16b