Fear No Fear

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

Your faith and love have arisen from the hope laid up for you in heaven, which you have heard about in the message of truth, the gospel
Colossians 1:5 (emphasis added)

Salvation is an incredible transforming gift that Adonai Elohim has provided for us. It is literally the gift that keeps giving. It happens at a set point in time, but it continues to transform us, inform our thinking and behaviour, and stir up our eager expectation for those things Adonai has set aside to be physically delivered to us — first here on Earth and later in Heaven. This eager expectation should help us because it is not a hope in vain or a hope that maybe, just maybe, we’ll actually get something. This is a strong expectation based on a real (if unseen) substance: the promises of Elohim. It takes root in our spirit (Colossians 1:6) which is sealed by Ruach HaKodesh (Ephesians 1:13), enabling it to grow and strengthen and deepen without any risk of damage to those roots. Salvation grows everything and because we know the experiential truth of salvation, we know the truth of our expectation. What brings our expectation from our spirit into our lives, is our trust in those secured promises.

Jesus lived by trust. He had to. He couldn’t see the things of the Father any more than we can. They were as unseen to Him as they are to us. Jesus learned the Word (the Old Covenant) and used the Word as the basis of His trust. How frequently He quoted from the scriptures. How often they were the basis of His opinions, stories, and actions. Without that foundation, Jesus would not have done even half of what has been recorded. The big difference between us and Jesus is that Jesus did not have a broken, dead spirit. He was not selfish in and of Himself. He was not inclined to rebel. But like us He had temptations coming from outside Himself. He had to learn HOW to obey the Father. He had to get the Word into His heart. He had to trust the promises of the Old Covenant — especially those relating to the mission of Messiah — in spite of having no evidence they were true. Until Ruach HaKodesh came upon Him at His baptism, Jesus had to operate just like we do. He did things the same way we have to. Then He got indwelt by Ruach HaKodesh and had a relationship to draw on to confirm all that He had learned and trusted in. It was trust fertiliser that helped him to strengthen those roots, keep the Word foremost in His mind, and do ONLY what the Father showed Him to do and spoke to Him to speak. We too have been given Ruach HaKodesh, so we too can operate the same way. If we want to do this, we need to heal our image of who we are.

We are not sick trying to get well. We are not broken looking to get fixed. We are not depressed or anxious seeking peace. We are not weak, desiring to be strong. We are not powerless, desperate to be empowered. We are not vulnerable. We are not poor sinners. We do not have to experience lack. These are all human ideas. These are all human perspectives. These are all ways that we have decided things are. We chose to believe in human thinking. We chose to look only at one layer of evidence — which is really poor scientific methodology. In this world we have contracts. We have vows. We have promises. And we hold each other to them. We’re really put out if someone breaks them. Or delays in fulfilling them. Without any evidence that someone is capable of doing what they say, we believe they can do what they’ve promised to do simply because they’ve promised to do it. Why do we throw all that out as soon as Adonai comes on the stage? Why do we change our thinking just because we’re looking at the Word? Isn’t His promise — at the bare minimum — just as good as ours? Isn’t His written Word — at the bare minimum — just as good as our written contracts and agreements? Think of the security you have when you have something on paper. When you can see it physically in black and white? Why the double standard? What holds us back? Lack of knowledge.

“For this reason we also, from the day we heard about you, have not ceased praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may live worthily of the Lord and please him in all respects — bearing fruit in every good deed, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for the display of all patience and steadfastness, joyfully giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light” (Colossians 1:9–12). We need knowledge of who we are based on who HE says we are. We see all the human parts, but Adonai sees a tag that is attached to our spirit. A tag that says we are bought and paid for. A tag that says we are sons and daughters of Adonai Elohim Most High. A tag that says we have a share in the inheritance of holiness and virtue because we are in Jesus. A tag that says we have been welcomed into the Covenant Jesus made with the Father. When we have that knowledge of what He says, thinks, and holds in His mind about us, then our perspective changes. We have abundance. We are healthy. We are whole. We are fully functioning. We have no desire to sin. We have a love of the Word. We enjoy fellowship with Elohim in all three persons. We have His peace. We have His strength. We have His fruitful character. We are humble. We are secure, safe, and protected. We are free. These things are what makes up who we are. When we have knowledge of this, we are able to walk in this. If you go to a store you will often see doors marked ‘employees only.’ Sometimes with a lock. But if you work there you have the key/code to unlock the door. You have permission to walk through it. You have access. Adonai’s door — marked ‘My Children Only’ — is available to us. It has been unlocked by Jesus’ blood. We have been adopted. We are both ALLOWED and ENCOURAGED to walk through. To be strengthened with HIS power in HIS might so that we can live just as Jesus did. This is the victory that overcomes the darkness around us: Jesus blood poured out through sacrifice. If that blood got that victory, how is it we have decided we only have a PART of it? The part we have accepted is what makes the echo, the ripples in the pond of our life, so that again and again and again we are being touched by more and more and more and more. It is all from HIM dropped into the epicentre of our life.

Jesus is the SEEN. We know He lived and died and rose again. Take Alexander the Great. We know a LOT about him. We don’t doubt the information. We consider it accurate and authoritative and teach it in our schools. We do not doubt it. The accounts of his life, that we trust so hard, were written three centuries after he died. Three hundred years. When the New Covenant was being written it was only a few decades after Jesus walked AND many of the witnesses were alive when it was being written and shared (1 Corinthians 15:6). You could go ask them if it was accurate. With documents written down and shared throughout the early church, unrefuted by anyone who were witnesses of the events, written so close to when the events took place, how can ANYONE choose to doubt when they have no problem with calling narratives written long after everyone involved was dead historical fact? Jesus as a man is not just a documented historical fact, but Jesus performing miracles and living after death is documented historical fact. He is unique in the history of this planet. He can be encountered today. He is the member of the godhead we can TOUCH. Knowledge of Him through our experience with Him is a truth as solid as the Word (because He IS the Word — John 1:14). Knowledge of His reality leads to knowledge of His love which leads to us loving Him back which leads to obedience in following His path. It is connected and combined like a vine in the ground producing more runners and new fruit and spreading to encompass everything around itself. THIS is the freedom we’re invited into.

Who are you? You are a clone of Jesus. You are a mirror image. At first the mirror is dirty, but the Father wipes it clean. Stroke by stroke, piece by piece, we are getting an ever-clearer picture of who we are inside. That knowledge informs what we do, how we act, what we claim, and even how we think. If it doesn’t, we don’t understand the knowledge we have access to. Elohim didn’t want slaves. Elohim won’t put up with prisoners. Elohim wants things to work how He designed them to work. Period. That was the whole point of Jesus coming to be a sacrifice. And in Jesus, we have access to all the things of the Kingdom. “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross — through him, whether things on earth or things in heaven” (Colossians 1:19–20). We are reconciled to Adonai Elohim in Jesus. Anything that isn’t in harmony with Him isn’t something we have a part of. Sickness is not in harmony with Him. Depression is not in harmony with Him. Anxiety is not in harmony with Him. Fear is not in harmony with Him. Lack is not in harmony with Him. Selfishness is not in harmony with Him. Meanness is not in harmony with Him. Bullying is not in harmony with Him. Stealing is not in harmony with Him. Drugs and intoxicants are not in harmony with Him (no matter what your personal feelings are regarding stimulants or moderation). These things are not part of His nature. In Jesus, they don’t have to be part of our nature either because we have been freed to be more than we are. We have been freed to be everything He is. First here and fully fulfilled in Heaven. This is what being ‘new’ is (2 Corinthians 5:17).

We are washed clean of all guilt, sin, and accusation. We are holy and pure in Jesus. We are not enemies of Elohim, but obedient and treasured children. The realm of the Spirit and the natural realm are met inside of us where Ruach HaKodesh dwells (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). This is the reality of who we are — we just don’t always see it. We get so focused on the dirt in the mirror, we won’t look at the reflection. Every day we’ve taken another step in Jesus. Every day we’ve gained a new insight into the Father’s love. Every day we’ve been reminded of how we could trust Jesus in a given situation. Every day we walk forward. Every day we are further and further from the past and the sin that Adonai took into the farthest beyond and pushed off a mountain into utter and absolute forgetfulness. If this isn’t the case, then the Word is the answer. The Word is how we get knowledge into our minds and hearts through His revelation (Romans 12:2). When we read and study it with intent, praying for revelation and listening to what He says, and then submitting to what we find, it transforms us (John 17:17). This is how we live a life consistent with who Jesus was here on Earth. This is how we live a life where we are moving every day from who He was to who He IS. This is the abundant life of the Kingdom. The eternal life of an ever-deepening relationship with Adonai Elohim. The life that is marked by an ever-greater removal of all that is out of harmony with the path where He sets our feet. More of His way of thinking, less of our old ways of thinking. This is the freedom contained in the promises that He keeps safe for us to walk in. This is the DELIVERED life we are all heir to. We only need to put our feet where Jesus put His. One piece of the Word after another.

Daily Affirmation Jesus IS Messiah: Hosea 3:5

“Afterward, the Israelites will turn and seek the Lord their God and their Davidic king. Then they will submit to the Lord in fear and receive his blessings in future days.” Messiah would restore Israel. From all the corners of the globe where the Jewish people were flung, Messiah would enable the people to come together again in the land promised by Yahweh and once again be the nation Israel. Spiritually AND physically. “Then Pilate said, “So you are a king!” Jesus replied, “You say that I am a king. For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world — to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”” (John 18:37). “For I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: A partial hardening has happened to Israel until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion; he will remove ungodliness from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.”” (Romans 11:25–27). Spiritually, Jesus made the way for the Jewish people to be placed back in right standing with Yahweh (Romans 3:22). Naturally, we have seen a partial fulfilment of this as Israel became a nation again in 1948. Since 1950, the Law of Return has granted any Jew the right to become a citizen of Israel. The return of the Jewish people to Israel is on the rise. The Times of Israel noted in December 22, 2021, that in that year 4,000 US immigrants moved to Israel, which is the highest annual figure since 1973. It is continuing today. There are a reported (those who admit it publicly, not all who believe) 20,000 Jews who believe Jesus was the Messiah — and the number is growing. We are seeing the fulfilment of the work Jesus made possible. 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