Fear No Fear

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

“remembering the sincere faith in you, which lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am convinced that is in you also,“

2 Timothy 1:5

Jesus tells us He is the Great I Am; the Bread of Life; the Light of the World; the Light of Life; the Son of Man; the door of the sheep; the Door; the Good Shepherd; the resurrection and the life; the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the true vine; the Alpha-Omega; the First and the Last; and the truth teller. He is a human being and also the heavenly exalted one. That is a LOT to take in. Once we do take it in, at least in some way, what do we do next? What’s the next step? To not forget it. Which seems ridiculous, considering the gravity, enormity, and sheer majesty of who He is. Yet, that is the human condition. We choose to keep from keeping Adonai front and centre, so now we struggle to keep our mind front and centre. It is a result of the Fall, evidence of our brokenness, and one of the main ministries Ruach HaKodesh has with us.

Life is full of experiences. Twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days of the year, we are doing things. Even in sleep our brains are doing things. We have hundreds to thousands of unique experiences in a day. Our brains -as they exist now – cannot possibly remember all of them. What we do is form memories over what we decide are the most important things. And our subconscious does that basically the same way a search engine algorithm does. Whatever we spend our time on the most, that’s what the memory is. It might not be a SPECIFIC memory, but it will be there. Perhaps an amalgamation of the many, many times we’ve done it. Picture starting your vehicle or combing your hair. What comes to mind might not be how you did it today, but you have a clear memory of doing the activity. Unless we are attaching importance to the task (even a repetitive one), it will be lost in the morass of our experiences.

We need to place importance on our relationship with Adonai. It needs to be the MOST important relationship we have. If we don’t have that relationship, we’ll have a very hard time in obeying Him because there won’t be any trust built between us. Trust is essential in order to obey Adonai because Adonai can ask for things beyond our understanding. And He doesn’t owe us an explanation. If Adonai IS God, then by His very nature He deserves obedience. But if we don’t trust Him, we’ll either hesitate or we’ll say no. He deserves more than that. In order to give Him the more that He deserves, we need a relationship with Him. A good one. One that proves to OURSELVES that we value Him – we need prove NOTHING to Adonai. He doesn’t ask that. But He DOES give us the opportunity to prove to OURSELVES that we can do what He says, rise to where He lifts us, and walk where He has laid the path for us to walk. It’s all about Him first, and trusting Him enough to both put Him there and keep Him there (Matthew 10:37-39).

We must REMEMBER our trust. We must STIR it up. We must NOT FORGET who Jesus IS and WHY we know it to be TRUTH. This is an active responsibility, a passive one. This is not coming across something and remembering that we like it. This is not coming across Jesus and thinking oh, there you are. This is not getting in trouble and THEN remembering to ‘give Him a call’. This is PROACTIVE preparation. No preparation time is wasted time. You can’t hold off a flood by starting to build the dam the day after it begins to rain. If we begin our relationship BEFORE we need Him (as in, before a crisis hits), then WHEN a crisis hits it doesn’t really feel like a crisis. But if we’re looking for the wrong thing, then when a crisis hits it feels like the end of the world. The disciples were warned by Jesus again and again what was going to happen to Him, but they were looking for the conquering king. They were looking in the wrong place. Consequently, when the crisis hit they were unprepared to keep themselves from anxiety and to keep themselves from panic and fear. They lost the fight. Peter even fell so far as to deny Jesus. If they had HEARD instead of listening, they could have prepared. They could have held onto what Jesus told them instead of remembering it after the fact. They could have been in the upper room praising Adonai and having a great time instead of cowering in fear and worrying they were next.

From the beginning, Adonai instructed that we remember Him. That we put His Word ahead of our eyes, in our ears, that we talk about it, and that we basically never stop viewing every aspect of our lives through the lens of His point of view. It is how the Israelites were to both take the land and hold onto the land. It is how the church is to preach, teach, and spread the gospel message. It’s how we endure persecution when we stand up for Jesus. It’s how we embody His character. It’s how we live the life of a disciple of Jesus. Jesus, our example. Jesus, Him first. Simple to type. Simple to read. Hard to do. Not because it is hard in and of itself. Because it is hard to keep ourselves focused. According to some survey data, throughout our lifetime we will spend a total of just over ten years working for a living (that’s a ten year non-stop around the clock block of time). That’s about eighty-eight thousand hours. I can believe it. You know what was hard to believe? We’ll spend about eighty-thousand hours watching television (or a comparable entertainment). You can see how ‘focus’ becomes a big thing. Think of the level of programming that is available to the makers of entertainment when that amount of it is entering our minds through our eyes and ears. Adonai was clear. We need to keep our focus on HIM instead of choosing to be distracted by every flickering LED light that comes our way.

We can and should study the Word. We need to see who Jesus IS. We need to learn what He teaches. But after all of that? We need to remember it. We need to make it a present-reality of daily remembrance instead of a past-tense what did I learn in high school remembering. This needs to be part of who we are. We know who we are in Jesus because we remember who Jesus is and how He has brought us into Himself. He is our REST. He is the cease of our efforts and the engagement of HIS. He is the BEST THING that could ever have happened to us and He FREELY makes Himself available to us. Since we’ve accepted Him, His Lordship, and been transported into the Kingdom by Him, we should really remember and keep foremost in our minds what He did and who He is. It makes it so much easier to start learning about His love and compassion. And knowing more about His love for us is the ‘secret’ to unlocking more of the Kingdom operating in our lives (Ephesians 3). We learn who Jesus IS and then we remember every day what we learned so that we can engage with who He IS every day.

Daily Affirmation of the Goodness of Elohim: 1 Chronicles 16:11

“Seek Yahweh and his strength; seek his face continually!” Adonai doesn’t want us going it alone. In fact, He thinks that’s about the worst idea ever. It’s like getting on a ship and heading out into deep waters with no navigational equipment. Chances are that no one is ever going to see you again. If we go through life without our navigation firmly on Him, we are going to be LOST. That’s why Adonai had Ruach HaKodesh write the Word down. That’s why Jesus came to be the One we can see and touch. That’s why the Father called to us. That’s why we are given instructions again and again. That’s why the angels helped announce the Good News that there was no more war with Sin anymore. We are told to continually seek His strength and His face so that we continually HAVE His strength to lean and rely on. So that we have His face to guide us. His peace beside us. His Ruach upon us. So that we are NEVER alone and NEVER relying on ourselves. So that we have what we need to succeed on a DAILY minute to minute level: Him. 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