Fear No Fear

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

And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13 (emphasis added)

When we stretch beyond what we feel and think is possible, Adonai Elohim stretches beyond what is naturally possible and miracles physically arrive. We can’t stretch beyond what we are and what we see without love. Love is the force behind our trust and our trust ignites our hope. No love, no hope. No love, our trust has no power. We have been given the Grace to have love because Adonai is MERCIFUL. According to Vine’s Expository Dictionary, mercy assumes need on the part of the person who receives it and adequate resources to meet that need on the part of the person who shows it. The Law was instituted to showcase our need for a saviour and explain how we can get it filled. Jesus came to fulfil it if we trust and believe that He IS the resource that fills our need for salvation. On both sides of that mercy is love. Love is what enables the boat of mercy to float. Love cannot be hoarded. By definition, love is something to be given away. To be shared. It is because all definitions of love have their root in the SUBSTANCE of love: Yahweh.

Love is a decision because we have to CHOOSE to tap into Shaddai. He is the source of love. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). This is TRUTH. This verse verifies Romans 1:19, that every human being has within them the knowledge that Yahweh exists as a real being. We as humans avoid that, deny that, and cover it up with our knowledge and reason. But it is like hiding a fire by kicking dead leaves on it. It may smoulder. It may smoke. But it doesn’t go out. All humans love. We love our partners. We love our children. We love our parents. Sometimes, we even love our teachers and in-laws. We love. We choose it. We can ONLY do that by taking from Yahweh’s love. By partaking of His nature. This is something He encourages EVERYONE to do, because it affirms the knowledge He put inside all of us that He IS. Which means every time anyone turns to another living human being and says ‘I love you’ they are also saying ‘Elohim is real’. Love is a demonstration of the existence of a God who will NOT leave us be. One who is VERY connected to and invested in relationships with humanity. One who does NOT make us earn it. One who REFUSES to be apart from us. This is Love: it craves fulfilment.

For the believer, we get MUCH more than a simple acknowledgement of Adonai’s existence. “By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we reside in God and he in us: in that he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides in him and he in God. And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him. By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been perfected in love. We love because he loved us first. If anyone says “I love God” and yet hates his fellow Christian, he is a liar, because the one who does not love his fellow Christian whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And the commandment we have from him is this: that the one who loves God should love his fellow Christian too” (1 John 4:9-21). Yes, there is instruction and correction there. There are guidelines on how to act toward each other. But the reason for the guidelines, instruction, and correction is also there. We get something the unbeliever is without: Elohim resides inside us. That is HUGE. One reason why is Romans 8:11 “Moreover if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will also make your mortal bodies alive through his Spirit who lives in you.” The perfecting that Elohim does in us by residing in us includes the making our bodies alive by Ruach HaKodesh! Sickness is little death. Ruach HaKodesh drives it out. Depression is little death. Ruach HaKodesh drives it out. Mental disorders and conditions are little death. Ruach HaKodesh drives them out. The Word is TELLING us this. If you will believe it, put your trust in it, and eagerly expect the physical arrival of it through imagining it in your mind’s eye until it is more real than the reality around you. Seed it into our life through the mixing of your trust with the Word. That’s how we get Kingdom things in this world. Through Trust in what the Father said in His Word. Does that seem like a lot to get from the simple idea of love? That’s the Gospel. Simple and DEEP.

“God has revealed these to us by the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the things of a man except the man’s spirit within him? So too, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things that are freely given to us by God. And we speak about these things, not with words taught us by human wisdom, but with those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people. The unbeliever does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. And he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The one who is spiritual discerns all things, yet he himself is understood by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to advise him? But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:10-16). This is why we shine. This Gospel is so BRIGHT we can’t contain it. This is why love is so attacked by an enemy that tries to weaken its impact (I love those candies or I love that show). Love is one of the three things given into our spirit that help define how we operate and function on this Earth and in this life. “For God did not give us a Spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7). One aspect of the power is our ability to exercise free will. Our ability to CHOOSE. We can CHOOSE love, to love, to acknowledge love, and to let HIS love be OUR motivation for EVERYTHING we do, say, think on, and trust in. No one can say we can’t or we had no choice because we have SELF-CONTROL. We can ALWAYS make our thoughts comply. We can ALWAYS take the time to choose our words. We can ALWAYS regulate our actions. We can ALWAYS choose to trust the Word based on Jesus’ faithfulness (Hebrews 13:8). Talk about the power of love, huh?

Holiday times are times where the world promotes the idea of love. Sure, it’s probably to sell more things during the ‘season of giving’, but nonetheless it is a reinforcement of the idea that humans LOVE each other. It is an entire season where we as humans tell each other about the existence of Adonai and His total and absolute LOVE of humanity. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him” (John 3:17). If we could truly grasp the love He has for us and then LIVE like we know it, our lives would be transformed. “I pray that according to the wealth of his glory he will grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person, that Christ will dwell in your hearts through faith, so that, because you have been rooted and grounded in love, you will be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and thus to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you will be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:16-19). The depth of the knowledge we have about Jesus’ love is the depth of the power that works in and through us. “Now to him who by the power that is working within us is able to do far beyond all that we ask or think, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:20-21). The knowledge of His love enables us to love Him as He loves us, empowering both our trust in His Word and His movement in our lives submitted to His will, His way, in His time; which leaves us with a tremendous hope since we believe sincerely in His love for us and the good gifts He rewards us with as we turn our love to Him – following up with actions, words, and thoughts motivated by our love for Him (Hebrews 11:6).

This is the light that shines in the world. Knowledge of where to go next with the declaration of our understanding of the facts Adonai Elohim IS and He LOVES us (John 3:16; Exodus 3:14). What a testament to what we can show those who are only just realising what their declarations of love really mean. What a gift we can give. A re-gifting of His gift to us. A gift of PERFECT Mercy, PERFECT Grace, and PERFECT Love. It is how our declarations become the firm foundation for our stretched anticipations of the physical arrival of ALL His Blessing.

Daily Affirmation Jesus IS Messiah: Zechariah 11:12-13 & 12:10

“Then I said to them, “If it seems good to you, pay me my wages, but if not, forget it.” So they weighed out my payment—30 pieces of silver. The Lord then said to me, “Throw to the potter that exorbitant sum at which they valued me!” So I took the 30 pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the temple of the Lord. . . I will pour out on the kingship of David and the population of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication so that they will look to me, the one they have pierced. They will lament for him as one laments for an only son, and there will be a bitter cry for him like the bitter cry for a firstborn.” Messiah would be rejected. For all that the Messiah would bring GOOD things and encourage a turning back to Yahweh, He would be rejected. He would be ‘forced’ into the role of a suffering servant – which would be needed to provide the sacrifice needed for the payment of sin. “Then one of the twelve, the one named Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What will you give me to betray him into your hands?” So they set out 30 silver coins for him. From that time on, Judas began looking for an opportunity to betray him” (Matthew 26:14-15). “Now when Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus had been condemned, he regretted what he had done and returned the 30 silver coins to the chief priests and the elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood!” But they said, “What is that to us? You take care of it yourself!” So Judas threw the silver coins into the temple and left. Then he went out and hanged himself” (Matthew 27:3-5). Jesus was NOT guilty of ANY sin OR of ANY violation of the Law. Yet He was rejected by the religious elite and sentenced to death. He was rejected by a beloved friend who betrayed Him into the hands of the religious elite for the price of a servant. 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