Fear No Fear

“But when they arrest you and hand you over, take no thought beforehand, or premeditate what you should speak. But speak whatever is given you in that time, for it is not you who speaks, but the Holy Spirit” (Mark 13:11, MEV). God loves us enough to help us communicate. God is love and without love, we just make noise (1 Corinthians 13:1). When we speak with no thought as to what God’s point of view on something is, we’re just putting words together with each other (Job 16:4). When we are on trial or we are put on the spot by authorities (religious or secular), we NEED the wisdom of Holy Spirit to speak – and if we will trust Him, He will supply the words. That’s a promise to us we can stand on. But what about the rest of the time? Holy Spirit isn’t going to speak through us 24?7, right? What do we do then? The tongue of humanity is a dangerous thing that we need to constantly be on guard against (James 3:8). The truth is that we need to be speaking from love ALL the time. And we cannot effectively do that if we aren’t growing His Fruit of love in our hearts. Which we cannot do without His help. We cannot do it without the Word being fed into us every day. We NEED Holy Spirit to communicate effectively. No, He will not take over our mouths and make sure that we are only saying what He wants us to say. Where is the obedience in that? Where is the trust? The belief? No, we must CHOOSE to rely on Him. CHOOSE to grow love. CHOOSE to think before we speak – and use that time to check in with Him. He will guide us. He will help us. He will work with us to put a guard on our tongues. But it is us submitting to Him and obeying what we hear. It is us feeding the Word into our lives every day so that we know His will and His point of view. So that His moral character starts becoming our moral character. If we trust in Him and work to keep our love of Him first and foremost in our minds and hearts, we will be tuned into Him. Listening to Him. And speaking according to His suggestions. Yes, there will be times He completely supplies our words so that we can reach someone. But He loves us enough to help us with ALL our communication, not just our ministry communication or our witness. God is an all-encompassing God. We need to let Him in everywhere.