Break free of the fear

I was reading my Bible and a couple verses really struck me.  Apparently it has hit home before because it was underlined from a previous read and through these verses God really spoke to me about an insecurity or fear that I have.  The verses are 2 Timothy 1: 8-10

 ⁸So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, ⁹who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, ¹⁰but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

These verses are important because one thing that I sometimes struggle with is sharing the things that God is doing in my life.  I know that I am not the only one that struggles with this, there are others.  However, in reading this I felt was as though God stepped right out of my Bible and said it right to my face.  Those words had such a powerful impact on me.  I know that in order to be a doer of the word I need to be able to step put of my comfort zone and express the things that the Lord is doing in my life and on my heart.  If I am to make an impact on other people in this world then I cannot fear sharing Him.  In order to lead by example I need to be comfortable speaking about things He has done and is doing.  

I struggle with this probably for fear of ridicule.  That people will not be receptive to what I have to say.  Although I know that I cannot and will not always reach people on a deeper level, or that they will want to hear anything that I have to say, I at least have to try.  There are so many incredible things that He has done for me and the things that He still continues to do in my life and on my heart are amazing.  We cannot allow the enemy to get inside our hearts and minds and tell lies to us and make us insecure about our faith and our Savior.  This is what Paul was trying to convey to Timothy while he was in prison and facing certain death.  

Despite everything that Paul had been through and how much he had been ridiculed for his faith, he still continued to preach and testify about the Lord.  He did not allow fears or insecurities to control his actions.  But rather, he pressed forward and reached out to Timothy, encouraging him to never be ashamed of what the Lord is doing.  Paul knew that his time was coming to an end and he needed to someone to take his place and continue to do the Lord's work.  This is why he wrote his letters to him.  To encourage him to fight through this battle and to never be afraid or ashamed.  

There is something greater than ourselves and our lives here on earth that we are fighting for. We are fighting a battle against an enemy that is prominent everywhere we turn.  He is all over the place, telling lies to us, hurting us, tempting us with superficial things that we believe will make us feel better about ourselves.  He is constantly working against us, all the while making us believe that we truly be better off.  He is a manipulator and evil liar.  This battle is one that can only be won with the help of Jesus.  Jesus saved us from our impending death and eternal suffering in hell.  So to be ashamed and to not speak His name in public and share His good news with others is sinful.  It is wrong to be scared.  And there are many times when I am scared.  I have never been ashamed, but I have been scared.  And I know that I need to let go of this.  

I need to not be so protective of the relationship I have with the Lord.  I need to share what He is doing in my life.  I need to tell others and encourage them by example.  We reach to people on a much deeper level when we can actually relate to them.  And even if we have never been in their particular situation, there is a reason as to why God had us cross paths and why we are being presented with the opportunity to speak to them.   Therefore we all need to let go and let God.  Most of us have heard that phrase one too many times.  But it is because it is true.  When we try and do things on our own, almost all of the time we fall short.  We worry too much and we stress ourselves out on things that are out of our hands or our capabilities.  That is when we need to give it to God and allow Him to handle our situation.  We need to remain faithful.  And if you have never done this before, I would encourage you to try it.  Talk to God.  Tell Him your problems, your worries, and your complaints.   Give it up to Him.  Ask Him to take control of your life and your situation because He will.  He will absolutely do that.  No matter how big or how small the situation is, God wants it.  He wants us to look to Him and be faithful.  Once you do that you will see Him work in your life and things will get better.  And when they do, go and tell someone!  Share what He has done with other people.  Be that example that He has called us to be.  

Paul tells Timothy in verse 8 to come and suffer with him over the gospel.  The deeper we go the deeper we will suffer.  The more we share God, the more people in this world will persecute us and ridicule us and call us names and try to make us feel inadequate and inferior.  But that is the beauty in being a Christ follower.  Jesus was crucified over the things He said and did.  Now we most likely will not be crucified, for in this new millennium we really don't do that type of execution anymore, however we may be crucified in the context of people yelling at us and refusing to listen to us.  That though is the enemy once again working against us through other people.  

Verse 9 tells us that we were called to a holy life.  We are sanctioned to testify about Christ and through grace we are saved.  Just because we lead good lives and are nice to people does not mean that we will gain admission into Heaven.  Despite all the good things we do on earth, if we do not ask Jesus into our hearts and follow Him then all that niceness will all go to waste.  We are saved by grace and grace alone.  Not by our good deeds.  God does not have a chart up in heaven with Him that He puts a gold star next to our name anytime we are nice to someone or do a good deed.  He looks upon that with favor, but that will NOT get us into Heaven.  And by believing that, we are once again listening to a lie from the enemy.  He wants us to believe that's all it takes not so that we can spend an eternity in Heaven, but rather so that we can spend an eternity in hell with him.  

Jesus loves us that's why He came to earth and died for us.  Because of His sacrifice and His pain and suffering, we too can spend an eternity with Him.  If someone on this earth sacrificed their life for you and saved you from death, would you not go and tell everyone you know?  You would be on the news and talk shows speaking about it, and you would probably even write a book about it.  Why?   Because someone gave themselves up for you and you feel blessed to be alive and appreciative that they would show so much love and compassion for little 'ole you.  Am I right?  Now, why in the world are we so afraid to do the same for Jesus?  Why are we afraid to talk about Him and what the Holy Spirit is doing in our hearts?  Because when a human saves us, we get a pat on the back and everyone wants to hear our story because we all need something good to believe in and frankly people will always let us down.  So it is rare when someone makes an incredible sacrifice for another person.  Yet Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice for the ENTIRE world!  And yet we don't want to hear it and we are afraid and ashamed to talk about it.  We don't put people on the news because they came to know Christ or because the Lord has done an incredible thing with their life.  No, we just call them Bible thumpers and Jesus freaks and make fun of them and put them down.  So maybe if we stopped putting people down and just listened to them we could get over our fear and spread the good news like we were commissioned to do.  

I will fight through this battle and continue to get over my fears that have been instilled in me through the work of the enemy in other people's ridicule.  I will overcome and I will not be afraid.  Psalm 23, one of the most famous of the Psalms says this 

¹ The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

    ² He makes me lie down in green pastures, 
       he leads me beside quiet waters,

    ³ he restores my soul. 
       He guides me in paths of righteousness 
       for his name's sake.

    ⁴ Even though I walk 
       through the valley of the shadow of death, ^[a] 
       I will fear no evil, 
       for you are with me; 
       your rod and your staff, 
       they comfort me.

    ⁵ You prepare a table before me 
       in the presence of my enemies. 
       You anoint my head with oil; 
       my cup overflows.

    ⁶ Surely goodness and love will follow me 
       all the days of my life, 
       and I will dwell in the house of the LORD 
       forever.

And because of this I will not be afraid because I know that the Lord is with me all the days of my life.  He will comfort me and protect me and at the end of the day I will know that I am a Christ follower that is loved unconditionally.  I will break free of my chains.

The ultimate Valentine

Have you ever thought about how silly Valentine's Day really is?  It is a day for Card companies, flower shops, jewelry stores, and candy stores to guilt the innocent consumer into spending money on people.  When you buy gifts for those "special" people in your life you are doing it because you have been pressured into it by society.  It is not done because you truly love and care about the person, if it was then you would do it on any other day but February 14.  If you truly want to show someone that you care then buy them flowers or cards or take them to a nice dinner on any other day of the year.  On the days when it is least expected, then it becomes so much more exciting and personal.  

I like to call this day Valiumtine's Day because there is so much pressure surrounding it that most people need a valium to relax.  If you don't know, valium is used to treat anxiety disorders.  Have you ever felt anxiety over Valentine's Day?  There is so much pressure to buy the right gift and make this day "one she will never forget", as the jewelry commercial says. And for those that are single, they need it because they are being shunned and being made to feel anxious about finding "the one".  It is all just silly.

Valentine's Day excludes those people that are single, making them feel unloved and unappreciated.  It is a day that "celebrates" the couples and segregates the single person.  This is why so many people are depressed on Valentine's Day.  They are surrounded by all this talk of love and watch everyone else receive gifts on a day when they are forced to give them and therefore are looked upon with pity, thus making them feel insecure about their marital status. Is this truly the way we want to make people feel?  I know I don't.

If you are in a relationship and your special someone has made you feel loved and appreciated today, then I am truly happy for you.  Rejoice in the fact that you have people in your life that want to cherish you today.

If you are single and you are feeling left out of the loop, I want to encourage you to look around you and be grateful for every blessing that you have.  What we tend to forget is that especially on days like today, we do not need a man or a woman to make us feel loved and appreciated.  We have the ultimate Valentine.  Jesus is the only true Valentine that we will ever need.  While it may feel good to have someone bring us flowers or do something special for us now, that is the flesh talking and the enemy telling us that we are not cared for because we do not have someone there with us physically.  Those thoughts will only cripple us and make us feel emotionally insecure and vulnerable to hurt.  

Jesus loved us so much that He gave His life for us that we can live with Him for eternity.  Our lifetime is so short compared to the amount of time we will get to spend with Him if we are followers.  He will always love us, care for us, be with us.  The Bible says He will never leave us of forsake us.  So take comfort in the fact that you have the best Valentine anyone could ever ask for.  Because Jesus does not forget us.  He will not leave us wounded and hurting.  He will only love us and cherish us.  

So walk through this Valentine's Day with confidence that you have the greatest gift in the world, the love of Christ and the salvation that comes with knowing Him as our Lord and Savior.  Do not be a conformist and feel pressured to celebrate this day if you do not want to, instead celebrate the one's you love when they are least expecting it.  And to my single friends, take heart and know that you are truly loved by your family, friends, and most of all your Lord. 

Messy Sheep

God is in control little sheep.  Something I tend to forget.  Something many of us tend to forget. 

There are so many times when we go through life and make decisions and stress out and worry and fight what is happening.  Sometimes we need to be reminded that God is in control.  He is in control of our lives, our well-being, our future, everything.  There are too many things in life that are completely out of our control.  This is a hard concept for those of us that like everything to be controlled.  We tend to take charge and want to make things happen a certain way in order to ensure a certain outcome.  However, what happens when that outcome does not happen?  The opposite happens?  Chaos is what happens.  The sheep are lost.  We cannot control everything for we are not in the driver's seat.  Not always anyways.  Many times we think we are and we are not. 

Take Moses and the Israelites for example.  They travel to the promise land and Moses sends some men in to explore the land of Canaan.  When they return they men tell stories of how the people there are much bigger, stronger, and more powerful than they.  They discourage the tribe from entering into the land the Lord has promised because they fear they will die.  While Joshua and Caleb plead that the land is good and God will protect them, they do not listen and they rebel.  Because they did not trust that the Lord had a plan and was in control, they were forced to travel the desert for 40 years (a year for each day they explored the land) until each person had died.  Their lack of faith kept them from ever seeing the land the Lord had promised to them. (Numbers 13-14)

We face giants of many kinds in life.  We have to trust that God has a plan and He will be faithful to us.  He will never abandon us.  A shepherd never abandons his flock.  We have to choose to walk into the light and stay faithful to Him.  We have to make the commitment to follow Him.  There is always more than what we see.  There is always a lesson to be learned.  By turning away we tend to drift through life and do what feels good at the time.  What happens when we fall away?  We start partying, drinking, slacking off, making wrong decisions, filling our lives with regret.  We need to be patient and committed to Christ to see what His plan is.  To follow our shepherd.

We need God's grace on a day-to-day basis.  Satan works in our lives to make us feel that we are not worthy enough. We are not good enough to go to church, or to pray, or that we are not worthy of His forgiveness.  The truth is, we are worthy to ask God for things such as forgiveness.  There is no perfect Christian.  That is a facade.  The "perfect Christian" you see going to church on Sunday with their "perfect family" and their "perfect lifestyle" is a hypocrite.  That person does not exist.  Those hypocrites are discouraging to others.  Christians suffer and hurt just as much as the next person.  Sometimes even more.  Paul did.  He suffered and went through trials, but he always put God first and knew that God was in control.  We are all messy sheep and God is our shepherd that keeps us clean.  That's what makes us so special.

When things happen to us and/or other people, we need to pray and examine our hearts and see where we are at.  We need to get involved and be doers of the word and not just hearers.  We are living testaments and the only Jesus some people will ever see. 

God commands us in John 13:34, "A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so that you must love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." 

God loves us in many ways, UNCONDITIONALLY (no matter what we do He will never stop loving us), SACRIFICALLY (He laid down His life to save us from sin, death, and the power of the devil), as a SERVANT (Jesus loved his disciples so much He washed their feet...including Judas who would betray Him), FORGIVING (He always forgives, even when we don't deserve it). 

Christians should be known by their sincere love for one another, just as Christ sincerely loves us.

Pray hard and diligently.  Pray first for God's will.  Secondly, keep you're prayers Christ centered.  And finally, bring God glory.  For these are the kinds of prayers He will answer.

God has begun a work in all of us and we need to allow Him to complete it.  He is a master artist and we are a beautiful canvas.  Let him complete his master piece for all the world to see and rejoice in!

Be steadfast and proud to be a messy sheep!