God wants us to be fearless. And we could be. It is not necessarily easy to dispose of fear in our lives, but it is possible with God. Even when we’re facing death, He has created a get out clause for His children.
The Bible commands us not to be afraid, and if God can command it, we can obey. In the current climate of terrorism and disaster, it is very easy to get drawn in by alarmist articles and reports that whip us up into an outraged frenzy, subversively motivated by fear. This is absolutely not what God wants for us, and it is no way to be the light to the world that we should be. The Yeshua way is a higher way, and the only way up onto that path and into that rarified air is by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Understand that you cannot die
The main tool of both Satan and the terrorists in his charge is fear. Once we are afraid, they are empowered, so their goal is to create an atmosphere of chaos and terror to gain power and control. Clearly, we do not wish to fall into that trap, and become another victim of their evil acts – and indeed as believers, we must not give way to fear.
But these days are full of some seriously frightening realities – how do we keep a grip on fear? How can we “laugh at the days to come”, as the woman of Proverbs 31 can with such dignity and courage when we don’t know what’s coming? As the days get darker, we must learn how to win this battle of our own hearts and minds in order to truly be a light that shines brightly in the darkest night.
Psalm 68:20 is an interesting verse about death. The Amplified Version has it like this:
“God is to us a God of deliverances and salvation; and to God the Lord belongs escape from death [setting us free].”
Our God is the God of salvations, the God of deliverances is the “owner of exits from death”, or the issues of death.
God is able to provide deliverance from death because He’s in charge of death. The “issues of death” belong to him, as the King James puts it.
Although He can prevent it or provide miraculous escapes, clearly, God doesn’t always rescue us from physical death. We all die sometime. But even then, He’s holding the whole matter of death in His hand. He can even save us from the power of death itself, so that death is not the end for us.
Here’s another one:
“We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. And God does not take away life, but devises means so that he who is banished may not be an utter outcast from Him.” (2 Samuel 14:14)
The glorious news is that God has come up with a get out clause to prevent the banished ones being banished.
What a wonderful fact we have written for our encouragement! Long ago, God thought of a brilliant plan to rescue us from utter banishment, which of course is Yeshua, his Son, our Messiah, who was banished on our behalf.
We may not deserve it, but God has “devised a way” for us that means death need not be the end.
The hope of glory
On one hand most of us who believe this are so familiar with the idea that we are almost blasé about the fact that we have eternal life, but on the other hand, we tend to live our lives as if this is all there is! We get overwhelmed with panic, fear, envy, despair… the hope of glory has seeped away and we shuffle along with the rest of the crowd obsessing about matters of this world. This should not be!
You might remember the 21 Coptic martyrs killed by ISIS in Libya in 2015. This is some footage of how they were courageously singing worship and praise to God even as they were about to be murdered. They know that their real life in God is indestructible. They are alive in eternity today, and we will meet them, if we have eternal life through the Messiah, the One who paid for the deliverance from death.
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“I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead… But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you… For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.
But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” (Philippians 3:18-21)
We can live with a different focus, our eyes fixed on Yeshua and the constant hope of eternity with him. This gives us the power to look evil in the eye and not be afraid. We know it will ultimately be overcome. Although the threat is real, we who know the Prince of Peace can respond differently to the world, not caving into fear, prejudice, paranoia or paralysis.
This is the time to pray diligently for the persecuted ones, the suffering ones, those tortured and in imminent danger of death. This is the time to decide how we can help in gifts of time, prayer, and finances. This is also the time to make sure our eyes too are fixed on Yeshua and our eternal destiny with him, and not only on this temporary world, so that we can follow the example of martyred believers who stood firm, faced death without fear, and will receive the crown of life.
Photo by Andrey Kremkov on Unsplash
