We all have fears but we have not been given a Spirit of fear. Why fear life when life is short? And in Matthew 6:27 Jesus is telling us not to worry and asks "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" (NIV); some manuscripts say "Which of you by worrying can add a single cubit to his stature?"- In other words, worrying is futile. God gives and God takes away so give your heart to Him so that He can take away all fear and help you to live a victorious life.
How does He do that? Well, He can only do that if you allow Him to by increasing your faith and this can only be done by spending time with Him both in prayer and reading the Word of God in order to get to know more about the nature of God.
There is no substitute for the presence of God. It is like a bright healing chamber where all the pain that was clutching to you in the forrm of the flesh is peeled away and your spirit is exposed to the light and renewed filling you with an inner peace. This is the reason you should not forsake your 'quiet-time' or time spent with God, reflecting, meditating. Now is the time to pray harder than ever and not to shy away from reading the word but make a habit of meditating on it and doing what it says (Joshua 1:8).
You may have heard statements similar to the followiing a number of times but it remains true and something must be done to change it. It seems that many people who call themselves Christians focus more on what they shouldn't be doing than what they should be doing as children of God and we tell others what not to do as well as forcing religion on ourselves. This can sometimes have adverse effects as we could pile on excess pressure and make ourselves/ other people feel inadequate when God hasn't said so. For example, a friend of mine recently told me that she grew up believing she was clumsy. She recalled a couple of occassions when her dad would be watching her as she was carrying plates and say something along the lines of 'Don't drop them, make sure you don't drop them!' What do you think is the most likely outcome? It's like when someone is about to take a penalty and someone shouts to them 'No pressure'- that's the exact instance when the pressure is likely to kick in. She dropped the plates. Obviously she didn't want to drop them but the words were probably echoing in her head and she soon cracked under the pressure.
Don't get me wrong I'm not suggesting that in your Christian walk will feel no pressure whatsoever or that should ignore the warnings about sin, but I do feel we succumb to pressure from other people, not even just Christians, as a substitute for conviction by the Spirit. And if we call ourselves Christians then we should be convicted by the Holy Spirit. The Word clearly emphasises that if we walk by the Spirit then we will not gratify the desires of the flesh. It's not a complicated principle but evidently not as simple to actually live by. We were not created to live in fear, we were created to feel a level of freedom and boldness that comes from having relationship with God. And believe me He craves a relationship with us, why else would He want us to call Him Abba Father?
About 2010 years ago Jesus died for all our sins and gave us absolute access to the same power and authority He had when He was on Earth. Subsequently it has become clear through the scriptures that the key to having a true relationship with God is accepting this fact. I used to find it hard to believe that Jesus was fully man because of how brave He came across. Now that I have studied the Word for myself I see that His bravery was as a result of His relationship with His Heavenly Father. There are instances recorded in the gospels which prove that He definitely felt fear and anxiety, however, He knew they could be overcome by prayer.
Prayer, by the way, is both talking to AND listening to God. The listening part is often omitted in our society today where there is a tendency to rush through our prayers in order to busy ourselves with other things. Often much less important things that we make a habit of doing whether they add to our lives or not. By failing to recognise prayer as THE priority we could easily set ourselves up to lead sheltered lives. We don't have to lead sheltered lives, we were made for greater things. We are sons and daughters of God and co-heirs with Christ, OUR FATHER MADE THE WORLD, we have a responsibility to live up to our names and also to look after the world.
Our lives are not just ours, We have no idea how many people are depending on us to live at God's intended level for our lives, both as individuals and as a generation, so that we can be blessing to their lives. If we fully realised how many opportunities we have compared with others I think we would have a change in attitude. When I think about third world countries I think about the fact that in a number of cases the people have big dreams but little access to resources, whereas in the Western world especially, we usually have access to a lot more resources but suffer from fear of dreaming big. We have the power to do a lot more than we are and have been doing. We have to stand up, We have to stand out.
NOW IS THE TIME TO BE BRAVE!
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