Embrace Your Place

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that rejects fear in any form. Fear is a spiritual force used by Satan to keep people down. The Israelites, despite witnessing miracles, still doubted because they had a slave mentality. As believers, we have been redeemed by the sacrifice of Jesus and have access to something the world doesn't understand. We can choose to not be afraid because we have a solid foundation in God. Jesus has already overcome the world. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of His word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to His perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Deuteronomy 1.29-31 Then I said to you, don't be terrified, don't be afraid of them. Yahweh your God goes before you. He will fight for you according to all that He did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness where you have seen how that Yahweh your God carried you as a man carries his son in all the way that you went until you came to this place. Delivered up out of slavery to Egypt, miraculously saved to the Red Sea, walking on dry ground where moments before a sea lay, led to the desert by a pillar of fire and of cloud, fed by manna dropped by heaven, led through battles of those coming against the people and getting victory, shown glory and majesty on Sinai, given laws and statutes of righteousness, led to the doorway of a lush land full of goodness and bounty and really big people. There they stopped, and there Yahweh God gave His final plea. I often wonder what the deal was with the Israelites. They saw the plagues of Egypt, those powerful, miraculous and awe-inspiring events that led to the Pharaoh driving them out of the country. We've spent millions of dollars trying to recreate them for film audiences, to give them their visual impact, the breathtaking wow of them. How could the Israelites see them and still doubt? Well, if you look carefully at the Scripture of Exodus, the miracles aren't really seen from the Israelite perspective, but from the perspective of Moses. So we don't know how the Israelites actually saw them or took them. Now also, many of the plagues did not touch Goshen, the place where the Israelites lived. They were protected. Things were happening around them, but not to them. They may not have realized the full impact of them. Maybe they did and simply forgot in the face of what was in the now facing them. I don't really know. Well, what was next after that? Well, they certainly experienced walking on the bed of the Red Sea while it was bone dry. Can't use that as an excuse. They were there when they were victorious in battle, when people swarmed up against them. They were definitely there when God descended on Sinai and shook it and thundered it with His power and glory and voice. They were in so much awe that they begged Moses not to let God speak to them again directly because they felt like they were going to die in the face of that much power. They were guided, sustained, protected, and spoken to. But a bunch of tall guys wiped it all away. I believe the problem was a vision. The Israelites had the vision of slaves. A slave is someone forbidden to quit serving a master and there is no humanity in them. They are property only, not people. We think of this as an ancient problem or a modern one that's been dealt with, but as of 2019, there were 40 million people, including children, that were enslaved in the world today, which is about 0.5% of the world population. Doesn't sound like much, but it's a significant chunk. So we've studied this. We've studied this historically and we've studied this in the world today. And some of what we know is this. A slave mentality is one in which you feel inferior to another. It's the belief that you cannot do anything on your own. You're chained to the idea that whatever you accomplish, think, feel, or do, it is not as good as the others, that it never measures up because you are less than. No matter what victories they had achieved, no matter what miracles they had witnessed, no matter what their place in the world now was, the Israelites still felt less than. When faced with a powerful-looking people, they crumpled, because how could a less than possibly fare against a better than? The God plan was simple. Arrive at the promised land, cross the Jordan River by miracle, and take the land. It was simple, but that simplicity had spiritual echoes that affected the whole land. We know that from Joshua 2, 9-11, that the Israelites had nothing to fear. She said to the men, I know that Yahweh has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. For we have heard how Yahweh dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and to Og, whom you utterly destroyed. As soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there wasn't any more spirit in any man because of you. For Yahweh, your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. The better than were quaking in their boots. They appeared bigger, better, stronger, but they were full of fear and waiting to be tipped over. They were physical beings, but in the spiritual, the battle had already been won. It's no different today. For a wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6.12 We may stand against physical things. We may stand against concepts. It might be a co-worker, neighbor, customer, boss, government agency, poverty, lack, depression, anxiety, or anything. The thing is real. The thing in front of you is real. It has, in its own way, substance. You can feel it. But that is not where the power is. Without power, a machine is a paperweight. Without power, a being is nothing but a straw man, a paper tiger, a bagel without seeds. If the spiritual is defeated, then the physical will fall. This is a universal truth. We are not paper tigers. We have been saved by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection to life. We are the redeemed of the Lord. If you call on him as Father who, without respective persons, judges according to each man's work, pass the time of your living as foreigners here in reverent fear, knowing that you were redeemed, not with corruptible things like silver or gold from the useless way of life handed down from your fathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish or spot, the blood of Christ, who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was revealed in this last age for your sake, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope might be in God. 1 Peter 1, 17-21 We are the redeemed. And as the redeemed, we have access to something that the world around us doesn't. Everyone who chooses to believe chooses to step into the call of the Lord to join the group of people called from the foundation of the world to be his chosen. Ephesians 1, 4 Give thanks to Yahweh for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever. Let the redeemed by Yahweh say so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the adversary and gathered out of the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. Psalm 107, 1-2 We are standing in something the world doesn't understand and cannot see. We are standing on the only solid stable ground that there is. Everything that you see around you is malleable, everything changes, everything in creation can be changed. But there is something beyond that, something solid and dependable, the thing we cling to, the thing by which we can choose to not be afraid. But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, to heavenly Jerusalem and to innumerable multitudes of angels, to the festal gathering and assembly of the firstborn who were enrolled in heaven, to God, the Judge of all, to the Spirit of just men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better than that of Abel. See that you don't refuse him who speaks, for if they didn't escape when they refused him who warned on the earth, how much more will we not escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven, whose voice shook the earth then, but now he has promised, saying, Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens. This phrase, yet once more, signifies the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain. Therefore, receiving a kingdom that can't be shaken, let's have grace through which we serve God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews 12, 22-29 The Pharaoh of Egypt said, You will be broken, but they weren't. Jehon king of the Amorites and Og the king of Bashan said, You will be broken, but they weren't. The sons of Anakim stood before them, too scared to say anything, and the Israelites broke themselves. But two stood apart and said, We can break them. Two defied what their eyes saw and their flesh felt. Two of them remembered the glories and majesty of Yahweh God and said, Nothing can stop Him. We can do this. But as a nation, they failed. More than them, we stand here looking at the world around us. We don't have two cheering us on. We have three, Father, Son, and Spirit. They are still saying, Don't be terrified. Don't fear. Jesus is saying even more. Jesus doesn't say, You can break them. Jesus said, I already broke them. Go take their places. You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are of the world. Therefore they speak of the world, and the world hears them. We are of God. He who knows God listens to us. He who is not of God doesn't listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. 1 John 4, 4-6 We are children of the Father in heaven. 1 John 3, 1-3 We can run to Him, leap into His arms, and be carried. We can cuddle into His neck and feel safe. We can be held by Him and the owies go away. He can carry us over the pits, the traps, and the lego that the enemy spreads to harm us. He is our loving Father. He has us. Tell me, where will you stand? Will you be in the camp that claims the victory of Jesus that He offers us? Or will you be in the runaway wagon? Will you be carried by your Father over the lines and logs of the enemy? Or will you try and blaze your own path, lost and longing? Will you take acceptance and a home with the Lord? Will you dwell in Jesus? Will you let Him dwell in you? Will you choose not to be terrified and not to be afraid? Will you embrace your place as the redeemed of God? He goes before us. We only need to follow His path. The Word lights the way and the Spirit guides us along. Jesus is with us and the Father is just up ahead. Reject fear. Embrace the Lord God Almighty. Let Yahweh lead you. Praise Him today and start walking. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Jeremiah 29, 11-13. Out of our hearts is the wellspring of life, Proverbs 4, 23. What's in your well? Ephesians 1, 15-21 says, For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus, which is among you, and the love which you have toward all the saints, don't cease to give thanks to you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling and what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might which He worked in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, authority, power, dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come. This is a powerful prayer. Do you pray it? Do you walk in it? Is your heart filled with revelation in the knowledge of Him? There's a reason He wants this in your heart. It's the only way that He has to give you a hope and a future. We are stations of imagination. We need the infrastructure of hope to achieve the vision of our future. If we can't imagine it, we can't walk in it. The only way we can imagine it is to receive the thoughts He has for us. He knows them. Do you? Seek Him. If you seek Him, He promises that you will find Him. If you find Him, you'll know His thoughts about you, which will let you imagine that you that He has in mind. If you can imagine it, you can have it, because that vision of you will fill your heart, and out of your heart, it will flow into the atmosphere around you. Your hope will embrace the future He has ready for you. Don't wait. Seek Him today. Start the journey into eternal reward. Don't wait until Heaven comes to you. Go seek Heaven. Go seek Jesus. Start your forever. As we close, remember that you have Earth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love, and no end to the things about you that He loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you, just because you're you. 1 John 4 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent His only-born Son into the world, that we might live through Him. And this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin, and it casts out our fear too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because He first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.