Two-Faithed

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. Fear can be anxious concern or awe and reverence. Fearing the Lord means acknowledging his superiority and turning away from sin. The Israelites chose to worship idols instead of God, but God continued to love them. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. True reverential awe is seeing God through Jesus and offering praise and worship. We should not accept the curse of fear and instead cleanse ourselves and live in reverential awe of God. God can redeem us from anxiety and trauma and make us new creatures. 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 Judges 6.10 I said to you, I am the Lord your God. You shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But you have not listened to my voice. Fear is a two-edged sword, which is why it's used in the English translation to mean two totally different things. They are, in fact, not different without Jesus. He makes the difference. Fear can be anxious concern, an unpleasant thing. That's its first definition in the dictionary. But fear can also mean awe and reverence. When we are angry, that is the flesh wrapping itself up to fight off that which we fear. When we run away, that is the flesh trying to escape that which we fear. When anxiety takes over the flesh and we freeze, that is the flesh trying to hide from that which we fear. When we comply with our aggressor or abuser, or we try to keep a volatile thing happy, calm, and copacetic, that is the flesh trying to fawn its way into not causing the thing we fear to occur. It is not ever consent. It is cowering because we feel we can do nothing else. So fear is a focus on unideal situations and circumstances, placing them in the forefront of who we are and filtering our thoughts, words, and actions through it to keep the bad from hurting us. On the other side of that coin is purposeful respect and obeisance. Fearing the Lord means that we acknowledge him for what he is. We appreciate his character. We are in reverent awe of him and his holiness. We believe in and trust him because we recognize his inherent superiority. We recognize his anger at sin. We recognize that his judgment accompanies his anger. In order not to be under that judgment, we move away from sin, the object of his ire, and turn to walk in his ways. That is impossible without Jesus. We position the Lord in the forefront of our minds and who we are, worshiping him who is worthy, filtering our thoughts, words, and actions through him to keep ourselves in a place where we can enjoy his freedom and blessings. That's why the two completely opposite things are translated with the same word, or one of the reasons anyway. Whatever is in that pole position, that foremost place in our brain where all the filter is, whatever is there, that's what we worship. That is what gets most of our energy, words, thoughts, and feelings. Consciously or unconsciously, that is what we are putting our energy into. That is what we are altering with. That is what is our whole world focus. That is what we are living our lives by, and it doesn't matter if you believe me or if you think differently. It won't change anything. The foremost position of your mind cannot remain empty. It is the foundation of our personality, mind, and emotions. It is the soil from which we grow. What is there quickly becomes who we are. The Israelites had the promised land. They were in it, or what pieces of it they had been willing to clear out, they had the blessing to inhabit, but they chose to reject that, to live with unholiness around them, much like how we choose to develop our coping mechanisms. They chose not to rid themselves of the unholy because it seemed too hard, or what they had was too good, or maybe that it was just so much better than what their parents had, so why not stop while they're ahead? Of course, letting the unholy remain, let it spread. Any disease left unchecked spreads. They started turning to the idols with intentful respect, with respect and obeisance. They put those idols at the forefront of their minds. They let the idols drive their existence. They ignored the voice of the Lord and went with the choice of their flesh. But look at what it says. You have not listened to my voice. That means God didn't stop speaking. They had turned away. They were ignoring him. They were actively participating in the conscious worship of idols and gods who could do no real things. But he did not leave them. He did not stop speaking to them. He did not stop listening to them. He knew exactly where they were, what they were doing, and he still loved on them because love is what he is, not just what he does. And in that love, a way was made, a way for them to redeem themselves, a way to gain victory over the idols, a way to gain freedom from their oppression of their enemies, a way he'd been talking to them about all that time. He didn't stop. God never stops. He wants to save us more than we even want saving, 2 Peter 3.9. They use the word fear when discussing worship for one simple reason. Regardless of the pure love the Father has for us, if we face him without Jesus, we would die. His utter and total righteousness would evaporate our sinful flesh. When we look at him without the filter of Jesus, we get hit with his majesty and glory, and we get scared. Who wouldn't? He hates sin completely. If it is inside us because we aren't redeemed, we would feel the intensity of that hate. But Jesus came and died to kill off that hate, to pay the price. All humans can be covered by the blood. So the Father, towards humanity, no longer has hate towards sin or anger toward us. That price has been paid. Now, as far as humanity is concerned, sin has been dealt with. The Father seeds us through the Jesus filter. If we want to see him through the filter and then come to him in worship, we need to be saved. If we don't have that choice made, if we aren't broken before the cross and abiding in Jesus as he abides in us, we can't get there. We can't enter into all that he has for us, all he holds out by grace through faith. If we go through and in Jesus, we get to experience reverential awe, not fear. If we appear before him without having accepted Jesus' payment, going through and in Jesus, then we will feel the fear of his judgment, which towards sin is terrible and mighty. Hebrews 10.31. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, says Proverbs 9.10. It's an acknowledgment that his ways are above ours. Isaiah 55.8-9. Because he is the source of truth. John 14.6. So if we want wisdom, we need to go to the one who has it to get it. And we can't get there without praise. So if we want wisdom to know what to do and how to step and where to go, we need praise. We can't get there without praise. Shout for joy to the Lord all you lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who has made us and we are his. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name. For the Lord is good and his loving kindness endures forever. His faithfulness to all generations. Psalm 100. Now that is as far from afraid as you can get. To have true reverential awe is to remember that without Jesus, we'd be justifiably terrified. Revelation 1.17. It is to see him as he is through Jesus. John 45.51. It is to offer up our praise, worship, and obedience because he is worth it, deserves it, and we can't help it when we truly love him. Hebrews 13.15 and James 5.13. Because he makes a way for us. I mean, if you look at the world around you and the way we've built up our society and our social constructs, we're teaching ourselves to accept the curse. We're teaching ourselves, oh, you can't help your mental conditions. You can't help your trauma. You can't help your mental strain, your anxiety, your this. What you can do is to learn coping mechanisms for it. To learn how to live with it. But that's not what God wants. Look at the entire Old Testament. He tells them, go into that place. Clean it out for me. The people that were there before you, that I brought there before you, have muffed it. They need to be removed. They've polluted the land so much, the land is eager to vomit them out. So you go in and clear them out. Kill off that disease so it can't hurt anyone else. And then live there and worship me in reverential awe. And you can be a beacon to the rest of the world to show them my glory and love and mercy and kindness. So a clean place, a whole place, a place dedicated to the Lord is the beacon. And any compromise, any living with disease is a mistake and will cause suffering to the people who are choosing to ally with unholiness. So it doesn't matter if you have anxiety. It doesn't matter if your parents just didn't know how to raise children the way they could have, not should have, but could have. It doesn't matter if you have trauma from your childhood. It doesn't matter if all these bad habits were beaten into you, possibly literally because it's only recently that physical spanking was seen as negative. So all this stuff we inherit, all this stuff we were taught as kids, all these ways we were raised, some of us better, some of us worse, all of it the world tells us is normal and that we should learn to cope with it and to manage it and then we'll be fine or as fine as humans can be. But God says differently. He says he can come and redeem you. He can come in and make you a new creature. He can come in and work with you instantaneously or over time. It all depends on where you're at. And he can take those things away. We can give them to him one at a time. Our anger, our anxiety, our running away, our fawning to others. It can all go away because he can work on us bit by bit, step by step, and develop us in Jesus. That is the sanctification walk that every believer walks from the moment they're redeemed to the moment they're standing before God the Father in person, face to face. Sometimes it's a long journey. Sometimes it's a short journey. Sometimes some things are long and some things are short and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But God has a plan. He never stops talking to us. He never stops encouraging us. He doesn't want us to cope with anything. He doesn't want us to manage any conditions, whether they're emotional or mental or physical. He wants us whole, healthy, nothing missing, nothing broken. The Israelites were in rebellion, but God loved them. He never left them, and he had a plan. Midian was his plan. You can see Judges 6-8. We're in that same boat. We were in rebellion in ignorance of him, in ignorance of how humans are supposed to be. But he had a plan, Jesus. Jesus has come. He came when we were sinful, ungrateful, and rejecting. He died and paid our price while we were hating on him. He was resurrected to life to offer us a choice, accept his payment and come into God's arms, or reject his payment and stay in darkness. Darkness is going to be banished. If you've chosen to be in it, you'll be banished too. He doesn't want that. He loves you. He's speaking to you. He'll never stop. Choose to take a step of reverent awe. Love him back. Take his hand. Accept his gift. Start your journey to wholeness. Make a choice. Choose life. Choose love. Choose Jesus. Choose him today. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Ephesians 2, verses 1-6. Here, in these verses, we have the expression of ultimate mercy and love. We were made. We fell. We're treasonous and refuse to follow the Lord who made us. We created other gods to worship. We rejected the idea that there is a moral standard to adhere to. We embraced sickness, deciding to nurture coping with it instead of getting rid of it. We followed our feelings. We were as far from the Lord and his love as we could possibly be. Jesus volunteered to pay the price of our sin. The Father sent him to earth to die for us. We were sinning. We weren't following him. We were rebelling. That's when he saved us. Not when we had started coming to church. Not when we had gotten our act together. Not when we had stopped doing, thinking, and feeling all the things that got us away from him. No. He came and died for us when we didn't know who he was. When we were enjoying our sin. When we were actively mocking him. Before we did anything. Before we even could. He died for us and was raised again to life. So he could offer us grace to be able to choose him. To be able to change our path from hell to heaven. So we could come to the Father and worship him. That's love. Not requiring a series of tasks or thoughts, ideas, and behaviors to earn it. Doing everything it needs doing and offering it free of charge. He loves you so much. He doesn't require you to stop anything in order to accept his gift. But by accepting, you'll come to want to stop the bad that's in your behavior. That's love. Unconditional love. You can't earn it. You don't deserve it. But he offers it anyway. And because of that, he wants us to know. He wants us to make sure that we can get it. He opens the door and encourages you to walk through. He loves you. He doesn't want you to be apart from him. Not now. Not tomorrow. And certainly not for eternity. He loves you. Take his hand today. Walk through the door. It'll be great. As we close, remember that you have worth. 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 love 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.