Know It. All.

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear in any form. Fear is a spiritual force used by Satan to keep people down. Instead, faith in God is championed. The Levites calmed the people and told them to hold their peace. They had access to peace and could keep it. Sadness and grief are part of being human, but we shouldn't let them overtake us. We have peace from the Lord to conquer sorrow. Dealing with grief at the heart level is important, as the heart informs the mind. Our spirits inform our hearts, and our hearts inform our minds. Our minds judge sensory information based on our heart's baseline. The amygdala in our brain is linked to our emotions, memory, learning capacity, and heart. What is in our hearts will run what is in the rest of us at a core level. By focusing on Jesus, we can inform our minds and live according to God's purpose. 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 Nehemiah 8.11-12 So the Levites calmed all the people, saying, Hold your peace, for the day is holy. Don't be grieved. All the people went their way to eat, to drink, to send portions, and to celebrate, because they had understood the words that were declared to them. There are four main things that the Israelites were told to do here, and they did them, because they understood what they had been told. They believed it. They walked in it. They obeyed. No matter what else happens, no matter what else you accomplish, no matter what you build and nurture and grow here, when we get to heaven, the best epitaph we could have is, They were obedient. Matthew 25.23 The riches that get unlocked through obedience are staggering. Richness of spirit, richness of mind, richness of body. Not as we regard richness, but as God does. A thorough, all-inclusive richness that begins and ends in our obedience to Him. It starts and it finishes in worship at the throne, basking in the love of the Father. And I pray that this is the choice we all make. The Levites calmed the people. They had gathered to worship the Lord. They had worshiped. They had listened to the law being read. They could see and hear how much they had missed the poor judgment, the disobedience, and they wept before the Lord. They were experiencing sadness and regret. Sorrow was threatening to overtake them. It's not wrong to be sad. It's not wrong to grieve. It's not wrong to weep. It's wrong to let sorrow overtake you. Sorrow is a state of despair, a state of defeat, a state of fear. It's sin to be in that state, because it's anti-God, it's anti-faith. Sadness is a part of humanity in that it happens to us. We do feel it, and we feel deeply. We grieve when we lose people, situations, possibilities. Jesus wept when He knew what was about to happen. He still wept because of the emotion that He was feeling. But Jesus didn't stay with that. He didn't let it stay with Him. He experienced the emotion, He worked through it, and He stepped out of it. He didn't let it overtake Him. He processed and continued. We're called to do the same, and to do it the same way. The Levites told the people to hold their peace. That tells us two things. They had access to peace, and they could keep it. Yahweh God speaks peace to us. And if we don't walk away, we get to keep it. If we don't give in to sorrow, we can keep it. Notice that it doesn't say we'll be happy. This isn't about being sad about something. This is about not giving up all that isn't sadness to stay focused on sadness. Peace puts sadness in its place. Peace is the better path. I walk it daily. I have experienced severe loss. In the Lord, I get peace. I can see the sadness. Sometimes I step into it, but the peace of the Lord is there so I can step back out. Behold, I will bring it health and healing, and I will cure them. And I will reveal to them abundance of peace and truth. Jeremiah 33.6 We're given peace from the Lord. It is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit who indwells us. Galatians 5.22-23 Jesus came to guide us on the path to peace. Luke 1.76-79 Jesus gave it to us to use, to wield, to conquer sorrow. John 14.27 Through Jesus and in Jesus, we have peace because we have his righteousness having transformed into him in our spirits. Romans 5.1-2 It is through the exercise of his peace that we get and keep our peace. Once again, it is not us doing anything. It is him. We use what he gave us. We don't have to understand it to use it. We only need to understand that we are authorized to use it. Philippians 4.6-7 I don't understand how many of my electronic devices work, but I know I can use them, and I do. Peace works the same way. We can use it even though his peace is beyond our understanding. Holding on to it, choosing it, and using it is how we stop grieving from becoming sorrowing. It's how we keep sadness in its place. How we grieve and how we come up out of both of those into the place where God wants us to be and inhabit. Romans 15.13 That means that thing number two, don't be grieved, is both true and a choice. We don't have to be grieved. We don't have to stay grieving. We don't have to stay sad. We don't have to give in to negative emotions. I've seen people live in their grief for years, nurturing it in the night, keeping it, holding it, refusing to let it go, listening to the whispers of ignorance, listening to the tune of sorrow. I've lived it myself, but the Lord has a better way. The Lord has a healing way. It isn't enough to mental through it, to therapy through it. That's great for the mental part. We've studied the mind and turned it into a science. We have tools and processes and steps and medication and many, many, many ways of dealing with the mental side of it. But it isn't enough. The heart informs the head. The head doesn't inform the heart. You've heard the expression, the heart wants what it wants. It means with the mercy of our hearts. The Bible says, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Proverbs 23, 7. Jesus taught that out of the heart our words are formed. Luke 6, 45. The heart needs to be dealt with. The heart needs to be cultured. Our heart will inform our heads. If our grief or sadness isn't dealt with at the heart level, it will always reset our heads to its default. That's one of the reasons we have mental cycles. We go to counseling. We get help. We feel better. We coast along doing the tools, taking the steps. But the heart calls up to our heads. And we think that stuff again and again. We use the tools on it, but it's a constant struggle. Sometimes the tools help us to manage it. Sometimes the heart wins out. At best, we get the stalemate. At worst, we're unable to prevent the heart from dominating. The heart is a powerful organ. It keeps life pumping through our bodies. If it stops, the life doesn't circulate and we die. It keeps the life pumping through our souls, holding us to the image that it holds. Therapy can't deal with the heart. It's a mental discipline. Medication can't deal with the heart. It deals with our physical brains. Counseling can't deal with the heart. It's a mental discipline. We need God for this. The Word tells us again and again that the heart has preeminent importance in our life. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it is the wellspring of life. Proverbs 4.23 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6.21 But the Lord said to Samuel, Don't look on his face or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For I don't see as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. 1 Samuel 16.7 The heart is where it starts. The heart is where we live. The heart informs our mind. It is a picture of how we are in our essence. We're spirit beings. Our spirit informs our souls. Our souls are our personalities, our minds, and our emotions. If we can grasp that our heart tells our mind what to do, then we can grasp that our spirit tells our hearts what to do. And if we can grasp that, we can understand 3 John 2. Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be healthy, even as your soul prospers. Our mind gets things from two directions, the flesh and the spirit. Things happen to us physically and in our feelings. That's sensory information. That's the flesh. Our mind takes that and processes it. That's natural. That's the world's way. And it can work to a certain extent. The thing is, though, that the world is about managing, not removing. They take away symptoms. They help you live with it. They get you back to a quality of life. They want cancer in remission. They don't talk about a pure cure, getting you back to where no one could tell you ever had it, period. There our minds sit, managing, evaluating sensory information. Our mind will judge that information according to our baseline. Our baseline is our heart. Now, the amygdala is an almond-shaped area buried deep in your brain. That's where the fight-or-flight response is located. It's linked to our emotions, our memory, our learning capacity, and our heart. If there is severe stress in the amygdala, it can cause a heart attack because the heart, as an organ, responds to it. The amygdala is looked at as the primitive part of our brain, the core from which the rest evolves. That stream of functionality is a two-way street. The amygdala sends signals down, but it also receives signals up. Our heart can tell it how important something is, whether it should be ignored, downplayed, or responded to. If something is in your heart, it is going to hit the amygdala, and the amygdala is going to tag it with a response level and send it out into the rest of your body and brain, which will respond as it has been designed and programmed to. What is in our hearts will run what is in the rest of us at a very core level. By grace, through faith, Jesus dwells in our hearts. Ephesians 3, 14-19. God directs our hearts into his love. 2 Thessalonians 3, 5. He puts his purpose into us. Revelation 17, 17. By focusing on Jesus, we can inform our minds as to what we should be doing, thinking, and emoting at an extremely basic, primitive source level. We can choose to do that by getting ourselves aligned to the word and his will. His word will keep our heart if we pray it. Luke 18, 1. That's more than reading it. That's reading it to glean revelation from the Holy Spirit and then applying it into our lives by speaking it, thinking on it, and praying it. That is keeping our peace and choosing not to grieve, choosing to focus on faith and not feeling. Truth, not tribulation. Grace, not guilt. We can fill our hearts with the things of God, not the things of the flesh. But he, turning around and seeing his disciples, rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan, for you have in mind not the things of God, but the things of men. Mark 8, 33. If Jesus did it, we should do it too. So the Israelites put away their sorrow, and they celebrated as God has intended. Number three, they chose peace, they chose fellowship, they chose obedience, they chose the celebration of the Lord. They did the thing. But they also sent Porsches. Number four, look at today's verse again. Now in the previous verse, Nehemiah 8, 10, they had been commanded to send Porsches to him for whom nothing is prepared. They were not to exclude. To get the trappings of celebrations for themselves, but also for those who couldn't afford it. God is a God for all people, 2 Peter 3, 9. God is a God who asks us to care for the widows and the orphans, James 1, 27. God is a God who asks us to care for the poor, Proverbs 22, 9. We aren't to forget that. We aren't to avoid it. We aren't to shy away from it. We're to apply it and walk in it. Because God wants no one to be left behind. God wants everyone to be able to celebrate beyond their own means. That doesn't mean go into debt. But it means that they've been blessed beyond what they can manage in the natural. This isn't about stuff. It's about abundant blessing in whatever form that applies to you. From the spirit to the flesh, John 10, 10. Whole picture celebration here. The people of God were told to start their journey of repentance with celebration. With thanksgiving and praise. With good food and drink. With fellowship with those around us. With blessing and understanding. With proper priorities. And with God at the front of things. Nothing has changed. We're called to the same. To enter with thanksgiving into the court of the Father. Approaching the throne with boldness in the grace He extends us. Don't believe this. Think on it. Pray on it. Dwell on it. Do that until you know it. Until it is in your heart and informing the rest of you how important this is. Until there is no doubt. No believing. No element of maybe not. Don't let go of this until you too understand all the words that have been declared to you. Be a know-it-all. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Genesis 2.15-17. God gave us a choice. God decided that He had done well with making us. We were good. Genesis 1.31. We'd been given dominion. Genesis 1.28. We'd been made in His image. Genesis 1.26-27. And He'd given us a job to do. Genesis 2.8-15. He gave us choice. We could obey. We could not obey. We could pick what we wanted or the path that He had chosen. Jesus had the same choice, Matthew 4.3. We failed at choosing. We made the wrong choice. But He gave us that choice. More importantly, He didn't rescind it. He took us out of the garden so that we didn't make our failed estate eternal. Genesis 3.22-23. He had warned us that if we disobeyed, we would die-die. Yes, it was repeated in the Hebrew. Not just die, but die-die. Really die. Die in totality. And they did. They immediately died spiritually. Genesis 3.7. And until Christ triumphed through the obedience of Calvary, we didn't get that back. Adam's body took a bit to die. 930 years. Interestingly, that's within a thousand years. A thousand years is a symbol for a spiritual death. He died-died. Total death. We were never meant to die. But it was His choice. And God didn't change His mind. He had given a thing, choice, and it remained given. He stayed with us, talked to us, walked with us, taught us, ministered to us, judged us, while there was still the penalty of sin over us. And through it all, He loved us. He loved us right back into His arms through Jesus. He made a way out of the technical legalities of the devil's usurpment. He loved us enough to let us choose then. He loves you enough to let you choose now. And He loves you enough that He gives you Jesus and the Holy Spirit to give you the ability to choose correctly and then walk in that choice. He helps us succeed. He is the boost so that we can get a counter cookie. He is the ladder so that we can climb out. He is the gas so we can get somewhere. He is the food we live on. He is the drink that hydrates us. He is the roof over our head, the blanket on our bed. He removes our shame, restores our covering, blows dust away, blesses harvest, removes pain, establishes tools, and shelters our living. Our return to paradise is in His arms. Our stay in paradise is in Him. He cultivates and keeps us. He doesn't dedicate Himself to us out of boredom. He doesn't do it out of pity. He does it out of love, getting us back to the place where He placed us, in His garden, fostering growth, choosing right, and joined with Him. He loves us too much not to help us. He loves you. Let Him help today and every day. 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 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.