Street Pizza

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that rejects fear in all its forms. It emphasizes the importance of faith in God and the power of his word to cast out fear. The message is that despite the challenges and opposition we may face, we have the victory through Jesus. We are encouraged to see ourselves and others through God's eyes and to rely on his promises. The love of God is highlighted as a source of comfort and strength, reminding us of our worth and value. 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 Psalm 49.5 Why should I fear in the days of evil, when iniquity at my heels surrounds me? The world has a certain logic that it likes to follow. It uses testable, viewable logic to determine things. What you see is what you get, and nothing else counts. So if you are a few in number, and you're surrounded by a lot of others, you should feel afraid. This is logical. At the same time, the world celebrates the underdogs who fight against impossible odds, whether they succeed or not. The world always looks to human accomplishment. They like it. They enjoy it. It helps them to keep us in a box. Sure, they did it, the world says, but you're not them. Look at you. You don't have a prayer. Well, in Psalms, we have just that. 150 prayers set to song. David was a man of prayer. He was a man who understood prayer. Praising as prayer. Supplication as prayer. Celebration of victory as prayer. David took everything to the Lord in prayer. The exact thing that we are to be doing. Philippians 4.6 This is why the Psalms are a great place to start when you don't know what to pray. Find one that suits your situation, your mood, and pray it out. Today's verse is part of the first half of that Psalm, and it's looking at how great in their own eyes the wicked get. Look at their money. Look at their power. Look at their accomplishments. Empty. All empty. Yes, they can do things, but those things don't last. Those things don't save. Death comes for them all. And then what? They are appointed as a flock for Sheol. Death shall be their shepherd. The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning. Their beauty will decay in Sheol, far from their mansion. Proverbs 49.14 Empty victories, dead legacies. In the end, there is not much for the plentifully powerful. But we're stuck with them now, you might say. That's true. This is their chance to do things, good or bad. They can cause us trouble. They can try and shut down the message of Jesus. They can try and bury it. They can try and bury us. It is troublesome, but it isn't as much of a game changer as they like to think. And it's because of a promise made to humanity way back in the Garden. I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel. Genesis 3.15 This was a prophetic punishment directed at Satan. It's still coming through today. It isn't fun being bruised on the heel. It hurts. It can make you limp for a time. It isn't pleasant. And it's hard to get your shoes to fit right. Some translations actually use crush instead of bruise. It doesn't change the message. It's temporary. We recover. We go on. It ends up feeling as if it had never happened. He will bruise your head. Whether bruising or crushing, when you're dealing with a snake, this is a serious blow. The Hebrew word for bruise means to gape, to snap at, to overwhelm. It is a covering or a breaking or a bruising. We hear it in such biblical languages, shall fall on me, shall bruise, and he crushes me. Again, having heels snapped isn't that bad. Even having an ankle crushed doesn't kill. Although the enemy has tried to get the opposite integrated into the human mindset. See Achilles. However you look at the heel, when it comes to the head, it is almost always fatal. This is a severe difference in outcomes. Yes, the enemy will snap at our heels. Yes, he may bite, bruise, or wound. But Jesus has great crutches and the Holy Spirit has a great recovery plan. In the meantime, that big bad enemy that got you so worked up, well he's dead. And thinking about snakes, especially ones that don't survive well in water, if you stick them in a bucket and start adding water to it, they will panic. They will strike out at anything near them just in total blind panic. Well, it's not quite a comeuppance yet, but we're heading that way if you look at Revelation. But at least when we see the punishment coming upon the wicked, the consequences for their actions, when we see the whirlwind of the moves of God occurring in the natural, they are going to panic, they are going to squirm, and they are going to strike out at everything around them. As bad as you think it is, they are going to think it's a million times worse. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord's work, because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. 1 Corinthians 15, 57-58 There are dozens of verses like this in the Bible. The Lord has worked hard to make sure we get the message. For the Lord your God is He who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you. Deuteronomy 20, verse 4 Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit. 1 Peter 3, 18 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1, 9 In Jesus, by Jesus, and through Jesus, we have the victory. He has overcome the world. John 16, 33 That includes physical things, mental things, emotional things, man-made things, and spiritual things. Everything in any phase of existence or dimensionality that makes up the world. Jesus has victory over it all. What does it matter if a bunch of enemies are rearing up their heads and getting uppity? It doesn't matter if they're hounding us and nipping at our heels. From their perspective, they're about to swallow us and achieve victory. From ours, they're about to get stomped by Jesus. It's too easy to let this world remain the focus of our eyes. After all, we're in it, right in the middle of things. We are in flesh bodies. We can see the world. We can touch it, experience it. It's hard to shift our thinking and see things through Jesus' eyes. To view things that we cannot see. Or harder, to see the things we can see, but in a totally different way. It's hard to see our partners from Jesus' perspective. After all, we live with them. We know them better than anyone else. Rough edges and all. We experience it all. Not just the nice things. Jesus, though, he sees none of the bad. He sees a sparkling, shining, perfect person. Because in him we are. In him we move, live, and have our being. Acts 17, 28. We're little Jesus clones. New creatures, created to be exactly the same as himself. 2 Corinthians 3.18. That's what Romans 12.2 is about. That's what renewing our mind is all about. It isn't just about understanding the things of God better. It's transforming our thinking through the word. Believing the promises that the Lord has for us and for those around us. Believing that what Jesus said is true. That there are no limits or epochs in which some things operate and others don't. That everything he said is true. It's about seeing the world through blood-colored glasses. Revealing to us, through the Holy Spirit, the potential that exists in ourselves and those around us in him. So that we can support each other, encourage each other, and maintain our walk with the Lord together. It's too easy to give up. We have a bodily reaction to fear. It is there, but not for the reasons we tend to think. It isn't there for us to fight or flight. It's simply information for our spirit. The message? Something to subdue. We might come against it directly with the authority Jesus gave us. We might take it to him in prayer and let him deal with it. But we were never meant to flee. Fear is not as big and mighty as it thinks. And it is the same thing with its master. The enemy isn't as big and tough as we're supposed to think. 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 The next time the cacophony of those against you gets to overwhelming you, remember that you have a God of promises. You have a God who is trustworthy. You have a God who can be relied on. A living one who can meet you wherever you are. Strive to be all that he says you can be. Stand on him and in him. That is where the victory is. You may get a bruised heel, but the enemy is roadkill. Never forget that. As big and bad and boogly as he tries to be, the enemy is street pizza. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Colossians 2, 9-10. Ever been to a buffet? Those temples to gluttony? Most of us have. We don't think of them as they really are. We think of them as cheap food. Take all that you want and then take a little more. Take until your belt pops, your breathing shallows out, and you start to sweat a little bit. Stuff yourself with potatoes, breads, salads, macaroni, beans, meat, dessert, and everything in between. Go until you physically cannot put another bite in you without risking going full-on Mr. Creosote. That is what we are. Full of Jesus. Full. Jesus has within himself the entirety of who the Lord is. All of what makes God, God. It is in Jesus. And he is in us. We have the resurrecting power of God within us. We have the healing power of God within us. We have all of who God is and what God can do living inside us. Jesus is in us. He isn't at our beck and call. We can't order reality around ourselves to suit ourselves. The Word is in us, and we need to operate by the Word. But if Jesus is in us, and the entirety of the Deity is in him, then how can there be room for anything else? How can sickness get in? How can depression thrive? How can anxiety rise up? We are full to overflowing with passion for our God. The name above all names is within you. Meditate on that. Think on it until you can feel it inside you like a flotation device filling up to lift you above your troubles, your problems. They'll still exist, but you will have a totally different perspective on them. You'll have Jesus lifting you. Jesus filling you. It's Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Remember that next time a germ tries to move in. Next time a black thought tries to grip you. No vacancy. No room at the end. Move along. Move along. With Jesus in you, what can come against you? 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.