Whom shall I fear?

What are you afraid of?
Are you afraid of anything?
Do current events make you scared?
Do you hear of the influence that radical Islam has and is gaining and start to worry about life?

That is where I was the other day.
In a class we were talking about all the events going on in the world and we came to radical Islam and stopped and camped out there for a while. When I left the class I was being dramatic and thinking about how the world is going to end and how we are all going to die and things are going to be bad. I was fearing a people group. I did not get to far into this thought because a certain passage came to mind. It is Matthew 10:28.
[Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.]

This goes against human thinking. If someone is dangerous, they should be feared. If they have the ability to take your life, you should probably do what they say.
What if it comes down to denying God and living, or denying man and dying?
It is doubtful you will have to face that kind of decision anytime soon, so let's take it to a smaller scale. What if it is just as simple as denying God and being accepted? Instead of the alternative which is being looked at as some sort of weirdo that actually believes this thing called the Bible is true.

I suppose that is another place that we could take this. 
Do you believe that what the Bible says is true?
Do you believe that there is actually a God out there that loves you and sent His son as a sacrifice to die for you? Do you think that is where it ends? With a nice, pretty, convenient, personal salvation with no real work or sacrifice afterwards. Do you think there is no personal responsibility on you after this?

Let's say that you actually do believe what the bible says, you are a follower of the Way, and you want to glorify God in everything you do. Then what is next? What happens when bad things start happening everywhere? What happens when your life is at risk? We could probably play this game all night. But what should happen when a situation arises and it is either your faith or not?

This passage is pretty cut and dry.  
If you call yourself a believer, then you have nothing to fear.
If the King of Kings dwells within us, we have nothing to fear. 
If the country is overtaken by people that want to do nothing but kill you, you have nothing to fear.
If you deny the Lord, you have much to fear.
If you deny the existence of the King, you have much to fear.
If everything in the world is going great but you do not have relationship with Jesus, you have much to fear.

Why is this?
It is simple. 
Man can kill you. 
And that is good news.  
It is good news because that is the only thing man can do.
Man has no control over your soul. 
God can destroy both body and soul.
He is whom we should fear. 
He is where our life is found.
He is the sustainer.
He is the King.
He is seated high on His throne.
No matter what events are happening on earth, God is still on the throne.
Nothing can change that fact. It is the truth.
He has control over body and soul.
So why do we ever fear man? We do we care what people think about us?
Why do we worry about impending doom? We have the King on our side. 
Our response is to not back down. Our response is to share His love no matter what is going on around us. 

If sharing His love and His message gets you killed, it does not matter.
That is not the end of the road for you.
We have nothing to fear on this earth. 

The Moment

John 16:33
[ ³³ “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”]

Do you remember where you were for big moments in history?
For example, if I say the date 9/11/2001, you probably remember where you were when you first heard about the twin towers. I was in the tenth grade and in Coach Nolte's world geography class. Class was going on as usual until Mrs. Pevito walked into the class and whispered something to the Coach. They then preceded to tell us something happened and we watched about it on TV for the rest of the day.

When you talk to people that were alive when Pearl Harbor was attacked, they more than likely remember where they were when they heard about it.
There is something about big moments that stick out. We remember them because they are important. We remember them because they change everything.

Do you remember the details about big things that were personal to you?
I was 17 when I gave my life to the Lord on July 10, 2003 at East Texas Baptist Encampment.
In 2007 in the country of Ukraine is the first time I remember hearing the verse at the top.
I know a favorite verse may not seem like that big of a deal to you, but this verse has shaped my thoughts and actions ever since I can remember hearing it.

It is a simple verse that gets to the point and describes what your walk with Jesus should look like.
["I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace."]
Jesus is referencing everything he just told his disciples. He had just told them that times weren't going to be easy. Stuff was going to happen. He(Jesus) was going away. The disciples would then receive the Spirit once he was gone. Jesus was just preparing them. In essence He is saying, "It isn't always going to be easy, but remember that I told you that. And remember where your peace is found. It is not found in man. Your peace is found in me." 
Jesus is saying that the only place our peace should reside is in Him. When we put it somewhere else, we will start to have issues. The troubles of this world will get to us and we won't be able to cope and hang and do the work that needs to get done. 

Next, Jesus just reiterates what He had been telling His disciples for quite some time. 
["In this world you will have trouble."]
I am not quite sure the disciples fully grasped this concept until they say Jesus hanging on a cross. 
If we follow Jesus and everything that a statement like that means, we will run into opposition. 
People do not understand the message. There a few reasons for this. Those reasons are not terribly pertinent at the moment so maybe we will look into those at another day. The point is that following Christ will lead to times that you have trouble. It might be a long period of time, it might be short, but if you follow Christ, you will face opposition at some point. 

And when this trouble happens, it points you to the beginning and ending of the verse. 
["But take heart! I have overcome the world."]
This is such a great way to end a verse and a chapter.
Jesus provides the peace so that when you have trouble it does not matter because he is your peace provider and your peace provider has overcome the world.
One of the great things about this is that Jesus was still on the earth with His disciples. He had not died yet. He had not been arrested and put through a phony trial yet. No. He was still walking with and teaching the disciples everyday. He was telling the disciples nothing can stop them. He was empowering them to take on the world and change it through the love of Christ.

The simplicity of this verse is beautiful. There are no hidden meanings. It is out in the open.
1. Christ provides peace.
2. You will have trouble.
3. I have overcome it so it doesn't matter.
 Our peace is found in the man that the grave could not hold down. So when trouble comes your way, it does not matter. Put your faith in Him and it will not even seem like trouble. You will be able to handle anything that comes your way because Christ lives within you. 
I think if we all started to live our lives this way, we would start to see a better world and a world that was changed in the name of Christ. It is a challenge that we need to live out and accomplish.

Impossible Part 2

This is part 2 to a blog that was written in December. If you want to read the first, click here.

What is possible if we start to believe in the impossible?
Are there examples of this in our life? Should there be?
There has to be examples in the Bible, right?
What does it say? We already know that the thought of Jesus existing in the way the Bible describes should be impossible. So what else does it say? What else is possible with an impossible God?

Ezekiel 37:1-3
[ ¹ The hand of the LORD was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. ² He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. ³ He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
   I said, “Sovereign LORD, you alone know.”]

This sounds impossible, right?
Can these bones live?
How can they? When it says they were very dry, it means there was no longer flesh on them.
This is not like the story of Lazarus who had only been dead for a few days when Jesus raised him from the dead. This is completely different. These bones had been there for a long time. There was nothing on them. They were just bones. A huge pile of bones.
If you were asked if those bones could live, what would be your response?
That seems like a very easy question, right? And maybe that is where we go wrong.
We never even consider the impossible to be possible.
There is no way they could live, right? It is a pile of bones. That is impossible. There is no way that can happen. Impossible things don't happen in this world. Why should we believe any different?

Ezekiel  37:4-7
[⁴ Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! ⁵ This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath^[a] enter you, and you will come to life. ⁶ I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’”
 ⁷ So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. ⁸ I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.]

So these bones can live? The passage goes on and Ezekiel does something else and the bones come to life. How insane is that? Dry bones that came to life? It should be impossible.

This passage pointed out a few things about Ezekiel that I think generally are true about us also.
1. God Spoke to Ezekiel.
2. Ezekiel had a choice to make.

God spoke to Ezekiel. He brought him somewhere and asked him a question.
Do we ever think this happens in our life? Maybe we don't hear the audible voice of God, but you know there is something going on. You know that there is potential for something big. Maybe God is going to want something big from you? Maybe it is going to take some trust from your part, because once God spoke, Ezekiel had to make a choice.
God asked him if the bones could live. Ezekiel said it was possible. He then did what God told him to do. He made the choice to do God's work. Because of his believing that anything was possible with God, dry bones came to life.
Ezekiel believed and the impossible happened. Do we?

It seems easy enough, right?
Believe that all things are possible with God. How on earth could I say no to Him?
He is God. I would be foolish to say no.
But how often does it happen?
How often do we get the feeling that we are supposed to do something and actually act on it?
We get this nudge that we should go talk to someone or pray for them or help in some way. 
Does this ever happen to you?
I know it does to me.
How often do you act on it?
Maybe if we started doing more of the things that followers of the Way should be doing, we could see something like this valley of dry bones in our life.
We are surrounded by dry bones everywhere we go.
People are dead. They are lost. They have no hope. It is almost like there is no flesh on them.
They are past the point of ever being saved.
Well, that is what we think. So it is best to just keep to ourselves. We don't want things to get awkward.
But, what if we did open our mouths? What if we did make the decision to do what God asked us to do? Do you think it would be possible for these bones to come to life?
Isn't that what our purpose is? Isn't that what we believe?
We do carry the hope with us, right?
So what the heck are we waiting on?
What are we so scared of?

Good=Suffering?

God is good. Right?
Well that is what we always say. God is good. God works everything together for our good.
That is what we are always told at least. And that last part was almost scripture.  But do we believe it?
We say and hear it all the time, so it has to be true, right? But did the writer believe it? Or what exactly did the writer mean by good?
The verse that people more than likely take this from Romans 8:28, and it says, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose."
The writer was Paul. 
What do we know about Paul?
He persecuted to their death the followers of this new religious sect called, "The Way."
He was an extremely devout Jew.
He had a radical conversion into this religious sect.
Through a process he became a very important player in this sect.
He wrote many books in the New Testament.
He faced much persecution and suffering for his part in this thing.
2 Corinthians 11:24-25 give a hint of what he went through.
"Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea."
This life sounds like a dream, right?
Who wouldn't call this good?
Well it does not fit the definition I normally use for the word.
With everything that Paul did for the Kingdom, why did he still have to suffer?
Was he not doing what God had called him to do according to his purpose?
If he was, what exactly was good about it?

Maybe, our definition of good and how it is used is slightly different than the definition God uses.
Or maybe we just don't understand and won't understand.
The platform that Paul had gave him a voice to reach many for the kingdom.
That same platform is also why he faced all the persecution.
If the Jewish leaders at the time didn't view Paul as a threat, they would have let him go.
But they knew what he was doing and how powerful he was. So they tried to stop and stop him.
They didn't want the potentially dangerous word to get out. The message Paul carried made everything they believed obsolete. What did Paul do when he faced the troubles? He continued on. He wasn't going to stop proclaiming the message he knew he was supposed to proclaim.

Did Paul get caught up in what was going to happen to him? He knew the consequences.
Did he think he deserved some comfortable life just because he was gracious enough to follow the Lord? He knew what he was doing. He knew what was going to happen to him. He then called it good. I think what we can learn from Paul in this situation is something very valuable.
He looked at the big picture and realized where he fit into it.
He knew that if his life was glorifying the Lord by the message he preached and the life he lived, then all the side things did not really matter.
Maybe it is that simple. Maybe that is what we need to get from Paul's life.
Maybe we just need to see that all the small side things do not matter. We have to glorify God with everything that we have.  We have to start realizing the importance of living for the Kingdom.
If something good happens for the Kingdom and if we are followers of this belief, how then can we complain about it?

Paul knew his calling. He didn't get caught up in the distractions that were coming his way. He didn't get caught up in this idea of a comfortable Christian life. He glorified God with everything he had and the world was changed drastically because of it. Are we ready to do the same thing? Or are the distractions of life going to stop us?