Fear: A Driving Force

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” 

1 John 4:18

There is something going on in my life that I’m not quite ready to share with you at this time but I can say that fear has tried to creep in and take over. Also allow me to say that I’m not one to succumb to fear, I live through faith. 

Recently I have been taking everything at face value. It is what it is. I allow outside influences to steer my thoughts and I’ve never done that before because I’m so focused on God. Here lately the dark one has been doing overtime trying to get me to live in FEAR! My prayer and meditation remains on God but again, outside influences and negativity try to seep into my being. 

“Fear is an acronym (I received this in my email this weekend from Bible Gateway) False Evidence Appearing Real.” How did they know I was dealing with this? Oh, they didn’t but GOD did and made sure the message was sent to me and received!

Lent for me is always a time where mysteries are revealed to me. The Greek meaning of mystery is defined as: what was not known but is now revealed. My body is going through some earthly changes; changes that scare me and have me dawdling in fear, but I can’t and won’t live there because I have an immense faith that there is something greater going on.

As I walk on faith, people will come at me saying but you have to be looked at, you have to see a doctor, you have to do this and do that, you can’t just rely on faith. I would like to slap them upside the head but I won’t, I’ll just simply say, “Thanks for caring but this is my cross to bear.” (I know, I can see your eye roll from here.)

God has a plan and that is to get His message across and He can be as subtle as the dark one when it comes to conveying a message. He wants and NEEDS us to walk on faith to find 'perfect love' and He’ll carry us the rest of the way on this little blip we call life. If you think for one moment that these fifty, sixty, one hundred years of life that you live on this planet is all that there is, you are sadly mistaken. 

We are on a mission for Him and He uses every way possible, even deaths, for us to see the Light. Take for example people who run on and on about what they hate of the Muslim people. People they don’t know and have never met. Don’t tell me because you’ve met a couple of them you hate all of them, really? And what they’ve done to the Christian faith?  (more in a later post about the Crusades)

God at work does not mean everything He does is rainbows and beauty, some of the things that has to happen HAS TO BE ugly, or no one would sit up and take notice. Take the Muslim women who have converted to Christianity secretly. You assume all Muslims are killers and worship a false god. Do you know that many are over there sacrificing their life for Jesus? How else can God wake up an evil nation? Because I choose not to HATE, I’m considered Un-American, really? Well I consider you who hate unChristian. Touché. May I ask if you hate Jews in America? Germans? Mexicans? No? Just Muslims?

When you spew hate, you are doing the Muslim’s work for them, they are feeding off fear and hate and you are feeding off of what they are planting while God is busy at work trying to get you and them to see Jesus, to spread LOVE not to spread hate. If that is your mission, you are no different than the very Muslims you abhor. When I see the slaughtering and pillaging I see God at work and see the Muslims realizing that this Jesus is bigger than anything they’ve ever imagined. They are delivering a message from OUR GOD without even knowing it, which is why I said God is subtle. He KNOWS what He’s doing.

Romans 5:15 (NIV) “But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!”

If dying for Christ is wrong; if God is wrong for taking lives; if we’re just here to read and believe, then this is a sad day to be a Christian. Take note: It is NOT a sad day to be a Christian, this is the time to stand up for Christ and show the people of the world that Jesus IS worth dying for in every way imaginable. Fear does not rule our world! But I see many who feed on the same venom those they despise feed on. You cannot bring people to Jesus through loathing what you don’t like in the world. 

If I have to die to show you how Christ lives then I am honored to be a part of this master plan and if satan thinks I’m going to go in fear and feed off of what the hatemongers wish me to take a bite of, he has another thing coming because the only thing I fear is what is left behind and that is leaving my family. But I’ll take Jesus over my family any day. 

This brings to mind a beloved worship song:

Our God is greater, our God is stronger, God you are higher than any other.
Our God is Healer, Awesome in Power, Our God! Our God!
And if our God is for us, then who could ever stop us.
And if our God is with us, then what could stand against.
And if our God is for us, then who could ever stop us.
And if our God is with us, then what could stand against.
Then what could stand against.

Think of this song and the power of YOUR God before you spew your next rant of antagonism. 

Tunnel Vision

2 Cor. 4:18 “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

Tunnel Vision

There is a world around me that has tunnel vision. They only see one point of view and that is theirs or people who believe in the same thing while all others are wrong and considered a liberal. Their vision is so shallow, any attempt to steer them right they become boisterous, overbearing and sometimes downright rude.

I try desperately to separate myself from them but as a living loving soul, I see a good spot in all people, in all walks of life and in many different colors. Here lately what has been bothering me has been the bashing of Religions, Races and Lifestyles. I just don’t get it or understand and I wish someone could enlighten me without bashing me and calling me a Libtard, why because I have an open mind as opposed to being close-minded?

Take the Muslim religion. There is such a hate for them because of what they see on TV, read on their screen, or listen to a minister bashing the Muslim faith. Do people try and understand the religion or would they rather jump on the bandwagon of hate? You cannot brand them all the same and if you took one second to stop hating, you might see a human being in there somewhere.

Note: Have you ever walked past a Mosque and had Muslims come running out with machetes ready to behead you? Of course not. You only hate what the Arab country and their men are doing. You don’t even understand the culture OR religion, you just want to hate

Then there is the black community. They are not all the same! They don’t all agree with the hate that is thrown at them. They don’t all want to riot and start fires and protest, they want to be HEARD but it is the people with tunnel vision who only see blacks as a degrading term. Have you ever had one in your home, eating off of your forks? I did and guess what, they are human too!

Note: Have you ever lived in a black community? Did they run the streets rioting and burning down houses? Of course not. You only hate the black community when it fits to your form of hate filled attitude. You have never tried to understand the culture or the person of a different color.

And guess what? I’ve sat at the same table and on the same church pew as a homosexual. Did I move away as if the person had the plague? Did I run home and put on facebook, “How could they allow those people in a church?” What sick and twisted mind thinks like that? I’ll tell you what kind, the people with tunnel vision who only see what they want to see and agrees with only those who are in agreement with their line of thinking.

All other people are just wrong!

Let me ask you this, do you bash the Catholics? They worship false idols. I was born and raised Catholic and around the Church sanctuary there are statues of Mary and Jesus and I have many times seen women at their feet praying to the statue. They place statues of Mary in their yard in hopes it will bring them good will and grace. They have priests who have been molesting small children long before there was EVER an internet with social media coverage. They pray and worship the Saints too. Are these atrocities any worse than the raping of women or the beheading of Christians?

Do you bash the Jews? They don’t even believe Christ is the Son of God. But do you bash them? No, or maybe this is one of those things you hide when you proclaim, “I stand with the Jews.” Do you really know what you’re standing for? Of course not, you don’t WANT to understand their culture.

You pick and choose the scripture that suits you. You also pick and choose which religion is wrong (meaning not the same belief as yours); you pick and choose who you love and hate. When Jesus said, “Love your brother as yourself.” He NEVER said pick and choose which brother you’ll love and hate or surely He would have HATED Judas for betraying Him, right?

You might not want to believe this but you are the Judas’ of Christianity. You are selling out Christ for what YOU believe in. Selling out mankind for all that Jesus taught, for what, a political allegiance, an ‘I’m right, your wrong’ attitude? 

You pick and choose sin like it is today’s bread to eat. “It’s only a small sin. I stole a gumball not a car.”  Isn’t stealing, stealing? Can we choose our sin too? Mankind is lost with his tunnel vision intact, seeing and believing in what he picks and chooses, not what is right and what is wrong.

When Jesus said, “Man cannot live by bread alone.” For some reason, I don’t think He was talking about the loaves of dough we eat; He was referring metaphorically to the Word alone. His Word alone is nothing and meant nothing if you don’t PRACTICE what He PREACHED!

Alleluia Amen! God bless each and every one of you.

Phil. 4:9  “Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.”