Fearless

--> “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1)
David had plenty of reason to be afraid. Few men in history have had giants, kings, armies, even entire nations of people trying to kill him. Yet David didn’t let fear control his life. He knew it, felt it, but didn’t surrender to it. How was he able to withstand the daily terror of running for his life?

David’s confidence was in God, specifically expressed in Psalm 27 by three word pictures: light, salvation, and a stronghold. And because God was these three things to him, David had the confidence to say, “Whom shall I fear?” Why these three pictures? What do these three things have to do with David not being afraid of anyone or anything? 

To answer this question, I asked my small group what things they afraid of. Specifically I phrased it this way: “What are some fears that have marked your life to this point?” I had a hunch that their answers would reveal exactly why David trusted God for light, for salvation, and for a stronghold. 

My hunch paid off big time:

• “I fear I will disappoint my family, that I will fail as a father and a husband.”      “I’m afraid that something bad will happen to my kids.”
• “I sometimes wonder if God will really save me, or that I’ve messed up so bad He will abandon me.” 
• “I wonder if today will be the day I die.”
• “I worry… What if something happens to me that I can’t handle?”

As everyone shared, I jotted down generally the fear they expressed: failure, abandonment, security and safety, fear of the unknown. As I looked over the list, my suspicions were confirmed…

 

Next, I asked the group how people typically handled fear. I told them I didn’t want “Sunday school” answers here. We all know how we should handle fear, but how do we usually handle it? Sometimes we react in anger when we feel threatened and lash out. Other times we seek to control our surroundings by insulating and isolating against even the possibility of being hurt.

 

It got deep, I can tell you. We hit some nerves to be sure. The Holy Spirit was uncovering some things that needed to be faced and dealt with at the cross of Christ.

I turned to Psalm 27:1 and read the verse, “The LORD is my light and my salvation… the LORD is the stronghold of my life.” I asked the group, “Why those three things? Of all the ways David has described God to in the Psalms, what is it about these three descriptions that makes David be able to say, ‘I don’t have to fear anything or anyone’?’

 

I told the group my theory: I believed that all the fears we expressed fell into one of three categories – fear of the unknown, fear of harm or danger, and fear of being vulnerable and exposed. These three categories applied across the board: physically, emotionally, and spiritually. My hunch at the beginning was that these three word pictures David used – light, salvation, stronghold – addressed these three categories of fear perfectly.

Light.  
What does light do? It illuminates. It reveals. It exposes. It dispels darkness. When you walk into a dark room, you have no idea what you are walking into until you turn on the light. As soon as the light comes on, you can see what’s there, you can know the truth about your situation. Because God is his Light, David can know what’s really true – about his life, about himself, about God. He doesn’t have to try to figure it out himself, always wondering and second-guessing, “Did I make the right decision? Did I do the right thing?” He can know what’s true and walk in the security of that knowledge: “Teach me Your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.” (Ps. 27:11)

 

If one of our greatest areas of fear is the unknown, God will be our Light and reveal the truth. We don’t have to fear not knowing anymore! Jesus told His disciples, ““I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life… If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:12, 31-32) Free from what? Fear and the bondage it brings! Look, Christ faced down death and won. If we put our trust in Him, “of whom shall we be afraid?”

 

Salvation. 
What is salvation? The dictionary defines salvation as “a source or means of being saved from harm, ruin, or loss.” In Psalm 27 David describes the things that threaten to harm him – assailing enemies, armies encamped against him, war and violence, false witnesses defaming his character, even being abandoned by his own parents. If anyone needed saving, it was David!

 

But what was David’s reaction to all this? “My heart shall not fear… yet I will be confident.” (Ps. 27:3) David’s confidence was not in his own strategy or skill or ability. David’s confidence was in God. “The LORD is my salvation.”

 

One of the greatest fears we all share is the fear of being destroyed with no one to rescue. We fear death, we dear harm, we fear destruction. And not just physical threats; some have gotten into such an overwhelming financial burden of debt, they fear it will destroy them and their family. Some are held in bondage to addictions to food, drugs, alcohol, pornography, sex, money, success, that they are ruining their lives and see no way out. Others are being destroyed from the inside out by their own bodies, racked with sickness, disease, or infirmity. We need a Savior! “The LORD is my salvation.”

 

Now does God always heal in this life? Does God always make our difficult circumstances go away? No. But God offers salvation nonetheless – not always from something, but always through something. We have the sure promise of a Holy God that this life is not all there is. Those who trust in Him will see the Kingdom, where there is no more sorrow, sickness, pain, or suffering. Forever.

 

When the apostle Paul was addressing the suffering of persecuted Christians in the first century church, he encouraged them with this truth:

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed… So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Cor. 4:7-9, 16-18)

David expressed it this way, 

“[What, what would have become of me] had I not believed that I would see the Lord's goodness in the land of the living!

Wait and hope for and expect the Lord; be brave and of good courage and let your heart be stout and enduring. Yes, wait for and hope for and expect the Lord.” (Ps. 27:13-14, Amplified)

The Lord IS our salvation, both in this life and the life to come. Let the world do its worst. In mercy God will deliver us, or in mercy He will sustain us in the midst of our suffering. But the Kingdom is coming. And those who trust Him will be there. “Whom shall I fear?”
 

Stronghold. 
A stronghold is a fortress. High walls and ample defenses. It is stocked with provision and built for protection. Inside it, we are safe from all enemies.

 

Another area of fear we all share is of being exposed and vulnerable. We fear revealing our true selves to anyone because they might reject us, and that rejection is too painful. We all find that out the hard way, don’t we? Our response is to retreat into a fortress of our own making. Like Adam and Eve, we will build it out of whatever is laying around – sticks, leaves, debris. Fragile things these homemade strongholds.

 

The truth is – if you really want to get down to it – is that we don’t know how to build a stronghold; we only now how to build a prison. But we call it a stronghold because it seems to work. It keeps out everything that might hurt us and protects us from being exposed for ho we are. What we don’t realize is that we aren’t keeping anything out, we are just keeping ourselves locked inside.

 

This expresses itself in a number of ways in our lives: 

·      The Poser: a carefully crafted persona that we think everyone will like because we have believed the lie that the true us – the one God made for His glory – is not good enough. We dare not risk rejection of our truest self, so we invent one based on what we think the culture (or our friends or parents or whoever) want us to be. The problem is that it is a lie. Lies take an enormous amount of spiritual, emotional, and mental energy to keep up. Eventually, they collapse under the weight of our own lives and the result is devastation.

·     The Tyrant. This is the person who seeks to control everything and everyone as a means of protecting himself from pain. If he can foresee and prepare himself against every possible eventuality and possibility of hurt, and take the necessary steps to prevent it, then maybe he will not have his worst fears come true. The over-protective parent. The domineering husband. The domineering wife. The manipulative friend. The demanding boss. The workaholic. These are just a few of the self-made strongholds that become prisons of fear.

·      The Loner. It stands to reason that if I never open my life to anyone then no one can hurt me. I can never fail if I never risk. I can never be rejected if I never offer. So he checks out. Life just rolls by and he passively watches from the sidelines, numb to its pleasures as well as its pain. He seeks to preserve his life by never living it. When he gets to the end of it, he realizes what he has done and lunches into eternity in utter despair.

 

David sang,

“For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble;

he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock.

And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me,

and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy;

I will sing and make melody to the Lord.” (Ps. 27:5-6)

So how does that work? What is the difference between hiding in a prison we made and a fortress God provides?

 

The best answer I have ever seen is in 1 John 4:16-18)

“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”

John draws a direct correlation between the love God has for us and our fear. What he is saying is essentially this: “Look, if God knows the truth about you – the good, the bad, and the ugly – and still loves you in spite of all that, what do you care what anyone else thinks about you? If you don’t have to fear the rejection of God at the judgment because of what Christ has done for you , then why would you fear the judgment or rejection of anyone else? Who else matters?”

 

We can live freely, love openly, and offer our true selves with wild abandon, because in Christ we are accepted by the God who knows us best and loves us anyway. His love is the stronghold of our lives where fear is kept out by His perfect love. The key that opens the fortress to us is in the word abide. We don’t use that word much in our culture. A modern translation might be “to move in an live there.” We make it our home. We settle there and stay. How? Glad you asked…

 

Look again at 1 John 4:16: “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.” A lot of us have heard that Jesus loves us.  Many even accept intellectually the possibility that that might even be true. But it’s something else altogether to truly believe it. Belief always results in a change of some kind. If we say we believe something, we must either adjust our lives to align with that belief or else admit that we don’t really believe it after all.

 

To believe the love that God has for us – to rest the full weight of our lives on it – is to move into a new neighborhood. We pack our things and leave behind that homemade shack of sticks we have called our fortress, and move into the sprawling freedom of being loved and accepted in Christ. Now make no mistake, there is work to be done. There are things that are going to have to change. That’s why John said that His love must be “perfected” in us, meaning it has to be gradually brought to its maturity, its intended state. That’s a life-long, ongoing process. But it is also an expression of His love because “the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” (Heb. 12:6) His correction means He loves you and has accepted you!

 

So it doesn’t matter what anyone else says or thinks, or how they react to your truest you. If you are in Christ, He will be your defender. The LORD is the stronghold of your life. You are now free to live, to love, and to offer all you were created to offer. Fearlessly.

 

Isn’t that good news? Don’t we all want that kind of life? Can I say with David, “Because the LORD is my light, my salvation, and my stronghold, I don’t have to live in fear anymore!”

HD or SD? Depends on your perspective...

Week 15, Day 3 of the Grand Story... reading in Psalm 73 about why God allows evil to seemingly prosper...

"For, behold, those who are far from You will perish; You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You. But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord God my refuge, That I may tell of all Your works." (Ps. 73:27-28, NASB emphasis mine)

One of the difficulties we have in puzzling out why God allows evil to continue is in our very definitions of "good" and "evil." We tend to define these terms in relation to the effects we experience in the immediate moment. If it brings harm or pain or discomfort or death, we call it "evil." If it brings happiness, pleasure, comfort, prosperity, or good feelings, we call it "good." We can't for the life of us figure out why God seems to allow "evil" and withhold "good" from so many people.

It's a bit like HD versus Standard Definition. There is a standard definition we all assume about many things -- life, death, right, wrong, good, and evil. But there is something missing from the picture. We are settling for less than there is available. There is a clearer view available. God says, 

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isa. 55:8-9, ESV)

God has a "Higher Definition" than the Standard Definition" we are used to.

God defines "good" and "evil" in terms of distance from Him, from His heart. "Those who are far" from God perish. They miss what life is all about. They are born, live, and die completely cut off from why they were even created. Is there anything more evil than that?

Conversely, the Psalmist says, "the nearness of God is my good." Scripture defines "good" as that which brings us nearer to God. Many of the things we think of as "good" might actually pull us farther away from God -- success, prosperity, comfort, certain pleasurable experiences. Likewise, much of what we call "evil," particularly in terms of suffering, can actually turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to us because of the "nearness of God" we experience in those times. I am speaking here from personal experience, not just sappy Hallmark-card sentimentality. The testing of my faith has proven to produce good things in me every single time.

I am not saying that suffering and pain are good things. Please don't misunderstand me. What I am saying is anything that results in us being increasingly more like Jesus should be considered "good." I don't expect everyone to agree with me here, or share my convictions. That's okay. Even the Psalmist said, "When I pondered to understand this, It was troublesome in my sight... UNTIL I came into the sanctuary of God; Then I perceived their end." (Ps. 73:16-17, NASB) Sometimes how we see things depends on where we are standing. Until we come into the "sanctuary of God" -- into His presence and get His perspective -- our view will be limited to our own understanding. We will be seeing in standard def instead of HD.

"The LORD is Good!" - Easy for Me to Say?

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Week 15, Day 1 of the Grand Story…
"Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! ... those who seek the LORD lack no good thing... The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and His ears toward their cry... The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit... The LORD redeems the life of His servants; none of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned." (from Psalm 34)

I love the Foo Fighters. Great band and I enjoy a lot of their music. "Learn to Fly" is one of my all-time favorites. But I have to admit they have one song in particular that really bugs me...

One of these days the ground will drop out from beneath your feet
One of these days your heart will stop and play its final beat
One of these days the clocks will stop and time won't mean a thing
One of these days their bombs will drop and silence everything

But it's alright
Yeah it's alright
I said it's alright

Easy for you to say
Your heart has never been broken
Your pride has never been stolen Not yet not yet

(These Days by the Foo Fighters)

What a load of crap. What an arrogant load of absolute crap! David had his heart broken. Multiple times. He had his pride stolen by his own son, among many others. He experienced some of the worst life has to offer, not a little of which was by his own hand. But he could still say to his last breath, "Taste and see that the LORD is good." Life is good. It will be alright. There is a faithful God who will keep His promises. All of them. Every time. If we miss them it's because we listened to junk like this and lost all hope. It is possible to be "brokenhearted" and "crushed in spirit" and still say "I lack no good thing" because I trust God.

That doesn't make it “easy for me to say.” Just because I hold fast to my faith in the face of the worst life has to offer doesn’t mean I am naïve or inexperienced. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It’s because I have experienced first hand the faithfulness of God in the middle of the storm. Ask Job. God doesn’t always spare us from the hard stuff, but He never leaves us to fend for ourselves. He always comes through. Always.  

Always.

So whenever that Foo Fighters song comes on, I change it to something more suitable…

When the ground beneath my feet gives way 
and I hear the sound of crashing waves 
all my world is washing out to sea. 
I’m hidden safe in the God who never moves 
holding fast to the promise of the truth 
that You are holding tighter still to me.

The Rock wont move and His Word is strong 
The Rock won’t move and His love can’t be undone 
The Rock of our Salvation!
(The Rock Won’t Move by Vertical Church Band)

"I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the Lord." (Psalm 27:13-14, NASB)

What Do You Want From a King?

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Week 14, Day 3 of the Grand Story...
"But today you have rejected your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses, and you have said to him, ‘Set a king over us' ... when the Lord your God was your king. And now behold the king whom you have chosen, for whom you have asked; behold, the Lord has set a king over you." (1 Sam. 10:19; 12:12-13)

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” -- CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory

I used to think I knew what I really wanted. I would do anything to get it, sacrifice important stuff to have what I wanted. I would even pray and ask God to let me have what I wanted. Only to find out it wasn't all that I thought it would be. Turns out it wasn't what I really wanted after all.

What I really wanted was Him. I just didn't know it at the time. The desires I had were really only ever going to be satisfied by the love of Christ. My vision was too small. I was aiming too low. I was asking for a stale saltine when God wanted to give me prime rib. But he would let me munch on that cracker until it was all gone, and I was still hungry. Then I would be ready for what He had in store all along.

Basically, it all comes down to who you want to be your king. What do you want out of him? Peace? Prosperity? Safety? Security? “A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage”? What we are willing to give up to get what we want says everything about who we really are. We learn that every four years, when we elect a new president. We listen to all the promises and the pretty speeches. Ultimately, we elect as a country the guy who promises us the most stuff, knowing full well he hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of delivering on half of it. 

Why? Because we aren’t looking for a King – capital K– someone that demands our loyalty and unwavering submission to his authority for the good of the kingdom even at the cost of personal comfort and safety. We want a king – little k – to give us the good life right now. We would sign over every bit of freedom we have for a nice house, nice car, and free cable.  Who are we kidding, we would sell our own children -- and we have done exactly that -- for more stuff now. We have rejected God as rightful King over our lives and replaced him with a smaller, scaled-down, easier-to-control version. We have cashed in holiness in exchange for immediate happiness, and the result is that we enjoy neither one!*

Here’s the kicker: We want to be like “all the other nations around us.” We don’t want to be different. We don’t want to stand out. We don’t want to be holy. Because to be holy is to paint a target on your back, to risk it all on the chance that God is faithful and will do everything He promised, if we would trust Him. But God makes us wait. He makes us endure suffering. He makes us work… hard! Why go to all that trouble when there is an easier way? Blend in. Disappear. Become invisible. That way you are free to do what you want, when you want, the way you want, and no one notices or calls you out. No one calls you to something higher or deeper or more meaningful.

O Father in Heaven! Save us from ourselves! Call us to something more! Stir in our hearts revival fires. Wake up your sleeping Bride! Bring glory to the earth through a holy people – Your Church! In the power and authority of the True King, I pray! Amen!

*I use the pronoun "we" to refer to the overall attitude of Americans in general, and the American Church in particular. I include my own propensity for short-sighted selfishness in this assessment.

Discernment... or speculation?

"Far and above the most revealing aspect of anyone’s character is how he handles people. Friends, I hope you understand this—the way a person handles others is the acid test of his true nature." --John Eldredge, The Utter Relief of Holiness

Yesterday, as I was reading through the daily reading in 1 Samuel, I came across a scene that I had read dozens of times before but never really stopped to consider fully. Hannah was a childless woman in Israel, barren in a culture where the ability to have children was seen as the favor of God, and a fruitless womb was interpreted as a curse. Shamed, humiliated, relentlessly oppressed by her husband's other wife who had already given him children, Hannah went to the tabernacle, into the presence of Yahweh, to pour her heart out. Scripture says, "She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly... speaking in her heart, only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard." (1 Sam. 1:10, 13)

What happens next in the narrative is significant. Eli is the high priest at the tabernacle. He sees Hannah. He watches her closely. Scripture says, "Eli observed her mouth." Moving in silent, desperate pleading, tears dripping from her face. Now... watch this carefully. What does this man of God do? How does he respond?

"Eli took her to be a drunken woman. And Eli said to her, 'How long will you go on being drunk? Put your wine away from you.' "(1 Sam. 1:13-14) The original Hebrew word translated "took her" literally means to weave or fabricate. In the modern vernacular, he jumped to a conclusion. He made an assumption based on what he saw without knowing the full story. He speculated.

This is dangerous ground for anyone, but for a pastor this can be particularly harmful to your congregation. Speculation relies wholly on what you can see. The root of the word speculate is the Latin word specere meaning "to look at." The problem is that we all "see" through different lenses that color our perception and interpretation: past experiences, hurts, wounds, unresolved anger or bitterness, and the cynicism that can often result if those things are not addressed and healed.

It works like this: Pastor Bob (totally fictional -- please no speculating) has seen it all in his years of ministry. He has poured his life into caring for the flock and takes his responsibility seriously. But along the way he has been hurt, disappointed, even attacked by the people he serves. He has been lied to, and lied about. He has given Biblical wisdom and advice only to have it be ignored, and then watched marriages and families suffer for it.

Over the years he has become jaded towards people and cynical about their motives. He begins to assume the worst, then look for things in their life to confirm his suspicions. He will find something -- the Enemy will see to that -- and when he does, in his heart he thinks, "Aha! Just as I thought..." and he begins to speculate. He takes what little he sees, mixes it with what he suspects, and fills in the blanks with his own imagination until he comes up with a version of the truth that fits. He makes a judgment, the gavel falls, and the sentence is passed: Guilty by Pastoral Speculation. The sentence is to be labeled, stuck on a shelf in his mind, and held prisoner there forever.  And here is the saddest part of it all: Pastor Bob believes that this is discernment. He believes that he has developed a special insight when what he has really developed is a judgmental heart and a critical spirit.

Kudos to Hannah for not being offended at Eli's accusation. She could have easily been angry and stormed out, "I am never coming back to this church again!" She could have let herself be deeply hurt, given all that she had already experienced. Her priest -- who was supposed to care for her as a child of God -- falsely accused her of drunkenness! She could have blown up Facebook about how she was treated and done a lot of damage, maybe even caused a split. (I know, I know, it's the tabernacle and Israel, but try to roll with it for the sake of making a point.) I have seen it go down that way plenty of times. But Hannah's trust was in God, not men.

It struck me as I read this that if I am not careful, I could easily fall into this trap. God knows, in my short time in ministry (less than ten years) I have already seen enough to be jaded. I have found myself actually saying out loud to another pastor, "Ministry would be great if it weren't for people!" And we laugh like it's this funny joke. But it betrays a shift in my heart that, if I am not aware of it, can turn me into an Eli -- speculating, assuming, judging, accusing, and labeling the very people who need my help most. It is arrogance at its worst.  It makes me wonder if Hannah might have been thinking of Eli when she prayed, "Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed." (1 Sam. 2:3)

Look, Eli was not a bad guy. Once he found out the truth he was pretty encouraging to Hannah. And he did a decent job training a young Samuel (1 Samuel 3). But he had his blind spots (two of them were named Hophni and Phineas), and they ultimately cost him his priesthood and devastated his family for generations. My responsibility as a pastor is to make sure my blind spots are not damaging my family, my congregation, and my potential impact for the Kingdom of God.

There are more ways to disqualify yourself from ministry than a moral failure. I can render myself ineffective by speculating about people's motives, passing judgment on them, and then treating them like second-class sinners rather than grace-given saints, all in the name of discernment.

God, deliver me from myself: from my arrogance, from my imagination about the motives of others. Only you know the whole story about any of us. Help me to take the time to listen and pray before I jump to a conclusion about anyone. May the same grace and mercy you have extended to me be the context for every relationship in my life. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.