I hope and trust this post finds you all having a great day and an awesome week coming to a close for you!
This morning I am going to share a few different things with you. First I would like to share some excerpts from "Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear" by Max Lucado and let them speak to your heart, let your spirit instruct you, as they will. I started reading this book this week and want to share some of Chapter 1, "Why Are We Afraid?"
- Oversize and rude, fear is unwilling to share the heart with happiness. Happiness complies and leaves. Do you ever see the two together? Can one be happy and afraid at the same time? Clear thinking and afraid? Confident and afraid? Merciful and afraid? No.
- Fear never wrote a symphony or poem, negotiated a peace treaty, or cured a disease. Fear never pulled a family out of poverty or a country out of bigotry. Fear never saved a marriage or a business. Courage did that. Faith did that. People who refused to consult or cower to their timidities did that. But fear itself? Fear herds us into a prison and slams the door.
- Getting on board with Christ can mean getting soaked with Christ. Disciples can expect rough seas and stout winds. "In the world you will [not 'might', 'may', or 'could'] have tribulation" (John 16:33).
- It's not the absence of storms that sets us apart. It's whom we discover in the storm: an unstirred Christ.
- They do not ask about Jesus' strength: "Can you still the storm?" His knowledge: "Are you aware of the storm?" Or his know-how: "Do you have any experience with storms?" But rather, they raise doubts about Jesus' character: "Do you not care..."
- Fear does this. Fear corrodes our confidence in God's goodness.
- Fear unleashes a swarm of doubts, anger-stirring doubts.
- And it [fear] turns us into control freaks.
- Fear, at its center, is a perceived loss of control. When life spins wildly, we grab for a component of life we can manage: our diet, the tidiness of a house, the armrest of a plane, or, in many cases, people. The more insecure we feel, the meaner we become.
- Fear releases the tyrant within.
- Fear creates a form of spiritual amnesia. It dulls our miracle memory. It makes us forget what Jesus has done and how good God is.
- When fear shapes our lives, safety becomes our god. When safety becomes our god, we worship the risk-free life. Can the safety lover do anything great? Can the risk-adverse accomplish noble deeds? For God? For others? No. The fear-filled cannot love deeply. Love is risky. They cannot give to the poor. Benevolence has no guarantee of return. The fear-filled cannot dream wildly. What if their dreams sputter and fall from the sky? The worship of safety emasculates greatness. No wonder Jesus wages such a war against fear.
- His [Jesus'] most common command emerges from the "fear not" genre.
- The one statement he made more than any other was this: don't be afraid.
- Fear itself is not a sin. But it can lead to sin.
- If we medicate fear with angry outbursts, drinking binges, sullen withdrawals, self-starvation, or viselike control, we exclude god from the solution and exacerbate the problem.
- Fear may fill our world, but it doesn't have to fill our hearts.
My Beautiful Bride and I were having a conversation this week that again brought to light the fact that we have choices, that we make decisions, and that every choice/decision has a consequence or a set of consequences. The part that really struck me as I thought about our conversation was how we will sometimes make a decision, not fully commit to it and how we are then trapped in a very awkward place. If I choose "A" (whatever "A" may be) over "B" (whatever it may be) but don't commit fully to "A" I really have neither. I don't allow myself to grow fully in "A", to embrace "A", to cherish "A" and I don't have "B" either because I didn't choose it...even if the separation is only physical. Think about it and I believe you will find it true. I am left wondering how many of us treat our lives, our marriages, our kids, our jobs, etc. this way.
Last night, after the Miami Heat won the NBA Finals, I was watching the post-game press conferences. LeBron James was asked, in part, what he has learned, how he has grown, as a man in the past year. Paraphrasing here, he said "that you can't control what others say and think about you. That what matters is what you think about yourself, what the one's you love think." I would like to encourage you to let that one speak to your heart as well.
Please let me know if there is ever anything I can do for any of you or your families.
Have a great day, a wonderful weekend and please cherish your precious families.
Kev
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