Fear & Faith

"You call me out upon the waters,
The great unknown where feet may fail.
And there I find You in the mystery,
In oceans deep,
My faith will stand."

~~Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)

Hillsong United 

There comes a time in everyone's life when we are afraid of something. I'm not talking about things like being afraid of spiders, or thunderstorms, or anything like that. I'm talking about fear that keeps you up at night, the fear that consumes your every thought. It is Satan whispering in your ear all the negatives. It is our weakest moments that Satan rejoices, for then he can come in a wreak havoc with our thoughts.

For most of us, that fear comes in the form of fear of the unknown. Fear of the future and all the things that COULD happen, or MIGHT happen. It's the little things that, over time, will roll into one big thing. We've all been there. Some of us, like myself, are there right now. And it's an awful place to be. It is a place of darkness. Of feeling hopeless. Feeling like God has abandoned you.

Some people will tell you that if you have that kind of fear, then you are not placing your trust in Jesus Christ. That you're not fully following Christ and trusting in Him. Or that perhaps you have done something to deserve this. We see this example in the book of Job. Job doesn't understand why all these bad things have happened to him. His friends are of no help, suggesting that Job must have done SOMETHING to deserve this.

 

"Yet if you devote your heart to him
    and stretch out your hands to him,
 if you put away the sin that is in your hand
    and allow no evil to dwell in your tent,
 then, free of fault, you will lift up your face;
    you will stand firm and without fear."

(Job 11:1-15)

I know that I have scratched my head at times and wondered what did I do to deserve this? Did I not confess all my sins to God and ask for forgiveness? Is there some aspect of my life that God sees as unfavorable? Maybe it's just me, that I'm not worthy of God's good grace and mercy. There's Satan, once again poking his nose in where it don't belong. Trying to convince me that I am unworthy of God's love.

I keep thinking of Peter when Jesus called out for him to step out of the boat and walk to Him. Here's this boat, in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of a storm and Jesus is asking Peter to get out of the boat. If that had been me, I would have been like "Are you crazy!?!?" That's where faith takes over. As long as Peter kept his eyes on Jesus, he was able to walk on the water to where Jesus was. But the moment Peter averted his eyes and looked down, he began to sink. Jesus, being the awesome soul that He is, plucked Peter out of the water. 

That's what our faith does. It takes us to places that we fear, sticks us in the middle of a maelstrom where we wait patiently for Jesus to come save us. Jesus wants us to learn to rely solely on Him. When we are drowning don't we look up for help? We are raising our hand up yelling to God to save us. 

Sometimes, though, we feel like we just can't hear God. We feel as though He's forgotten us. I began reading Job on my own because I feel so much like him. Here's this man who is minding his own business. He has a good life. When all of a sudden he loses it all. And there he stands.

"What I feared has come upon me;
    what I dreaded has happened to me.
 I have no peace, no quietness;
    I have no rest, but only turmoil.” 

(Job 3:25-26)

What are we to do when our lives fall apart? How many times have we wondered why God would allow these bad things to happen? We may never find out why. It's at those times, however, that we truly need God. It is at those times that our faith is tested, just like Job. Like Job, our faith waivers. We go back and forth between blaming God and thanking God for His many blessings. When all is said and done, our faith steps in and keeps us from feeling afraid. We are reminded that, yes, God is listening and He hears all of our prayers. 

"Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, 

and I will listen to you."

Jeremiah 29:12

 Remember, the times when you are most afraid, when the future seems out of control, THAT is when you need to leave God in control. Just as Jesus pulled Peter out of the water, He will pull you out of the water. You need to take a leap of faith and trust in God's perfect timing. 

 

It Is Finished (Good Friday)

April 18, 2014  by Jon Bloom   Topics:  The Death of Christ

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/it-is-finished-good-friday 

It is Friday, April 3, A.D. 33. It is the darkest day in human history, though most humans have no clue of this. In Rome, Tiberius attends to the demanding business of the empire. Throughout the inhabited world, babies are born, people eat and drink, marry and are given in marriage, barter in marketplaces, sail merchant ships, and fight battles. Children play, old women gossip, young men lust, and people die.

But today, one death, one brutal, gruesome death, the worst and best of all human deaths, will leave upon the canvas of human history the darkest brushstroke. In Jerusalem, God the Son, the Creator of all that is (John 1:3), will be executed.
 

The Garden

The Jewish day dawns with night, and never has it been more fitting, since today the hour has come and the power of darkness (Luke 22:53). Jesus is in Gethsemane, where he has prayed with loud cries and tears, being heard by his Father (Hebrews 5:7) whose will will be done. Jesus hears noises and looks up. Torches and hushed voices signal the arrest party’s arrival.

Jesus wakes his sleepy friends who are jarred alert at the sight of their brother, Judas, betraying his Rabbi with a kiss. Soldiers and servants encircle Jesus. Peter, flushed with anger, pulls out his sword and lunges at those nearest Jesus. Malchus flinches, but not enough.

Blinding pain and blood surge where his ear had been. Voices speak, but Malchus only hears the screaming wound, which he’s grabbed with both hands. He feels a hand touch his hands and the pain vanishes. Under his hands is an ear. Stunned, he looks at Jesus, already being led away. Disciples are scattering. Malchus looks down at his bloody hands.

 

The Sanhedrin

Jesus is led brusquely into the house of Annas, a former High Priest, who questions him about his teaching. Jesus knows this informal interrogation is meant to catch him disoriented and unguarded. He is neither, and gives this manipulative leader nothing. Rather, he refers Annas to his hearers and is struck with irony by a Jewish officer for showing disrespect. Frustrated, Annas sends Jesus on to his son-in-law Caiaphas, the current High Priest.

At Caiaphas’s house the trial gets underway quickly. Morning will come fast. The Council needs a damning verdict by daybreak. The examination proceeds as bleary-eyed Sanhedrin members continue to file in.

The trial has been assembled hastily and witnesses haven’t been screened well. Testimonies don’t line up. Council members look disconcerted. Jesus is silent as a lamb. Irritated and impatient, Caiaphas cuts to the quick: “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God” (Matthew 26:63).

The hour has come. Charged in the name of his Father to answer, Jesus speaks the words that seal the doom for which he had come to endure (John 12:27): “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64).

In a moment of law-breaking (Leviticus 21:10) politically religious theater, Caiaphas tears his robes in feigned outrage and thinly concealed relief over Jesus’s blasphemy. He declares the trial’s end with, “What further testimony do we need? We have heard it ourselves from his own lips” (Luke 22:71).

As the sun breaks over Jerusalem’s eastern ridge, Judas swings from his own belt, Peter writhes in the grief of his failure and Jesus’s face is streaked with dried blood and saliva from the pre-dawn sport of the temple police. The Council’s verdict: guilty of blasphemy. Their sentence: death. But it’s a sentence they cannot carry out. Rome refuses to delegate capital punishment.

 

The Governor

Pilate’s mood, already sour over the Sanhedrin’s sudden insistent intrusion so early in the morning, worsens as he grasps the situation. They want him to execute a Galilean “prophet.” His seasoned instincts tell him something isn’t right. He questions Jesus and then tells the Council, “I find no guilt in this man” (Luke 23:4).

A game of political chess ensues between Pilate and the Sanhedrin, neither realizing that they are pawns, not kings.

Pilate makes a move. As a Galilean, Jesus falls under Herod Antipas’s jurisdiction. Let Herod judge. Herod initially receives Jesus happily, hoping to see a miracle. But Jesus refuses to entertain or even respond. Antipas, disappointed, blocks the move by returning Jesus to Pilate.

Pilate makes another move. He offers to release Jesus as this year’s annual Passover pardoned prisoner. The Council blocks the move. “Not this man, but Barabbas!” they cry (John 18:40). Pilate is astounded. The Sanhedrin prefers a thief and murderer to this peasant prophet?

Pilate tries another move. He has Jesus severely flogged and humiliated, hoping to curb the Council’s blood thirst. Again the move is blocked when the Council insists that Jesus must be crucified because “he has made himself the Son of God” (John 19:7). Check. Pilate’s fear grows. Jesus’s divine claim could threaten Rome. Worse, it could be true. Roman deities supposedly could take on human form. His further questioning of Jesus unnerves him.

One last move. Pilate tries to persuade the Sanhedrin to release Jesus. One last block and trap. “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar” (John 19:12). The Council has Pilate where they want him: cornered. Checkmate.

And the triune God has the Council, Pilate, and Satan where he wants them. They would have no authority over the Son at all unless it had been given them from above (John 19:11). Fallen Jews, Gentiles and spiritual powers unwittingly collaborate in executing the only innocent death that could possibly grant the guilty life. Checkmate.

 

The Cross

Morning wanes as Jesus stumbles out of the Praetorium, horribly beaten and bleeding profusely. The Roman soldiers had been brutal in their creative cruelty. Thorns have ripped Jesus’s scalp and his back is one grotesque, oozing wound. Golgotha is barely a third of a mile through the Garden Gate, but Jesus has no strength to manage the forty-pound crossbar. Simon of Cyrene is drafted from the crowd.

Twenty-five minutes later, Jesus is hanging in sheer agony on one of the cruelest instruments of torture ever devised. Nails have been driven through his wrists (which we only know about because of the doubt Thomas will express in a couple days (John 20:25)). A sign above Jesus declares in Greek, Latin, and Aramaic who he is: the King of the Jews.

The King is flanked on either side by thieves and around him are gawkers and mockers. “Let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!” some yell (Luke 23:35). One dying thief even joins in the derision. They do not understand that if the King saves himself, their only hope for salvation is lost. Jesus asks his Father to forgive them. The other crucified thief sees a Messiah in the mutilated man beside him, and he asks the Messiah to remember him. Jesus’s prayer is beginning to be answered. Hundreds of millions will follow.

It is mid-afternoon now and the eerie darkness that has fallen has everyone on edge. But for Jesus, the darkness is a horror he has never known. This, more than the nails and thorns and lashings, is what made him sweat blood in the garden. The Father’s wrath is hitting him in full force. He is in that moment no longer the Blessed, but the Cursed (Galatians 3:13). He has become sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). In terrifying isolation, cut off from his Father and all humans he screams, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani,” Aramaic for “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, Psalm 22:1). No greater love (John 15:13), humility (Philippians 2:8), or obedience (Hebrews 5:8) has ever or will ever be displayed.

Shortly after 3 PM, Jesus whispers hoarsely for a drink. In love, he has drained the cup of his Father’s wrath to the dregs. He has born our full curse. There is no debt left to pay and he has nothing left to give. The wine moistens his mouth just enough to say one final word: “It is finished” (John 19:30). And God the Son dies.

It is the worst and best of all human deaths. For on this tree he bears our sins in his body (1 Peter 2:24), “the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). And now it is finished.

 

The Tomb

A bright irony on this darkest of days is that the men who step forward to claim the corpse of the Christ for burial are not family members or disciples. They are members of the Sanhedrin: Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. It is one more unexpected thread of grace woven into this tapestry of redemption. They quickly wrap Jesus’s body in a sheet and lay it in a nearby tomb. Evening is falling and they don’t have time to fully dress it with spices.

Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses accompany them, careful to note the tomb’s location. They plan to return with more spices after the Sabbath, on the first day of the week, to make sure that it is finished.

---

This is the sixth post in Desiring God’s 2014 Holy Week series “The Final Days of Jesus,” inspired by the new book of the same title by Justin Taylor and Andreas Kostenberger. Holy Week illustrations provided in partnership with Crossway Books and Adam Greene. Previously in the series:

• The Problem of Palm Sunday
• No Turning Back (Monday of Holy Week)
• The Escalating Conflict (Tuesday)
• Spy Wednesday
• The Greatest Prayer in the World (Maundy Thursday)

Jon Bloom (@Bloom_Jon) is the author of Not by Sight: A Fresh Look at Old Stories of Walking by Faith and serves as the President of Desiring God, which he and John Piper launched together in 1994. He lives in the Twin Cities with his wife, Pam, their five children, and one naughty dog.

Good Morning Girls Devotional Week 7 Your Ministries (Week beginning 3/10/14)

Well, well.. I made it to week 7! At least now I'm only a few days behind!!! lol So, let's dive right in!!

Think about your ministries this week. What do you do to help others? Do you volunteer at your church? Do you work with kids after school? Anything that you do that reaches out to others that offers help and encouragement is considered a ministry. You don't have to have a title or a special job. As long as you do it for God's glory, then it is a form of ministry.

Read 1 Peter 4:1-11

Therefore, since Christ suffered as a human, you should also arm yourselves with his way of thinking. This is because whoever suffers is finished with sin. As a result, they don’t live the rest of their human lives in ways determined by human desires but in ways determined by God’s will. You have wasted enough time doing what unbelievers desire—living in their unrestrained immorality and lust, their drunkenness and excessive feasting and wild parties, and their forbidden worship of idols. They think it’s strange that you don’t join in these activities with the same flood of unrestrained wickedness. So they slander you. They will have to reckon with the One who is ready to judge the living and the dead. Indeed, this is the reason the good news was also preached to the dead. This happened so that, although they were judged as humans according to human standards, they could live by the Spirit according to divine standards.
 
The end of everything has come. Therefore, be self-controlled and clearheaded so you can pray. Above all, show sincere love to each other, because love brings about the forgiveness of many sins. Open your homes to each other without complaining. And serve each other according to the gift each person has received, as good managers of God’s diverse gifts. Whoever speaks should do so as those who speak God’s word. Whoever serves should do so from the strength that God furnishes. Do this so that in everything God may be honored through Jesus Christ. To him be honor and power forever and always. Amen.

S: 1 Peter 4: 9-10:  Open your homes to each other without complaining. And serve each other according to the gift each person has received, as good managers of God’s diverse gifts.

O:  I remember reading a blog on this very verse. It was around Christmastime. If you've ever had family come to stay with you, do you remember how you felt while they were there? Did you grumble about the extra housework? Did old family squabbles come into play? Were you relieved when your company left?

God's gifts? Stop scratching your head. We all have a gift. We just have to ask God what it is. Or maybe you already know. Do you like to cook? Do you enjoy doing for others? Maybe you like decorating. 

My husband LOVES to cook and serve people. He has taken over our kitchen at church. It is now HIS domain! No one messes with hubby's kitchen! Those are his gifts. Mine...well.. I've been told I'm compassionate, kind, a godly woman (that may be stretching things..but that's what someone at church described me as). At our old church I was the dishwasher. I had everything organized and had all my supplies that I needed. 

In this letter, Peter is telling us to JOYFULLY open our homes to visitors. Don't grumble or complain, but do it WILLINGLY!! Hmm...yup...ok....hhmmmm...




I like having company, when I'm in the mood for it. But Peter tells us to do this willingly and joyfully. It's not always the easiest thing to do. Think of The Last Supper when Jesus shared a meal with the Apostles. He KNEW He was going to be betrayed. He KNEW He was going to die. And yet, He still sat there with His friends and shared a meal with them.

Being a Christian isn't always the easiest thing to do. No one promised us it was going to be easy. For the times when you really don't feel like it, stop for a moment and pray. Let God's peace guide you through the times when you have company and don't really feel like entertaining.

A: On those days when I'm not feeling really friendly or up to having company (even if it's my neighbor from across the hall) I have to remember that if someone took the effort to come see me then it's the least I can do to be thankful for their company and open my home to them. My husband usually will feed anyone who comes through our door! No one leaves here without food of some sort. And usually sends them home with leftovers! 

So, the next time someone comes over, regardless of how I am feeling, I will make them feel welcome. And I will welcome their company. I will do what Jesus expects of me.

P: Heavenly Father, we know we should be happy when someone comes to visit. We should welcome them with open arms and a smile. But we don't always feel like it. Help us to see that this isn't a job but a chance to have fellowship with friends and strangers alike. It is a chance to sit and "break bread" as Jesus did time and again wherever He would go. We pray for peace and joy at these times Father. In Your Holy Name we ask this. Amen.