Listen

 "Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God." Isaiah 41:10...."Listen to what you know, not to what you fear." Todd Mullen

The message of God in the Old Testament through His prophets, through His Son Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit in the New, was for those who followed Him to not live in fear. There are countless Scriptures that exhort us to "fear not." Jesus was constantly telling His disciples to not be afraid. Yet they often were. We often are. Fear grips us, paralyzes us, and renders us powerless. Why? How?

The answers to those questions are not really that hard to know. We know His words, but we don't really know Him. We believe His words in our head, but their power so often doesn't find its way into our hearts and lives. We can recite His promises but their reality never fully finds its way into our life experience. Knowing what He's said is not the same as knowing Him. You can own every sort of Bible promises book ever printed, but they're just words on a page if you lack any real and intimate knowledge of Him. 

Todd Mullen's above quote is true, but we are more prone to listen to our fears than to listen to Him because what we fear is more real to us than He is. We can't trust someone we don't know. The things we fear press in on us, crushing us, because our experience of Him is so shallow. Satan knows this and intimidates us because of it. He knows exactly where to aim his fiery darts, right at the heart of our fears. Unless we are rooted and grounded in Him, His promises are weak in comparison with all the scenarios of disaster that the enemy is only too happy to paint for us. What the preacher proclaimed in the sanctuary on Sunday just isn't working out in the hardness of the world we must live in.

Jesus confronted His disciples in their struggles to trust with the question, "How long have I been with you and you still don't know Me?" In the midst of your fears today, does He speak this to you? Fear, anxiety, stress, these things cannot survive in His presence. Paul said that the consuming passion of His life was to know Christ and the power of His resurrection. His desire to be known by us is deeper than any desire we could ever have to know Him. Let Him kindle that desire in you. Let Him fan it into a burning passion for Him. Know not only the truth of His words, know Him who is Truth itself. Be free of the fear because you have listened to the One who is Truth.

Blessings,
Pastor O