This past Sunday our worship music seemed to focus on overcoming fear by seeing the greatness of God. I loved how God put the music together through our worship leader … “There’s Power in the Blood,” “I Believe,” “You Make Me Brave,” “No Longer a Slave to Fear,” and “How Great Thou Art.”
As I traveled home from church, I thought about how the world works overtime to install fear in all of us, including Christians. First, we’re told a low-fat diet, oh, no wait, it’s now a high protein-high fat diet. Of course, we should also worry about cholesterol clogging our arteries from all the fat, no, wait, it’s really the high sugar that’s the problem. But we can always take medication, can’t we … oh, no, wait, the medication isn’t good for us either. All those medications and pesticides which were supposed to help us are now killing us
If we aren’t fearful about our health, the world will try to make us fearful about our politics … the left says we’re in trouble if we vote conservative …. The right says if we vote liberal, we’ll suffer ….
And of course, if it isn’t our health or our politics that make us fearful, we can always worry about our money (stock market crashes/recessions/layoffs) or be fearful about terrorism or recalls of our food, or cars, or …. Will it never stop?
It must be significant that there are so many references to “Fear not,” in some form in the Bible. I’ve read that there are 365 such. If that’s true, there’s a “fear not” for every day of the year—for every fear in every day of the year. Perhaps my favorite is found in Luke 12:32 when Jesus promised, “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” [NKJV]
Our Father, who is All Powerful, All Knowing, and Always with us, loves us and is delighted to welcome us into His flock. It’s His good pleasure to give us the kingdom … knowing that, what do we have to fear?
