"Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe." Proverbs 29:25 (niv)
Fear is such a paralyzing emotion. It robs us of a couple of important life aspects:
- Our vitality...
- Our decision making ability...
- And our strength.
Courage helps us step out of fear's paralysis and turn its' nervous edge into power.
I read an article in the Kansas City Star newspaper about a mother whose daughter is paralized from waist down. Her ordeal happened not long ago. Her daughter, a straight A student in high school happened to be with a couple of her friends. One of her friends was a beginner driver of her own car. The driver ran into a tree and severely injured all the passengers. This daughter, along with other riders, were taken to the hospital. She was in a much worse condition than the others. Her lungs collasped. She slipped into coma. She had major surgery on her vertebrae. Hospital bills kept increasing. Rent hasn't been paid for months. A dire need for medicine and medicinal equipment.
But that wasn't the only thing that kept paralizing the family. A year ago, the 36 year old mother had a heart attack and went through bypass heart surgery. After waking up, she realized that she had a severely degenerative heart disease. It seems one thing led to another and I read the mother's quote:
"I ran out of prayer. I stopped praying to God."
Fear took over. She became paralized by life's crisis: herself and her daughter's. Our life's crisis can take a heavy toll against our faith with God. It will keep pounding and pounding on us until we call it quits. We stop going to church. Fellowship with other Christians is useless. We're experiencing severe spiritual dementia. And it wears us down to the point of paralysis. We begin to feel less and less from God.
We need the courage to overcome our life's crisis. But this kind of courage comes to us fully only when we know that all Satan and his allies can really have of us is our bodies. He cannot take our mind, our attitude, our faith, and most of all, he cannot take our relationship with God given to us through Jesus.
3 comments:
Mark,
We are thinking about this family and will pray for the family that you mentioned in the blog. My heart goes out for them!
One author wrote "One time a lady came to one of our meetings in Louisiana. She told us she had just learned her husband had been injured in an accident and was at that very moment undergoing surgery in a hospital in Arkansas. Yet there she was in the back of the church filled with the peace of the Lord. But why not? It would have not done her any good at all to be worrying and fretting and weeping and wailing, OH, why did this happen? Here I am trying to be a good Christian, and while I'm in church a tree falls on my husband and causes a disaster in our lives. I just don't understand why such things happen to us believers."
The author encourages us to meditate on the verse, "By your steadfastness and patient endurance you shall win the true life of your souls." Luke 21:19
The author said that it is important that we don't let our mind and emotions get the best of us especially the things we have no control over.
The same author said, that the first two verses of Psalm 91:1-2 and Exodus 15:26. They mean that we stay in HIS rest. The rest of the scriptures of Psalm 91:3-16 listed all the promises of God's provision and protection. Overall, it will depend on how we react to things that cause pain and problems for us. The promises that the Lord made in Psalm 91:3-16 depend completely on our reactions to situations and problems in our lives. We need to be CALM, STEADY, and COOL. Hard for us sometimes!
The author said, "One day a lady was sitting in a boat reading and quoting Psalm 91:11 which promises that the angels of the Lord will take charge over us and defend us and protect us in all our ways. Just then something happened to the chair she was sitting on, and she fell over and cracked her head on the side of the boat. It hurt so bad her soul leaped up, and she started complaining to God, "I don't understand how this could have happened. Here I was reading and quoting Psalm 91:11 about how You send Your angels to watch over me and protect me, and look what happened! Where were You, Lord?"
"Immediately God spoke to her and said, "Well, you're not dead, are you?" The author said that we often become upset over what happened, we fail to realize what God protected us from.
Mark, thanks for your GREAT BLOG AGAIN!
Holly
Amen!
Of course! We all will have issues such as these you have just listed by the author! What do we expect? Heaven on earth? Well, not exactly. Though, we have peace through both blessings and cursings.
Really! It's beyond our own comprehension. We're simply human with limited understanding. Do we expect God to divert billions of people from pain and pestilence? If that were to happen (how many times have I said this to those who keeps complaining to God for the not-so-grave or grave issues in their lives), that we would NOT need God, the Father of Jesus and that Jesus died on the cross for nothing!
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33 (niv)
One interesting scenario here is that there will be certain people looking for peace through various avenues:
1. Expecting the church to "please them" with the peace.
2. They hop from one church to another hoping to find peace with God (probably looking for people who pleases people).
3. Running to the condiments of the world (drugs, alcohol, sex, isolation).
4. Perhaps, wealth will cover the pain of their issues.
None of the above will dampen the problems everyone of us is experiencing (yes! I am saying that everyone of us are now experiencing trials and tribulations)!
I am especially glad that we have problems in the world today. We had them yesterday. We had them last week. We have series of them last year. We'll have them tomorrow and more or less next year. They bring our eyes and heart to the throne room of God!
AMEN!
NO GLOOM, NO DOOM, and NO FEAR!
Holly
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