Transforming Despair to Hope

Charles Durhig’s book, The Power of Habit, tells of a woman named Lisa Allen who is a thirty-four year old graphic designer who doesn’t smoke or drink. She is a runner, debt free, and has recently finished her master’s degree.

A few years before, her life was a mess. She was sixty pounds overweight, a chain smoker, and a heavy drinker. She could not hold down a job or finish school. She was a failure in every area of life. Now she stands before researchers at the National Institute of Health, who are desperate to learn how this woman changed from a failure to a success.

It started when her husband left her.  Without a job and hopeless, she made a rash decision to visit Egypt on her charge card for one last holiday.

She had no goals, no hopes, and no motivation. She was desperate to do something, but did not know what to do. While riding a bus to the pyramids a thought struck her. Could she walk this trip, instead of taking a bus? There was no particular thought behind it—it just came to her, and she resolved to do it. She realized that if she tried now, it would probably kill her. She decided to come back in a year’s time and make the walk. 

First, she gave up cigarettes. It was hard, but she did it. Then she decided to take up walking around town, and eventually jogging, then running. Her life changed, one habit at a time. Every time she changed one habit, she got the courage to change another. With each victory, she gave herself a precious gift—hope. 

Hope transforms us. With it, we can do anything, sustain any action and endure any suffering. Without it, all we do is an exercise in futility. If our hope returns, then our life begins anew.

Paul says in Thessalonians, “I do not want you to suffer as those who have no hope.” Many of us suffer without hope. We may have hope for heaven, but we have no hope for today or tomorrow. We’ve been handed a fortune cookie that says, “This is as good as it’s going to get,” and we believe it.  We are miserable because we have no hope.

Christianity is all about hope. In fact, it is about three hopes. Our first hope is for heaven –we will be with Jesus when we die and live forever. Our second hope is in a better world--Christ’s eventual victory in the end times over darkness, a new heaven and new earth. Our third hope is to become more like Christ here while we live. Romans 8:29 says, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” In this life we are becoming like Jesus in His love, passion, and joy.

The first two hopes are important, but in our daily lives it is this third hope that gets us through this life. If we are dying, or facing terrible persecutions, then we really need those first two hopes. But while all Christians have hope for heaven, many have no personal hope.  

Can we blame them?  If our faith is just an insurance policy against hell, then why should we pay attention to it? Do you read your life insurance or fire insurance policies, and rejoice in your deliverance from future disasters? Does it bring you daily joy to know you’re covered against collision, or do you take it for granted? If all Jesus does is give us a future in heaven, then why should we come here week after week and remember it?  If that’s all the hope we have, then our faith provides nothing in this life, but freedom from worry about the next life. Hope doesn’t help us daily unless it is personal, practical, and daily. 

Jesus came to give us hope not just for heaven, but for this life as well. Many Christians believe that they are stuck in their sins, problems, depression and fear. But if we believe in the transformative power of Christ, then there is nothing in our lives that cannot change. 

Let’s look at a passage about hope in this world. Mark 9: 31-40.

This story happened after Jesus, Peter, James, and John had been on the Mount of Transfiguration. When they returned, they found the other nine disciples losing an arguing with the local scribes. It started when a local man took his son to them to be delivered from a demon who got hold of him, and threw him into fire and water. The disciples couldn’t cast it out. The Pharisees used it as proof that Jesus was a fraud. The townspeople were coming to their side. 

Isn’t this happening today? We say that Jesus is a savior, healer, and deliverer. But where’s the evidence? When we show them our own lives, do they see victory? Why should an unbeliever look at the average churchman and think there is anything special about our message?

Jesus immediately recognizes the problem as unbelief. There was not enough belief in this town, or in the disciples. Because there was not healing the first time, they assumed they never would be, and turned on the disciples and the message. They prayed for the boy, and nothing happened, so they assumed that nothing would happen. 

Jesus says the whole generation refuses to believe!

Is our generation any better?  Listen to how we talk about prayer. We talk about holiness, but never get any better. Many Christians are filled with unbelief and don’t even know it. When our lives are filled with anxiety and worry, what do we do but doubt?  When we show courage and hopefulness in hard times we are demonstrating hopefulness. 

This father of the boy expressed his sense of helplessness in verses 21-22.

Jesus asked his father, "How long has this been happening to him?" And he said, "From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us."

The father implies that the boy’s whole life was a failure from childhood. We are all born with flaws and handicaps. But none of us are so broken that we cannot be better. God can help us overcome even our flaws from birth. 

He also indicates that they could do nothing about it. “It often casts him into fire and water, to destroy him.” If this were your child, would you let him near fire or water? They had all but given up on helping him. Unbelief does not just rob us of a cure—it robs us from trying to find a cure. What’s the point of wasting time and money trying to solve an unsolvable problem? Fortunately, they were still looking for help from Jesus. 

Finally he says to Jesus, “If you can do anything.”  The doctors and religious leaders could do nothing. Now he had come to Jesus’ disciples and they could do nothing. He must have thought he had been abandoned by God Himself.

Jesus’ responded. “If you can! All things are possible for he who believes.”  Not only is something possible—everything is possible! 

Here we must stop and ask an important question. Does Jesus mean all things are possible for those who believe in general, or for those who believe in God?  Is it belief itself or belief in God that makes all things possible? Belief in anything has great power, as we often hear in our culture. Positive thinking works, up to a point. But it has two serious flaws.

First, positive thinking is often pushed too far, making it into a kind of magic. Whenever I hear someone say, “You can achieve anything if you just believe hard enough,” I want to scream, “Okay then--fly!” We all have limitations.

The second problem with positive thinking is that it does work, but for the wrong goals. It is only by God’s mercy that we do not achieve our dreams.  People can succeed, but at the cost of their souls. Legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson is said to have literally sold his soul to the Devil for the power to play the blues. Entertainers such as James Dean, Tupac Shakur, Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger, and many others gained their dreams and destroyed their lives. Be careful what you hope for, because it can destroy you. But when we believe in God, and we hope in His glory He grants us the desires of our heart. 

At this point, the father cried, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”

Belief is not the total absence of doubt, nor is doubt the total absence of belief. We do both all the time. Our brains are like congress—there’s always a vocal minority. But we choose to act upon faith rather than doubt.

Hope is choosing to act upon belief, not doubt. If we don’t think we can lose weight we won’t seriously diet. If we don’t think prayer will work we won’t pray. If we never try, we won’t succeed. But if we trust God and keep trusting, He will come through.

Jesus healed the boy, but the disciples were still perplexed. How come Jesus could do it, but they could not?  Jesus answered that this kind of demon comes out only with much prayer.

Why does it make a difference how long you pray?  I confess I do not always know the answer, but there are some things that must be true before we can realize our hopes.

First, we must know what we want.

 

What we really want is not always obvious. Sometimes the things we think we want are the very things that stand in the way of our ultimate happiness. 

Second, we give up what we don’t need.  

 

We’re double-minded—wanting too many things at once. When people asked to be His disciples, Jesus told them to leave their families, sell everything, and neglect everything else. They were not willing to take Jesus over other good things. We need to consider the implications of what we want before Jesus gives it.

Third, we must do whatever it takes. 

 

Jesus gave specific instructions to those He healed. If they did not do it, they did not get the healing. God doesn’t heal us all the same way. Sometimes it takes surgery. Other times, we just have to ask for help. It usually begins with admitting that you have a problem. If we aren’t willing to do what it takes, we won’t be healed.

All this requires much prayer time. Prayer is simply a conversation with God, where we sort out our real reasons and motivations, what healing will require, and whether we are willing to pay the price.  Real prayer is a battle, not a cake walk.  In this battle, the most dangerous opponent is our own unwillingness to believe.

Hope is patience.  The two Hebrew words that are translated “hope” in the Bible. One--yachal--literally means “to wait.” The other—tiqvah--literally means a rope--something we hold while we are waiting for God to pull us up. It’s easy to have hope if wait just a moment, but it’s hard to hold on when the day grows long and our hands get tired. That’s when hope is all important. God’s blessings require holding on. He will give us what we ask, but we must keep holding on. There are greater blessings for you than you can possibly imagine, but you must have hope. Don’t give up. Hope for something greater, and you can have it. 

Anxiety: The Divided Heart

Last week we began a series about the difference between the life we are promised in the Scriptures as Christians and the actual lives we live.  God has promised us abundant, joyful, fulfilling lives, yet we live in poverty, misery, and worry.

God has not let us down. The gift we have been given has been stolen from us. Jesus gave us this promise in John 10:10 

“The thief comes to kill, steal, and destroy.  I come that you might have life, and have it in abundance.” 

Who are these thieves that rob us of our joy?  We are looking at seven—the “seven sinister sisters”--fear, anxiety, hopelessness, laziness, jealousy, perfectionism, and individualism. 

This week we are talking about anxiety.  Fear and anxiety are not the same thing. They are both emotions and they both come about due to a threat, but beyond that, their similarity ends. 

Let me illustrate the difference. Suppose you are working in your backyard one day, and you see a rattlesnake. Your first reaction ought to be fear. Your glands shoot adrenalin into your system. Your heart starts pumping, your palms get sweaty, and panic starts to take over. You explode with energy, and you either kill it or run. Psychologists call this the “fight or flight” response.  Either kill it or get out of its way.  Fear in this case could save your life.

But the next day, you have to return to the backyard and finish your work. As you do, your glands give you another shot of adrenalin. You are afraid, but there is nothing before you, only the memory of the snake. What if there’s another rattler?  How do you know there’s not? What precautions should you take to prevent it? Your body experiences the same physical responses you felt when you saw the snake, but now there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t kill a snake that isn’t there, and you can’t run from a snake you can’t see. So you go around the yard thinking about the snake that only might be there. Even when you finish your work, and go in the house you still think about that snake.

What you feel the next day may seem like fear, but it is not. It is anxiety. Fear has a definite object. Anxiety is generalized and vague. Fear prompts us to act. Anxiety keeps us from acting.  Fear is a good motivator as long as it has a direct motivation, and fear is only for a short time. But anxiety is a de-motivator, and can last for a lifetime.  Fear protects and preserves. Anxiety destroys and unnerves.

Christian psychologist Dr. Archibald Hart has written an excellent book on the physical side of anxiety. He explains that anxiety is the result of adrenalin in our system. Adrenalin is the chemical that gives us almost superhuman strength in emergencies. But over time, if we try to run on adrenalin all the time, it tears us down. It breaks down the brain chemicals that give us our sense of wellbeing—serotonin and norepinephrine. We get nervous and jittery. We can’t sleep. We obsess and fret over things. Our hearts ache and we get upset over nothing. When we cannot fight or flee we turn into worriers.  

Anxiety is a subtle and dangerous killer. Often we don’t even realize we have it. Many Christians have it all time, but they just think it’s normal to worry. Unlike excitement that comes from pleasure, which builds us up, our worry and anxiety is tearing us down. 

The Bible talked about anxiety two thousand years before psychologists discovered it. The Bible uses two different words for fear and anxiety. Fear is phobos in Greek, and refers to the sudden reaction of threat. The Greek word for anxiety is merimnate, which derives from the word for partition or divide. When we are anxious, we have divided thoughts and hearts. One part of us is trying to live in today, while the other part is worried about yesterday, or tomorrow. We are carrying two or three times the burden we should in our minds. We cannot enjoy or be productive in this day, because our minds are stuck somewhere else. 

A friend of mine spoke about getting some terrible news about one of his children. Afterwards, he had to get in his car and drive to the drug store. He thought about his child, and suddenly realized that he had passed the drug store and was on the other side of town. He had not been paying attention to where he was going. His anxiety about his child had occupied the space in his brain that should have been given to navigating and driving. 

Anxiety distracts us from life. We cannot pay attention to our business, because we are thinking about our worries. We all have anxiety, but when it affects our daily enjoyment of life, then our anxiety has overcome us.  

Jesus gave us the best advice we could ever have about anxiety in Matthew 6, “Take no thought about tomorrow.” In Matthew 6: 31-34

 “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'  For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

"Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

Worry and anxiety steals today from us, by focusing on the past or the future. When we are robbed of today, then our tomorrow is stolen in the process. It steals our attention from what we are doing now, and forces us to focus on what may never be.

Have you even taken a trip with someone who required a lot of attention? For example, an elderly relative or a small child.  How much attention could you give to what you were doing while you were worried about them? You cannot, because you have a divided heart. You are either paying attention to one or the other. 

Worry wears everyone down in time. It burns us up from the inside.

During World War II the army hired psychologists to look at the state of troops in combat, particularly in regard to “shell-shock” what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress. What they discovered was that the maximum a person could withstand in continual battle field conditions was twenty-one consecutive days.  Every soldier, no matter how balanced or fearless, would experience shell-shock after twenty-one days of fighting. They had to have time off or they would burn out. So, the army learned to rotate soldiers in and out of battle.

A continual state of heightened adrenalin is poison to your system. We need time to recuperate if we are to survive. This is what Paul addresses in Philippians 4: 6-7 

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

  The word for anxiety is our old friend merimnate. It means to have a divided heart, which means to care over things we don’t need to care about at the moment. 

Paul isn’t saying that you can avoid being anxious. Everyone is anxious sometimes. In Philippians 2: 2, Paul feels anxious about the Philippian church. He admits in 1 Corinthians 7: 32-34, that a married man is more anxious than an unmarried man, because of his responsibilities for his family. No one is suggesting we’ll just saunter fearlessly through life-threatening situations without any worry. We must deal with worry. We must learn to lay our anxieties aside and get on with life.

“Be anxious over nothing.” Many people are anxious over exactly that—nothing! Is what we are worrying about anything worth worrying about? Whenever we are anxious, we should first decide what we are anxious about. What’s really stressing us?

Second, ask if what you are worrying about is in your control or out of your control. Is it really within your power to prevent all calamity, or is your worry really taking on a responsibility that belongs to God. It is sensible to take precautions against disaster, but anyone who assumes they can stop all of life’s disasters is fooling themselves. Most of our worries are about things we can’t control.

We can’t control the past. We can’t control the future. We can only control our now, which is this moment. This is the only responsibility we have. To make good decisions today.

We can’t change the past. Shame, regret, unforgiveness, and guilt are all just different words for anxiety about the past. The past is gone, and it is like a ghost. Don’t be afraid of ghosts. They cannot affect us now unless we let them. Christ’s forgiveness on the Cross set us free from worries about the past.

We can control only a small part of the present. You can’t stop a meteor hurtling to earth over your head. Neither can we stop our grown kids from making stupid decisions. We can only control the little part of the world we are in right now.

We cannot control the future. I can assure you that bad things as well as good things will definitely happen tomorrow.  But when they happen, God will give us what we need to survive. 

Paul says, “In everything, by prayer and supplication, make your requests known.”

Whenever we feel anxiety welling up inside, we must respond by slowing down and resting. Take some deep breaths. Take a moment to meditate and pray. Instead of driving faster, drive slower. Turn off the radio. Turn off the news programs, and pray instead.

The usual response I get when I suggest prayer is this, “I tried praying, but it didn’t work!”   My answer is, “How did you pray? Did you pray in calm or in panic?  Did you expect immediate results, or long-term strength?  Did you go through the steps of prayer--acknowledging who God is, recognizing the blessings, confessing your sins, and accepting His forgiveness, or did you just skip those parts of prayer and just scream, “Help!” Prayer is a concentrated act of devotion, a laying aside of worries to visit with our Maker. In prayer we step out of our worldly boundaries and commune with God on a different level. We’ll never be calm if we keep one eye on God, and one on the world. That divided heart is the essence of worry.

Paul gives us a promise that if we give God His due, and entrust to Him what is really His, then the peace of God which passes all understanding will fill us. Instead of being driven by adrenalin, we are calmed by the presence of the Holy Spirit. 

Worry will kill you. Christ will save you.  When we bring our worries to Him, then he will lift the burden of our worries from our shoulders.

The Far Side of Fear

Christians ought to be the happiest, most successful people on earth. We have everything going for us. We know we’re going to heaven, we have God on our side, and we have the Holy Spirit. Of all people we are the most blessed.

But really--does this sound like most Christians you know?   

There’s a huge gap between the life God intended for us and what we actually experience. We fall short of God’s promises in behavior, experience, and happiness. There are several reasons for this failure. Over the next few weeks we are going to address seven of them. I call them the “seven sinister sisters”---fear, anxiety, hopelessness, laziness, jealousy, perfectionism, and independence.

Today, we begin with the oldest and most dangerous of them all--fear.  If we trust Jesus, we should be happy, bold, and fearless. But not only are Christians fearful, we are often more fearful than unbelievers. We sing “This is My Father’s World,” but instead of seeing the world as God’s, we see it as filled with dangers. We fear its creation too much to ever love it. We are like the farmer who once told me that his farm was God’s country, but that the boundaries did not extend much beyond his property lines. We look at the rest of the world as a dangerous place, as we huddle in a corner, and worry about becoming polluted by it.

We live in one of the safest nations on earth, yet we are more afraid than people living with wild animals in the jungle. We live in a society where the crime rate steadily declines, yet we think it is going up. We have more freedom than anywhere in the world yet we don’t use it, because we are afraid. We are afraid of terrorists, afraid of traffic, afraid of disease, afraid of crime, and afraid of being talked about by others. We live in a land that is a mountain of prosperity, yet we fear not having enough to eat. We live in a country that is stronger than any other country on earth and yet we feel unprotected.

I blame our news programs for much of it. Whenever there is a tragedy anywhere in the world, we get a steady stream of coverage, blanketing our world with discussions, until we forget that these are only isolated incidents. We are so bombarded by attention that it distorts our perception. America is not descending into chaos. Christianity is not about to be banned. People are not really shooting each other on the streets, and what you eat is not about to immediately cause cancer.

 The Bible has a lot to say about fear. At least twenty three times in the Bible, we are commanded not to fear. 

Before we go further, we need to be clear that we can’t just command fear to go away. Fear is an emotion. We can no more control when we feel fear than when we feel hunger, drowsiness, or anger.

Fear is an individual thing. One person fears crowds, another heights, and another closed spaces.  We don’t know why one person fears one thing while another does not.

But we all fear. Our pulse races, our mouth gets dry, and we experience the desire to either fight or run. 

Fear is natural, and sometimes necessary.  But just because we feel it doesn’t mean we have to act on it. Feeling fear is not the problem, it’s what we do with it.  We have to master our fears.  Panic is when our fears master us. The biggest danger is not fearing, but panicking from fear. Panic is doing stupid, irrational things because we are afraid. 

As I said, the Bible command us not to fear twenty-three times. It does not mean “don’t feel fear” but “don’t panic.” There is no shame in feeling fear, and no one should be ashamed to admit when they are afraid.  But we don’t have to act on fear. 

I have a list of useless things people say to each other. At the top is “Don’t be afraid.” We can’t control whether we feel fear. We can control what we do about it.

Bravery isn’t the opposite of fear. Bravery is the opposite of panic. It’s a choice to act in some other way than panic. The bravest people are those who are just as afraid as anyone else, but who choose to face their fears instead of run from them. 

Paul says in 2 Timothy 1:7,

 

 “For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.”

 

A “spirit of fear” is not feeling fear, but being possessed by it. Of all the spirits infecting the world today, the spirit of fear is the most dangerous by far. The spirit of fear is responsible for most of the violence done on this earth. It is behind prejudice, bigotry, rage, injustice, and so many other things.  When the Charleston shooter fired on that unarmed black church, it was because he feared the encroachment of people unlike himself on his world.  More families are broken up, more wars started, more crimes committed due to fear than for any other reason.    

Once I entered a pasture full of cows by climbing over a fence. A bull came charging at me, and I had to jump over the fence.

Why did that bull charge?  A bull eats grass, not people. He charged because he feared what I might have done to himself or his cows. Remember that there are two reactions to fear—fight or flight.  We either run away or like that bull, or we become aggressive.  A person who attacks out of fear is not being brave—he is panicking. 

Or we run in panic. No one ever thinks they are panicking, of course running is still rationalized in our minds as a reasonable retreat. For most Christians, running away from our responsibilities and duties does more damage than fighting.    

Peter gives an example of what panic in a marriage can do in 1 Peter 3:6.  He praises a faithful wife, calling her a daughter of Sarah,

 

 “like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.”

Sarah was the wife of Abraham. While he was in his eighties, Abraham left on what most people must have assumed was a wild goose chase. He left his home and his land to seek a place God would show him. If you were his wife, what would you think?  Doubtless, she was afraid. At times, she probably complained bitterly to him about her husband’s foolish quest. (After all, her original name was Sarai, which means “Nag”)  But Sarah stayed with the old fool anyway. She did not panic and go to live with relatives. She stayed with her husband, not because she trusted Abraham, but she trusted the Lord, and did not give in to her fears. As a result, Sarai’s name was changed to Sarah, which means “Princess.” She went from nag to princess, because she did not give in to her fear, but trusted God.

Fear breaks up more families than lust. One spouse becomes afraid that their mate won’t provide for their needs. They become afraid of what their lives will be with their God given spouse, so they panic and run from them. They tell themselves that there is all other reasons, but panic is the root. That panic leads the situation where God placed them.

 God often requires us to stay with people and situations we cannot trust. We must stay with one person, while we are trusting another. We stay with our job, not because we trust our boss, but because we trust the Lord. We stay with our church, not because we trust the preacher, but because that is where God placed us. We stay with our unbelieving friend in spite of the hurt he causes, because he is the mission field that God entrusted to us. Sure we are in jeopardy, but God never promised us complete freedom from fear, only the power to get through it. 

We should never trust people completely—we should trust the Lord completely. When we flee from where God put us, then we are really fleeing God. 

Every time the Bible commands us to not panic it gives a reason. Here are three. First, because God is with us. Genesis 26:24 says,

 

“Fear not, for I am with you.”

 If there is one sentence that summarizes the entire Bible, it would be this—God is with us. He was with Noah on the ark, Abraham on Mount Moriah, Moses on Mount Sinai, David in the cave,   Elijah in the wilderness, Daniel in the furnace, Paul while shipwrecked, and John in exile--every person in the Bible. When they remembered this, they were strong. When they forgot this, they were weak. 

There is never a time when God is not with you. To be afraid with him is like being afraid when your mother holds you and your father protects you.

Second, because God loves you. Isaiah 41:13,

 “For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, "Fear not, I am the one who helps you."

 

God saves us. The name “Jesus” means “Savior.” Jesus is the ultimate sign of God’s love. Only one time in the whole Bible did God ever turn His back on someone he loved, and that was when He allowed Christ to die on the cross. But that was God Himself on the Cross, bleeding for us. 

God doesn’t just love you. He likes you. God would do anything to help protect you, and care for you.  He will never leave or forsake you. He died to cover all your sins. You can never sin your way out of God’s love. He doesn’t punish you for your mistakes. He loves you like a mother loves her child, like a groom loves his bride, and like a bride loves her husband. Nothing you can or will ever do will ever take you out of God’s love.

Third, God has plans for you. Jeremiah 29:11,

 

“’For I know the plans I have for you.’ declares the Lord. “’ plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.'"

 

Fear deceives us into forgetting the future.  But God holds the future. We don’t always know what the future is, but it is what exists on the far side of our fear. We can’t avoid our fear or run from our fear, we can’t drive what we fear away. We must face it, in order to get to the future.  

Deuteronomy 1:21,

 

 “Go take possession as the Lord your God has told you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” 

 

 The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years because they were afraid to enter. It wasn’t until that scared generation died that their children could enter. 

Think of what you fear most in your life right now. There is a hope and future beyond, and sometimes the only way through it is to face it.

Last week we took our grandchildren for a helicopter ride. My grandson is afraid of heights but he reluctantly agreed to go. After we had bought our tickets, he had a full-blown panic attack. We assured him that it was very safe, and that we would be with him, but that did not help. He wanted to quit. We asked him if tomorrow came, and he had not taken the ride would he feel better or worse about himself.  Fear only lasts a moment, but the accomplishment lasts forever. Ten minutes into the ride, he decided he wanted to be a helicopter pilot!

What is on the far side of fear? The future is!  If we allow our fear to rule us, then we will never discover that future. Fear is natural and normal, but when it runs our lives, then it robs us of our future and eventually our hope.  

The next time you are afraid, just remember that God is with you, that he loves you, and that He has a wonderful plan for you. But that plans lie on the far side of overcoming our fears.

Nehemiah 13: Working the Wall

In 1987, the Berlin Wall came down. It had been a hated symbol of Communist oppression for forty years. But few people know what really caused its fall.

The leaders of East Germany agreed to let certain people pass through the wall to visit relatives in the West for a weekend pass. People stormed the checkpoints to visit relatives in the West. Soon the pressure of people wanting to see family nearly broke the wall.

But that wasn’t all. Germans lined up to visit the West just for the fun of it. Germany is famous for its Autobahn, a long interstate with no speed limits.  In East Germany they made a little car called the Travi. Like most cars made under Communism, it was a terrible car—nevertheless, East Germans were curious to see how they would perform on the Autobahn. They flooded the checkpoints trying to get their cars through to race them on the Autobahn.

It’s often little, ordinary things that tear down spiritual walls, too. The same pressures that brought down the Berlin wall—family connections and the desire for worldly things—can destroy the walls God builds around us to protect our lives, more than the devil ever could.

We see this in Nehemiah, chapter 13.  The wall around Jerusalem had been completed and dedicated. Now they had to use the wall to preserve the nation. Nehemiah wrote in 13: 1-4

 

“On that day they read from the Book of Moses in the hearing of the people. And in it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God, for they did not meet the people of Israel with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them—yet our God turned the curse into a blessing. As soon as the people heard the law, they separated from Israel all those of foreign descent.”

 

The Law of Moses was their spiritual wall.  When they read it, they discovered that they had missed something important. The Ammonites and Moabites—the pagans living in their land—were not only living in Jerusalem, but intermarrying with the Jews, even though the Bible expressly forbade this. This wasn’t racism, this was obedience. It probably made no sense to the average Israelite. Why should they discriminate against Ammonites and Moabites?  It wasn’t their place to question God’s motives—they should just obey.

Today, we have the same problem. We should not discriminate against any race or ethnicity. African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Native Americans, and Arab Americans should fully participate in American churches, and there is nothing wrong with intermarriage with them. In Numbers 12, when Moses married an Ethiopian woman and his brother and sister complained, God rebuked Miriam and Aaron for complaining. To discriminate against those whom God calls us to welcome is a sin.

But the Bible does not approve intermarriage with unbelievers, nor does it approve sexual relations of any kind outside of marriage. The reasons why are the same as they were in Nehemiah’s day, and that was to keep ourselves pure for God.

In Nehemiah 13: 4-9 we see an example of what happens when we don’t.

 

“Now before this, Eliashib the priest, who was appointed over the chambers of the house of our God, and who was related to Tobiah, prepared for Tobiah a large chamber where they had previously put the grain offering, the frankincense, the vessels, and the tithes of grain, wine, and oil, which were given by commandment to the Levites, singers, and gatekeepers, and the contributions for the priests. While this was taking place, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I went to the king. And after some time I asked leave of the king and came to Jerusalem, and I then discovered the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, preparing for him a chamber in the courts of the house of God. And I was very angry, and I threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the chamber.

 

One of the three enemies of Nehemiah was Tobiah, and he was discovered to be living in Jerusalem! Tobiah had lost his position as an Ammonite chief, and was living off his in-law, Eliashib, the High Priest of Jerusalem! Tobiah had been unable to get through the wall, but his relative did! So the High Priest opened up the wall to the Jews worst enemy and gave him an apartment inside the temple itself. 

We have a responsibility to take care of our loved ones, but we have a greater responsibility to take care of the things of God. If our race, nation, or family comes before God, then our race, nation, or family has become an idol.

There is only one member we can choose, and that is our spouse. With that choice comes responsibility for our spouse’s entire family. Be careful what in-laws you choose. That’s one of several reasons why God forbids sexual relations outside marriage. We risk creating children with them, and that is a responsibility that lasts forever. Choosing the wrong spouse is risking a lifetime of bondage. To become entangled with the wrong family endangers not only our relationship to God, but all our children after us. 

Our society pushes a life priority that is entirely wrong. It goes like this:  Feelings first, family second, and God last.

Feelings first.  We have sex or get married because we have feelings for someone.  “Love” in our common understanding is a helpless, hopeless feeling, which we are not able to control. If we have sexual feelings for someone, we believe if we don’t act on them we will die. We have been told constantly to follow our heart, instead of following God’s Law or even or own reason. As a result, we get into relationships that defy not only God, but common sense.

Family second. Because we have been told that families are important, we go along with our loved ones who live immoral lifestyles. If a family member sins, we feel we should cover up for them, if they get in a foolish argument we take their side even when they are wrong, if they refuse to work we still support them, and if they get involved in a sinful relationship, we turn and look the other way. We accept things in our own family that would horrify us in someone else’s family.  This was Adam’s first sin, to put his relationship with Eve over God’s commandment. Not only did he not rebuke Eve when she ate the forbidden fruit, but he joined her in eating it. The same sin is repeated in modern families all the time.

 God last. Our honor of God is conditional on our first two priorities. If our feelings tell us we no longer love our families or spouses, then we feel justified in dropping them. If our families tell us that honoring God in worship is inconvenient with family plans, then we quit the church to go with the family.  If we don’t feel like worship, then we don’t worship, because in our minds, God is a distant third to our feelings and family.

 God has a different order. His order is God, family, and then feelings. Our first obligation is to obey God. Because when we obey God, we honor our families. If we don’t feel like honoring our families we do it anyway because our God commands it. “Honor your father and mother.”

This isn’t easy. We are not used to saying “no” to either our feelings or our family. Sometimes our feelings seem so strong that we think we’ll go crazy if we don’t listen to them.

But our feelings change from day to day. Recognizing and resisting our feelings makes us stronger, not weaker. Feelings are like kids: we should cherish them, love them, and listen to them. But we should not let them run our lives.

 

Eliashib was high priest, but he was a prisoner of his relatives. He put a relative first who was the devil himself, and gave him a room in God’s temple, because at some time he or one of his relatives became married to an unbeliever. I have seen the same thing in many Christian families—even my own. If we are to be serious about God we must put God first and build our homes upon solid connections.

Nehemiah’s reaction was stern and swift.  He had Tobiah kicked out, his grain supply cut off, and his furniture thrown out on the street. Nehemiah would not allow Tobiah to be supported by the temple. 

But family is not the only cause for walls coming down. Business and entertainment can take the place of family in this order. We see this in 19-23

 

“As soon as it began to grow dark at the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I commanded that the doors should be shut and gave orders that they should not be opened until after the Sabbath. And I stationed some of my servants at the gates, that no load might be brought in on the Sabbath day. Then the merchants and sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice. But I warned them and said to them, "Why do you lodge outside the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you." From that time on they did not come on the Sabbath. Then I commanded the Levites that they should purify themselves and come and guard the gates, to keep the Sabbath day holy. Remember this also in my favor, O my God, and spare me according to the greatness of your steadfast love.”

 

Here the order was feelings, business, and then God. The merchants and sellers felt that if they could not work seven days a week at selling stuff, then they were being cheated. So they set up shop at the gates of the temple on the Sabbath Day. They justified this by saying it was good for business. God’s law may have been against it, but business came first.

But God has a different priority: God, business, and then feelings. Our business is dictated by God’s law, not what we feel like doing.

Jerusalem twice is still a walled city. But now there are no gates on the walls. There are just roads and highways that go right through the city walls. It would be impossible to close the gates today, if they wanted to. The walls are just decorations, no more.

Are our spiritual walls more than decorations?  Do they matter to us? We may call ourselves righteous all we want, but if don’t listen to God, our faith is useless. 

Christ said in Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”  Seek God first before family, business, and entertainment and He will reward you. Set God first in your life. That is ultimately the only way to survive this dangerous world.

Nehemiah 6: Gossip!

There is no rest from trouble! Just as soon as you think you have peace from your problems, they pop up again! 

Take Nehemiah, for example. They got the wall around Jerusalem built, but they had a famine, and people were starving. Then the rich men in Jerusalem started taking advantage of the poor and starving people. Then, when Nehemiah got them straightened out, the three enemies who had bothered them while they were building the wall, who they thought would be defeated while they were building the wall, popped up again, worse than ever!

These three men Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem, are the villains in this story. They have one purpose, and that is to keep the wall from being built. The wall around Jerusalem was for the purpose of protecting the people from these three men and their followers, just as the wall around the Church is meant to protect us from the destruction that the Devil causes in our lives. 

While the wall was down, they would ride into town like bandits in an old Western, taking whatever they wished. When the wall was rebuilt, they were powerless. So they tried to lure Nehemiah out of the protection of the wall.  Verses 1-2

 
“When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it-though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates- Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message:

‘Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.’ But they were scheming to harm me;”

 

Notice one little detail. Nehemiah did not say, “They were scheming to kill me.” But he did say they wanted to harm him. When the Devil attacks, don’t make the assumption that he wants to harm us physically, or even financially. Sometimes the biggest dangers are not to life and limb, but to our hearts and souls.

When he comes after you, he doesn’t wear horns and a tail. He wants you to think that he’s not such a bad guy. It is easier to deal with the Devil when he acts like the Devil than when he comes in the guise of your best friend. He tries to convince us that the war for our souls is over, so that we will not be on our guard.

When Satan attacks, it usually looks like a blessing. He can come in the form of an attractive, sympathetic woman or man, a sudden windfall of cash, or a pleasant day off. These joys may be real, but they are live bait. If we are foolish enough to bite, then he will have us hooked, and he can have us. 

Sanballat, Tobias, and Geshem offered peace to Nehemiah. All he had to do was meet them in an open, undefended field. They may have even promised him gifts. Nehemiah sent this message back.  Verses 3-4

 

“So I sent messengers to them with this reply: ’I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?’ Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer.”

They did not just ask once, but four times. Satan never attacks once: he always comes back. We cannot prevent temptations from coming, but we can respond. With the first temptation, we need to start praying. We also need to be looking for help from others. To fight Satan we need both strength from God and strength from others.  Verses 5-7 

“Then, the fifth time, Sanballat sent his aide to me with the same message, and in his hand was an unsealed letter in which was written: ‘It is reported among the nations-and Geshem says it is true-that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. Moreover, according to these reports you are about to become their king and have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem: “‘there is a king in Judah!”’ Now this report will get back to the king; so come, let us confer together."

 

When the false overtures of peace did not move Nehemiah, they tried gossip and slander. They claimed that he was planning to revolt against the Persians, who were their overlord. One of them, Geshem, was prepared to swear falsely to this. They threatened to take this to his boss, unless they could meet with him.

When we are slandered, there are two reactions we have, and those two reactions are to fight or flight. I’m sure Nehemiah wanted to fight back. But in order to do that, he would have to leave his protective wall. 

Consider how Christians react to slander.  We are being slandered in the world today, and Christians want to fight back, too. But it is God who protects us. When we leave God’s protection to seek after vengeance or retribution, then Satan has us where He wants us. 

When the Muslims drove Christians and Jews out of the Holy Land, European Christians launched a series of Crusades to take it back. Not only did they fail to take it by force of arms, but the last two Crusades wound up being fought against other Christians! One wonders if the time, effort, and lives wasted in the Crusades had been spent on loving the Muslims and sending in missionaries, if the Muslims would still be in power today. 

Satan does want to kill you, but not if he can use you. Satan often uses us against each other, especially when it comes to slander.

The second reaction we have to slander is to run away. Of all the attacks Satan uses on the church, none are more effective than gossip, except one. That is the fear of gossip. The gossip does not really have to be spread.  All we have to do is think that people will be talking about us, and we will refrain from doing good.

Social scientist Jerry Harvey cites a study done on peer pressure in his book, The Abilene Paradox. These studies have shown that peer pressure does not mainly originate in other people, but in our own minds. People do not have to gossip about us. We are so afraid of people talking that we will not do what we know to be true. People were put into a group with five other people without knowing they were part of a social experiment. The five other people were instructed to give the wrong answer to a simple question, while the other person gave the right answer. The five with the wrong answer were specifically instructed not to pressure the other one in anyway. Nevertheless more than half the time the person would change their answer to go along with the crowd, even when the crowd said nothing. They would change, for fear of standing out. 

People will always talk—so what?  It does not necessarily mean anything. Even if they are malicious, we have a God who loves us. What are wagging tongues next to a God who stands by us?  Verses 8-9

 “I sent him this reply: ‘Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.’” They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, "Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed." [But I prayed,] "Now strengthen my hands."

Notice what Nehemiah does. First, he denies the gossip. We should deny it. But he doesn’t try to stop it. He can’t stop it. The more he argues the worse he would make it. Instead, he prayed to God to make his hands strong, so that he could put up with the gossip.

Gossip was used against the early church. They were called libertines, cannibals, baby snatchers and especially intolerant. Nevertheless, it was God’s power and their resolute following of Him that eventually showed the gossipers for the liars they were. Verses 15-16

“So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.”

Have you ever been afraid of speaking out in a meeting or standing on a stage? Have you ever worried about being overdressed or underdressed for an occasion? If you have what you really fear is what others may say or think. 

Remember this, God has not given you a spirit of fear. Our fear does not come from God, but from our fear of people, often from a fear that has no basis in fact. 

When people do slander us, it is not because they hate us so much as because they fear us. If they were not afraid themselves, then they would have no reason to slander. Because they are afraid, they resort to slander.

When we do not allow other people’s opinions to dictate our behavior, then our enemies lose their weapon of last resort. They should be afraid because they are helpless. From then on, they fear us.

The early Christian church endured terrible slanders, but they were not moved. They continued to preach Christ. It shocked Roman society that the Christians did not seem to care about the slander. In time the actions of the Christians, their good deeds and good qualities, became so well known that people did not believe the slanders. Later, the Romans started to fear the Christians, because the emperors who persecuted believers usually came to bad ends. God takes care of us. We do not have to fear.  

Jesus said, “Blessed are you when people persecute you and despise you, when they say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake, for great is your reward in heaven.” God does not let slander go unanswered or unrewarded.

Persecution is coming in America to Christians—in fact, it is already here. It is not physical persecution or legal persecution, though it is not impossible in the future. The persecution of Christians in America today is that of slander. It is the one kind of persecution that is best dealt with by paying no attention. Stand firm, and it will go away.

Nehemiah 5: Hard Times

We have been following the story of Nehemiah, a butler to king Artaxerxes of Persia, who heard that Jerusalem was in a mess, and got permission from King Artaxerxes to go back to Jerusalem and oversee the rebuilding of its walls. After many trials and over great opposition, he organized the people, fought off their enemies, and completed the repairs of the wall. He did all of this by the end of chapter 4!

Chapter 4, would have been a good end to the book, but there are still 9 chapters to go.

By chapter 5, they were having more problems. A famine devastated the land and people were starving. 

It seems so unfair!

They had just rebuilt the wall. They scared off the enemies that surrounded them. They were well on their way to restoring the temple. They should have been experiencing God’s blessings.  Now instead, their crops were dying in the field, their animals were starving, and their children never had enough to eat.

We tend to think that hard times are an exception to life, that if we only make it through a hard patch things will be all right. But when we get through one hard patch, another one seems to be on the horizon. Troubles roll in like waves in the ocean. No sooner does one challenge pass us, then another is rolling in to take its place. When do we get to experience God’s blessings?

 Life sometimes seems like a cruel joke. You work hard to achieve something good, noble and holy. You’ve done God’s will, or at least you have tried, but you are no better off. Another trouble is always on the horizon.

I see frustrated young pastors. They go off to school and study seven years for the ministry.  Then they go to their first church and run into trouble. In a year or two or three, they drop out of the ministry. The blessings they expected were not there.  I see that in parents. They raise a child to believe in God and to be good. Then, just when they think they’ve done a good job, the child becomes a teenager, and will have nothing to do with God. Instead of a blessing we get heartache. I see it in older people. They get over one illness, just to get another.  I see it in people who take jobs, only to lose them in a month or two. Why does God allow so much trouble in our lives for so long?

We think about trouble too simplistically. Trouble is not a temporary state but the permanent condition of fallen people. Trouble persists as long as our lives persists. Buddha said, “To live is to suffer.” We are going to have problems as long as there is bread in our bodies. Trouble follows us our whole lives.

Sometimes trouble comes from our own mistakes. The Jerusalem famine might have occurred because they planted the wrong crops in the spring, or because they should have had more people farming while others were building the wall. It often takes years for us to experience the result of our wrong choices.  By then, we may have changed our ways, but the consequences still come.

More often trouble comes for no apparent reason. Famines hit even good farmers. We might lose our shirt in the stock market, even if we do everything right.  We might have a heart attack or get cancer even if we’ve taken good care of our health. We did nothing to cause it.

Don’t try to figure out why trouble comes. It comes because the world is a mess. God is in charge, but He is constantly challenging us to grow by allowing trouble. God never removes all trouble from us permanently. He depends upon trouble to keep us growing. We can either see our troubles as a doom or a challenge. That is our choice. 

The people of Jerusalem responded to this new challenge in a manner that is typical of believers today, and that was making a mess of it.

The majority of the people became so desperate that they nearly threw away their futures trying to fix it.

They mortgaged their fields and homes. If they lost their fields, what would they eat in the future? Debt is a form of slavery. We sell our future to pay for the present. Debt is also a form of gambling. We bet that we can pay off the present in the future. But who knows what tomorrow will bring? We may have prosperity or we may have ruin.

They mortgaged their sons and daughters by selling them into indentured servitude. If they lost their kids, what was the point of going on?  When we neglect our kids to make money, we are selling our kids’ happiness to provide for our wants and needs today. 

In hard times we must take stock of what is essential to us. Do we really need all these so-called “necessities?”  Can we live without our televisions and gaming systems?  Do we really need the best and the latest, or can we make do with what we have? We should not sell our children and our futures for current luxuries.

A small group of people—the rich and powerful among them--took advantage of the others. They used the famine as an opportunity to make money through usury.

“Usury” is the sin of making money off other people’s troubles by lending money at a high rate.  “Loansharking” would be a more common term. 

Go down the road in any major city and you will see usury.  It is what goes on in places that say “Payday loans,” “Quick Cash Loans,” and “Title Loans.”  Every day, you receive ads in the mail for credit cards inviting you to borrow money at a high rate of interest. These places are not selling, they are buying your future.  When you deal with them, you are selling pieces of your life. They will keep after you until you pay every last penny.

I do not believe these people are necessarily “greedy.” “Scared” would be a better word. They are concerned with storing up treasures for their future.

Making money is good, but not when we take advantage of the trouble of others, or when we mortgage our futures or our families to acquire it.

Nehemiah 5 suggest better responses to hard times. 

First, we should trust God

In verses 9-12, Nehemiah had a “sit down session” with the moneylenders about their food loans. 

"What you are doing is not right. Shouldn't you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies?”

Consider what you are doing, Nehemiah says.  You call yourselves God’s people, yet the pagans around you are showing more sense than you. Aren’t you afraid of God?  Don’t you want to please Him more than you want to make money? 

The problem here is not greed or gluttony, but trust. Either you trust God to supply your needs or you don’t. If you do, then you don’t have to break God’s rules to supply your needs. Fear Him, not the famine. God will take care of you if you put Him first.

 God has been with us in the past. He will be with us in the future. When we try to do it our own way, then we just make matters worse.

Second we should Praise God.

The second answer comes from verses12-13

 

“Then I summoned the priests and made the nobles and officials take an oath to do what they had promised. I also shook out the folds of my robe and said, "In this way may God shake out of his house and possessions every man who does not keep this promise. So may such a man be shaken out and emptied!"

 

At this the whole assembly said, "Amen," and praised the LORD. And the people did as they had promised.”

 

The leaders repented of their usury. But before they did what they were supposed to do, they praised God.

Praising God is how we remind ourselves that God is in charge. If we do what God wants, but we don’t praise the Lord, then all the anxieties and temptations will stay, even if the problems get better. If we don’t trust Jesus now, then what makes us think we will trust Him in the future unless we first acknowledge that He is trustworthy?

Third, we join others.

Nehemiah’s response to the famine is found in verses 14-18. He did not take advantage of people.  As governor, he was entitled to eat well. Instead, he ate like everyone else. Moreover, those who had nothing found a place at his table. At one time, he had more than a hundred and fifty people regularly dining with him.

Not only did Nehemiah love God, he also loved the people and provided for them.

Our best bank account against hard times are the people we help along the way.  When we care for others, they will care for us. 

Nehemiah curried favor with the people by refusing to put himself first, and by accepting their burdens as his own. In this way, he encouraged others to be generous

People follow their leaders. If their leaders are outgoing, generous and concerned, then they will be the same to each other. 

Our leader is Jesus. As Jesus treated others, so we should treat them. 

God upholds us in times of trouble, and we uphold each other. It’s time to lift each other up, so we can all make it together.