why should I?

The Lord is my light and my salvation—
so why should I be afraid?
The Lord is my fortress, protecting me from danger,
so why should I tremble?                        Psalm 27:1-2

  

Why should we be afraid? Of course, we shouldn’t. We know that…in our heads. We have nothing to fear if our hope is in Christ.

 

And yet, the reality is that for most of us what’s in our head, what we know to be true, doesn’t always translate into how we live. We have this professed faith we say we believe and then we have our functional faith which is how we actually live. It isn’t intentional. It’s not calculated or decided. It’s just the reality of our disconnect—even as followers of Christ—with the God we love.

 

The Lord is the light of our salvation, he is our fortress and protection, so of course we shouldn’t fear or worry or tremble. But still, we find ourselves worrying about how we’ll get all the bills paid. Still we uncover fears and frets as we lay awake wondering how we’ll talk to this person or how we’ll respond to that email. We pray, but fearfully so, when we think about our kids and how they’ll grow and what they’ll encounter, and who they’ll befriend. We can become paralyzed with concern over what our boss thinks of our performance or how our friends view us after that outburst of anger.

 

We worry about people, we fear about money, we are concerned about all the issues we can’t control and the things we don’t know about. We even fight this fear of death! The people who have a God who’s defeated death, who has taken away the sting of death. And yet still we fear.

 

Is it a lack of trusting God? Maybe. For some of us that definitely it and in certain situations that’s probably it for all of us. Is it a lack of belief that our God is personally invested in us? Again, this is probably somewhat true too. Maybe it’s that we enjoy the attention and perceived difficulty of our lives that comes from having something fear. A friend of mine recently referred to this as the “tragic hero” mentality. So much going on, so much hardship, so much to fret over. People admire our ability to make it through and we like this perception of ourselves. It could be as simple as a control issue. We like to feel in control, so when we don’t feel in control all our trust in God’s protection and God’s sovereign hand on our lives is out the window.

 

It could be some or all of these. It could be something else. But I for one am determined to take this tendency head on. I’m not calling for us to be irresponsible or throw caution the wind and live wildly out of control, but I think we need to recognize the ways in which what we say we believe about God doesn’t line up with how we live. We need to begin unpacking the areas of life where our professed faith and our functional faith don’t meet. And what better place to start than with fear and worry?

 

The Lord is my light and my salvation. The Lord is my protection.

Lord, let me live in this truth today.

 

just stay calm

 

As Pharaoh approached, the people of Israel looked up and panicked when they saw the Egyptians overtaking them. They cried out to the Lord, and they said to Moses, “Why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness? Weren’t there enough graves for us in Egypt? What have you done to us? Why did you make us leave Egypt? Didn’t we tell you this would happen while we were still in Egypt? We said, `Leave us alone! Let us be slaves to the Egyptians. It’s better to be a slave in Egypt than a corpse in the wilderness!’”
  But Moses told the people, “Don’t be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again. The Lord himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.”            Exodus 14:10-14

 

Just stay calm? Really? We don’t want those words. Not when the world is crashing in or our plans are falling a part. We had almost made it, we were almost there. And then…the feared or the unforeseen. The worst that could happen. No worse than the worst. Everything is not as it should be and all has gone wrong.

 

This is when we like to blame. This is when we second-guess: when things seem inevitable—as if anything is unavoidable with God! The more I read through Exodus the more I see us in the Israelites. They are who we are.

 

When all the pain and cost is on the Egyptians the Israelites are all about leaving. They love the idea and accept what is given. But not when they have to pay. They didn’t like that at the beginning when the work load is increased and not here when it seems that Pharaoh will catch them again. No, now they blame. Now they deny that they ever had dreams of more than slavery or wants beyond being oppressed.

 

Why is it that we are afraid to dream unless there are guarantees involved? Why do we fear failing in when seeking God’s best for us? Can it really be failing if we falter in a pursuit of God and his Promised Land for us? Is it not success simply to go when he says go?

 

The Israelites have just made it out and here is Pharaoh, bearing down on them again and they are afraid. And just like us they lash out, they cry out, they blame and become fatalists. And Moses has words that no one wants to hear in a crisis.

 

Don’t be afraid.

 

Of course we are afraid! Why would we not be afraid? We are afraid of the worst happening. Afraid of failing. Afraid of seeing our dreams be so close and then have them ripped away again. But if we are on God’s journey and he is leading, then doesn’t it make sense that we not fear?

 

Stand still.

 

When a crisis strikes we like to “do” things, don’t we. Anything. Doing at least makes us feel like we have some semblance of control. Ah, and there’s the problem, isn’t it? We like control. Watch the Lord? But that means keeping my focus on him instead of my crisis. That means relying on him instead of myself.

 

Just stay calm.

 

As I said, we don’t want to hear this when things are falling a part. Especially when we are anything but calm! But the truth is that Moses is right. If God has called us, if God is leading us, if God is God at all, we should be more calm. Not uncaring or disengaged. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hurt or feel disappointment. But panic? No, we shouldn’t panic. Blame others when things are crashing in? Assume the worst and resign ourselves to some fatalistic outcome? These things we shouldn’t do; we shouldn’t become.

 

The greatest display of our faith isn’t just found in the choosing to follow at the beginning, but also in the continued following, in the response to crisis situations that arise. It is found in how we live the journey each day, whether a good or bad day. Whether an expected day, or something we don’t know how to handle.

 

Just stay calm…and let God do what he will do. We have nothing to fear.

 

Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
  And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.          Romans 8:35-39

keep listening

What do we do when life gets worse instead of better? What happens when we feel and believe that God is about to turn things around and we’re sure he promised he would and then, well, he doesn’t. Things get worse. The pain gets more intolerable. The relationships divide further. The money problems get bigger. What do we do then? What happens when we put all our hope in God doing something—something he said he would do—and then things go further in the wrong direction?

 

Flounder. That’s usually what we do. Struggle. Give up or in our out. We doubt, we hurt, we question. We stop trusting.

 

So Moses told the people of Israel what the Lord had said, but they refused to listen anymore. They had become too discouraged by the brutality of their slavery. Exodus 6:9

 

We are just like the Israelites. Time may have separated us, cultures and mindsets may be completely changed, but we are no different. They refused to listen anymore. They had become too discouraged. For them it was their slavery, admittedly far worse than anything most of us will face in life. But for us it’s usually circumstantial as well. We become to discouraged by our suffering, our mistreatment, our sense of unwanted-ness. Maybe it’s our fear, our repeated failures, our lack of having our own needs met in our relationships. We become discouraged by our questions that go unanswered, our pursuits that go unresolved, our friendships that are broken.

 

The list goes on and on. Things happen and we become discouraged. Nothing wrong with this. Life is sometimes discouraging. But we stop listening to what God is saying; stop trusting that he is working; stop running after the ways that he’s leading.

 

Why? Because things went badly? Because we thought he was coming to rescue and instead it felt like he turned and went the other way?

 

The Israelites just knew God wasn’t coming because the immediate things got harder. And after all, if God is going to do a miracle, won’t it be instantaneous? It took Moses forty years in the desert of Midain just to be ready to come to the Israelites so I’m thinking maybe we are too short-term focused, too oriented to immediate gratification.

 

Whatever you are in, wherever you find your self, how ever discouraging it is, hang in there. Keep listening, God is speaking. Keep looking, God is moving. Keep trusting, God hears your cries for help and he is concerned. He is coming. Maybe not as soon as you’d like, but he is knows where you are and he cares.

 

You can be sure that I have heard the groans of the people of Israel, who are now slaves to the Egyptians. And I am well aware of my covenant with them.
  ”Therefore, say to the people of Israel: `I am the Lord. I will free you from your oppression and will rescue you from your slavery in Egypt. I will redeem you with a powerful arm and great acts of judgment. I will claim you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God who has freed you from your oppression in Egypt.       Exodus 6:5-7

 

the good side of fear

Fear. That ugly tyrant that leaves us with all kinds of issues while the ones we fear just go on about their business. This is what Exodus opens with. However, we find that there is a good side of fear as well. It holds our attention in the second half of Exodus 1 (v. 15-22).

 

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Exodus 1:15-17

 

Here we have the king of Egypt instructing the midwives of the Israelites not to allow any boy babies to live. This is heinous to be sure, but does it strike anyone else how deep the destructive fear of others has run in these Egyptians? The king—who should be leading the country—is having clandestine meetings with midwives!

 

The midwives, for their part, show us a different kind of fear—a good fear. They fear God. I have to wonder as I read this, How is this different from the Egyptian fear?

 

They fear God, the Egyptians fear the Israelites. Couldn’t we just make an argument that it’s the same? One fears a people, the other fears their God? But they are not the same—at least not to me. The Egyptians have a fear of what malicious act will be done to them by another. The Israelite midwives have a fear of being the ones doing something malicious. Something they would do to their God. They do not wish to disobey him—he is God after all! They don’t fear that this would harm him, but that it would harm their relationship with him.

 

Granted, in part they do not wish to do something malicious to him because he can do far worse to them. But the motivation for the fear finds its source in their actions, not another’s. And they fear, not other people, but the one who created the people. They fear God.

 

I wonder, do I have this kind of priority for God? Do I place him far above whatever is convenient or desirable at the moment? Do I give him first place so that my greatest fear would be to harm my relationship with him? Or do I rely so heavily on grace that I have denied God his due respect? Do I willingly disobey and disrespect him for the simple fact that I know I can receive forgiveness? Do I fear God?

 

I’m not calling for a terrifying kind of life where we fear we will—at the last minute—be told by God that we weren’t good enough and so will be sent to hell. Fearing God doesn’t mean always walking around fearing a lightening strike. That’s not the gospel Jesus came to give us, that’s not truth. But sometimes grace makes it hard to care enough to choose well. Where sin abounds there will always be more grace.

 

It’s a risk God knew he was taking yet he took it anyway. As I said Monday, this Jesus, he loved too much. But we should seek to have a healthy fear. A fear of harming our relationship with the Father. A fear of willingly going against the only one who ever loved us purely and freely. And we can trust that God will care for those who fearfully respect him.

 

The midwives took their lives in their own hands when they chose to disobey the king. They could easily have been killed, but God protected them. (Don’t think I missed the fact that they honored God by lying! We’ll consider that tomorrow.)

 

For now I wonder, do I fear God? In a good way? Do I trust that fearing him leads to blessing and to God caring for me? 

 

 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.     Exodus 1:21

 

fear

As I’m reading through Exodus chapter 1 I’m noticing how fear plays such a strong role in human nature. The Egyptians came to hate the Israelites and “worked them ruthlessly” for no other reason than that they came to fear them. They came to see their neighbors as a threat.

 

What drove the Egyptians to fear the Israelites so much? It was the simple fact that the Israelites were doing well. They were growing and bettering themselves. Why does someone else’s gain automatically have to become a threat to us?

 

Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them.         Exodus 1:6-7

 

This is the great and terrible people the Egyptians enslaved and began to fear. “They multiplied greatly.” That’s a creative way of saying they had a lot of babies. In today’s society, at least in my American culture, having a lot of babies is seen as somewhat of a limiter. It costs a lot to raise a lot of children so it limits you as to how much you can do and buy and have. You are less “free” with more responsibilities tying you down. This isn’t how I see it, but it’s how many see it.

 

For the Egyptians and the Israelites of Exodus however, more babies meant more people. More people meant larger potential armies. This meant large potential power. So the gain of the Israelites was feared by the Egyptians.

 

“Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”     Exodus 1:10

 

There is no logic behind this line of thinking. It’s completely irrational and driven by fear. These are the Israelites. The only reason they are in Egypt is because of Joseph. Remember? The one who saved all of Egypt with his preparation for the coming famine? These are friends, not enemies. But fear doesn’t play by these rules of reason. Fear does not reflect accurately on history or trust those who have earned it. Fear reacts, preserves, and mistreats potential threats. And this is how the Egyptians choose to live. Fear, after all, is the great motivator—not for action, but for over-reaction. Fear panics. Fear assumes. Fear breeds suspicion and envy and hatred. Fear is a tyrant and it’s primary victim is the one who wields it.

 

How many of my life’s decisions are a reaction to fear?

 

What I find ironic in Exodus 1 is that the plan backfires on the Egyptians. They intend to oppress the Israelites and so minimize them as a threat. Instead, through harsh treatment and unfair abuse the Israelites thrive and continue to increase.

 

But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly.        Exodus 1:12-13

 

The only ones who lost for all this fearing are the ones living in fear. Granted, the Israelites endure harsh treatment, but their story does not end with being treated harshly. Their story is not over, it is only just beginning.

 

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.     1 John 4:18

 

what are you crying about?

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.            Exodus 14:15

 

Exodus 14 finds the Israelites freshly freed and on their first little bit of their journey through the wilderness. Pharaoh realizes what he is losing in setting the Israelites free and decides to come after them. And wouldn’t you know it, they start to worry and question and blame Moses for freeing them! (A sign of things to come?)

They are afraid and so they begin to doubt. And as Moses is trying to comfort and encourage the people, God says something very interesting to Moses:

“Why are you crying out to me?”

Now there is something you never want to hear in a crisis! God asking, “Why bring me into this? What are you crying about?”

Sometimes I’ve felt that way. Sometimes I’ve felt like all I wanted from God was some help, some direction and what I get in response feels more like this.

But look at what else God says here:

“Tell the Israelites to get moving.”

God isn’t asking why he is being involved in their problem because he doesn’t care, but because they already have been given direction. They have already been told that God will lead them out and that they are going to the Promised Land. But the second they see trouble coming they stop doing what God has called them to and start crying out, complaining, blaming and regretting their steps of faith.

Actually, in light of this, God’s response is remarkably kind. It must have been frustrating for him to be in the process of delivering them and all they can focus on is the one thing that looks bad, that appears to be a problem.

Forget all the plagues and the miracle of the Passover! Forget the fact that they are now already out and on their way, a free people! Forget about the constant display of God’s power they have been witnessing! What about those who are chasing us now?!

Isn’t this just like us? Well, it’s just like me, I know. I can be so afraid of the possible failures and difficulties that I forget the deliverance that came just moments ago. Or that is still coming right now!

I am so very guilty of this kind of vision. Seeing only the failure and possible pitfalls and ignoring the victories that surround me. Crying out to God to rescue me when he is rescuing me and has already given me the direction I need.

Father, may you grant me the courage to not fall apart when I fear that things around me are. May I stick to the plan you have given and trust you to make a way. May I see that your face is shining on me, that you are  gracious to me, and that you have given me peace.