Bagels Can't Hurt You

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear and champion faith in God. It focuses on the story of Joshua and Caleb, who had faith in God's promise to give them the land. The Israelites, however, feared the inhabitants and did not enter the land. The power of words and belief is emphasized, as well as the importance of obeying God. The passage also discusses the promises of God and the authority given to humans to allow God to work in their lives. It encourages praise and obedience, and highlights the connection between spiritual and physical healing. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of his word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to his perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Numbers 14.9 Only don't rebel against Yahweh. Neither fear the people of the land, for they are bred for us. Their defense is removed from over them, and Yahweh is with us. Don't fear them. This is a sad passage. Not for the passage itself, but for what came after. Here are two men, Joshua and Caleb, who were declaring that the people living in the land the Lord was calling the Israelites to were no big deal. Not because of the proficiency of the Israelites, or the ineffectiveness of the people in the land. Because of the Lord. Because of what the Lord was doing, and would do, and promised that he would do. Because of the Lord, they had no reason to fear. They were pleading and trying to get it across so hard, they mentioned it twice. And the Israelites talked about stoning them. The Israelites refused listening. They heard, but they did not listen. The Israelites did not move into the land God had given them. You have to ask here why they didn't. Why didn't they listen to these two men who reverence God and trusted him? Well, but the men who went up with him said, We aren't able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we. They brought up an evil report of the land, which they had spied out to the children of Israel, saying, The land through which we have gone to spy it out is a land that eats up its inhabitants. And all the people who we saw in it are men of great stature. We saw the Nephilim, or giants, the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim. We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. Numbers 13, 31-33 Twelve men went out. Ten said, No way! Two said, Way! They listened to the ten. The ten were full of fear because of how they saw themselves versus how they saw the inhabitants of the land. And then the inhabitants of the land saw them as they saw themselves. Now they all twelve agreed it was a great land, full of lushness and sustenance. But ten balked at the inhabitants. Now Caleb, when the report first starts, Numbers 13, 26, they talk about the land, the fruit of the land. Then they say, But, but they're big, but they're intimidating, but their cities are strong, but some of them are really big. And Caleb immediately jumps in, verse 30, saying, Let's go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it. And then the ten immediately respond to that, verse 31, with, We aren't able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we. One group decrees we can enter, and one group decrees we cannot enter. The book of Job says in 22, 28, You will also decree a thing, and it will be established to you, light will shine on your ways. That verse does not lie. Both groups decreed something. Both groups got what they decreed. The ten who said, Nope, did not enter the promised land. The two who said, Oh yeah, did enter the promised land. Both got what they decreed with their mouths and believed in their hearts. Every word is a seed. Every seed brings a harvest. And what is in the heart of man is what comes out of our mouths. Luke 6, 45. One side rejected the word of the Lord in their hearts. One side embraced the word of the Lord in their hearts. Then they both spoke their belief. Now this process is so powerful, so full of creative power from the Father, that it is the way in which we are saved. That if you will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10, 9. What it comes down to is trust, belief, and expectation. Do you believe the Lord can do what the Lord God says He can do? Do you believe He can wash away your sin? Then He will. Do you believe that He can do that impossible thing? Then He will. When we believe, then we speak. When we speak, we give Him permission to enter our circumstances. This is important because we were given dominion by Yahweh God, and He won't move until and unless a human being says that He may. Note, important note, this is not us telling God how to move, or when to move, or restricting His movement in any way. This is us saying, yes Lord, do the thing you want, how you want, when you want, where you want, and according to your plans and ways. His ways are above ours. Isaiah 55, 8-9. His plans for us are not our plans for us. Jeremiah 29, 11. And we are to walk in obedience to Him, doing what He says and saying what He gives us to say. John 5, 19. We lose the authority so that God can work, or we refuse to let the Lord work. Matthew 18, 18-20. This is free will. This is why the promises of God are given. He is giving us a hint. If you let me do it my way and obey me, this will happen and it will be good. All we need to do is believe Him. When God makes a promise, don't rebel. Obey the Lord. Do not fear your enemies. There are thousands of promises in the Bible. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Hebrews 13, 8. What He gives to us, all of us, is the same. Same spirit, same gifts, though activated differently at different times by that same spirit. 2 Corinthians 12, 4-11. He makes provision for us. Matthew 6, 33. He has a design for us. Jeremiah 29, 11. And all He's asking is for us to obey so He can do the stuff, to bring Him praise and honor and glory, because it's the truth. He deserves it. We are the altar of praise. Hebrews 13, 10-16. Altars are heavenly landing strips where the spiritual and the physical meet, where heaven is invited down and into our lives. Don't neglect your praise time with the Lord. It will help us. It will help you to obey. And obedience is so simple, which begs the question, why don't we obey? Well, the answer is fear. Whatever isn't of faith is fear. So, we start looking at what we see instead of what He sees. It's like Peter. When he walks on the water, he stops looking at Jesus. He starts thinking. We're seeing foes. He's seeing bread. How hard is it to defeat bread? We see the cancer and we feel the effects. He's looking at a bagel. He sees us whole and healthy. Perhaps a croissant. Nothing missing. Nothing broken. And Jesus suffered so that we can step into full healing, spiritual, mental, physical, by grace, through faith, and be 100% whole. All aspects of our lives whole. We have been invited to enter a glorious manifestation of His goodness, 2 Peter 1-3. Don't let fear stop you from entering. Now, I know that some scholars look at the verses in 1 Peter to deal with this and say they don't refer to physical healing, but to our spiritual state. 1 Peter 2-24 says, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness. We were healed by His wounds. Now that certainly sounds like our spiritual state of being, all right. Though the words also can sound like physical healing. So let's look at where Peter got the quote. He got it from Isaiah 53, 4-5. Surely He has borne our sickness and carried our suffering. Yet we considered Him plagued, struck by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed. Now this is also a spiritual state set of verses. Isaiah is a prophetic, He will. Peter is a fulfillment, He did. And they both talk about the righteousness and eternal state of our spirits. Which is really important because in Matthew 5, 11-12, Jesus tells us that as His disciples we will be persecuted for His sake. Spiritual reward, spiritual wholeness, spiritual prosperity, and sometimes in this life, persecution. He's a whole package truth here. So looking at the whole package, what about the physical, the natural? Is this all just spiritual? Do either one of these, Isaiah and 1 Peter, talk about physical healing? Well, head over to Matthew 8, verses 16-17. When evening came, they brought to Him many possessed with demons. He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, He took our infirmities and bore our diseases. Now, this here in Matthew, it is before the cross. This is before Jesus did what was required to give us a change of our spiritual state. This is purely physical healing and the breaking of demonic bondage. And it says that Jesus, by doing this, fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, the one that said He will. And then 1 Peter says He did. So, we are changed spiritually. Our sin is taken away. This is prophesied by Isaiah and is confirmed, accomplished by Peter. We are new creations with Jesus' righteous spirit within us. But according to Matthew, it also means that Jesus bore our physical infirmities and sickness, that Jesus broke the hold of ill health, that Jesus broke demonic bondage, and we have a right to be whole and healthy with nothing missing and nothing broken, physically, here, now, in this life, because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If it meant physical healing in Matthew 8, it means physical healing now, today, from our spirit to our flesh. Now, John echoes this in 3 John 1 too. So, don't let fear or religious thinking prevent you from walking in all that Jesus has for us. 2 Peter 1, 4-8 says, "...by which He has granted to us His precious and exceedingly great promises, that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust." Yes, and for this very cause, "...adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in moral excellence, knowledge, and in knowledge, self-control, and in self-control, perseverance, and in perseverance, godliness, and in godliness, brotherly affection, and in brotherly affection, love. For if these things are yours and abound, they make you to not be idle or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." Your enemies are as bread to the Lord. They can be as bread to you. Physical enemies, spiritual enemies, people enemies, things of the flesh enemies, or things of the mind enemies, anything that is a fear, any enemy, all enemies. In Jesus, we have victory. In Jesus, we have authority. In Jesus, we have it all because He does the work. The Father has the power, and we give them permission to do what they want, how they want, and when they want. Don't look at problems and situations as problems and situations. Look at them as toast. Don't fear toast. It can be defeated with drool. Babies do it the world over on a daily basis. Instead, shout for joy and decree that in Jesus, by Jesus, and through Jesus, you are well able to overcome it. Drool all over that bread. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Lamentations 3, verses 22-24, and verse 57. Everyone who has ever felt love of any kind, in any way, to any degree, has been born of God, 1 John 4, 7-13. God is love. Everything God creates was made with love. Inside of every sentient thing, God has created in us the capacity to love. We love because He first loved us. He loved us before we loved Him, and gifted us His only Son before anything was made. He was and is ready to answer our calls to His ears. It was and is the plan. That is love that we cannot comprehend. We can understand the words, but not the thing. Not only that, but through His Spirit, He lives in us and perfects our love in us for Him and each other because He is love and gives us His nature. Why? Because He loves us. Dwell in Him, and let Him dwell in you, and feel the resonance of love echo back and forth in your life and in the atmosphere around you until you vibrate with love, His love. It will change you, revolutionize your world, and change the very atoms of your body. God's love is a powerful thing. As we close, remember that you have worth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love and no end to the things about you that He loves each and every day. Pick one, and remember the Lord loves you just because you're you. 1 John 4 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent His only-born Son into the world, that we might live through Him. And this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin, and it casts out our fear too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because He first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.