Faith or Fear

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear. Fear is a spiritual force that keeps people down. We should champion faith as an allegiance to God. The fight-or-flight response is a psychological reaction to stress. After the fall, humans were no longer masters and fear became part of our spiritual makeup. However, in Jesus, we regain authority and can choose faith over fear. We can respond to daily events in fear or faith. It's important to regularly meditate on the word and listen to the Holy Spirit. We have access to teachings from great men and women of God. Strengthening our faith enables us to reject fear and walk in faith. God is with us and problems have no power over us. We are not just another mammal, we are created by a divine God with purpose. We have Jesus' spirit and righteousness. We can kick fear from our path and walk in Jesus. 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 John 14.27 Peace, I leave with you. My peace, I give to you. Not as the world gives, I give to you. Don't let your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful. This is interesting. The fight-or-flight response is an automatic psychological reaction to an event that is perceived as stressful or frightening. The perception of threat activates the sympathetic nervous system and triggers an acute stress response that prepares the body to fight or flee. These responses are evolutionary adaptations to increase chances of survival in threatening situations. Overly frequent, intense, or inappropriate activation of the fight-or-flight response is implicated in a range of clinical conditions, including most anxiety disorders." That's from PsychologyTools.com's fight-or-flight response resource information sheet. And I find those words interesting. Just as Adam and Eve had no belly buttons, they also did not have acute stress responses. There were no threatening situations because their survival could not be threatened before the fall. That was the state that was meant to be. No stress, no frightening or threatening situations, peace only, and the authority to subdue. Humans were not looked on as lunch because there were no meat-eaters, no killing for food, not humans, and not creatures. Fruit yielding seed. It will be your food. To every animal of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that creeps on the earth in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food. And it was so. Genesis 1, 29-30. Perfect world. Diet for dominion. No killing. All faith. No fear. After the fall, it was a different story. Carnivores came to be. Humans were no longer masters but fellow inhabitants. Note, we were and still are humans. We did not suddenly become just another animal. The scientific community has a need for classifications, and they put humans as mammals, just another animal. If you look at humankind as animals, then there is a lot of behavior that becomes permissible, a lot of thinking that is suddenly permissible. But we are still human beings, male and female, made in a class of our own, regardless of any similarity with the natural world around us. I mean, we were made from the dust of the earth, just as the animals were. Genesis 2-7 and 2-19. So there's going to be similarities. But we are spirit beings inhabiting flesh, not flesh beings. There is a distinct difference. We can classify our flesh as anything we want, but reality is that we are not subject to the rules of the animal kingdom. We are subject to spiritual rules and reality as we interact with the rules of the animal kingdom. We are fellow inhabitants with the animal kingdom. As humans, we no longer have authority over them as an automatic thing. We fell. Now there is fear where before there was only faith. Faith was perverted to fear when we gave up our authority. We were no longer in control until Jesus. In Jesus, we again have authority and dominion, Luke 10-19, because in Jesus, we are made anew into his spirit, 2 Corinthians 5-17, born again. We no longer have fear as part of our spiritual makeup. We are again beings of faith, Hebrews 11-6. That's why we have a choice. We can choose to be troubled, anxious, and fearful, or we can choose to dwell in faith and peace. We can live by old habits and our old nature. We can inhabit the flesh, or we can live in Jesus in our new nature. We can stick with fight or flight, or we can go with faith or fear. The faith or fear response is a conscious spiritual reaction to the daily events that our flesh experiences. We can respond in fear and remain in the flesh, fighting and flighting, or we can respond in faith and choose to see and say. See what our flesh is encountering. Stand in peace through Jesus and Holy Spirit. Say the name and use the authority that Jesus got back and gives us license to use again through the Word. Faith or fear is a superior way to live. By faith, by grace, through Jesus, we are new and anointed because he shares his anointing, 1 John 2, 18-29. We don't have to be fearful ever. Now, it's a choice, which means it is a skill that must be practiced. There you are, late at night, dark house. There's a sharp and unknown noise. Adrenaline floods your system. Your breath catches. Now, at that exact moment, are you going to faith or are you going to fear? If you're going to faith, you reject it. You say, no, thank you. I'm not doing fear. Whatever is or isn't there has to submit to Jesus' name. Whatever is or isn't there is not more powerful than he who is in me. He who is in me is greater than anything in the world, and I am in him. Then praise to God, say hallelujah, shout, sing, pray, whatever you like, but choose not to fear. Choose to listen to God, and on a regular basis too. That still small voice is better than any trigger or impulse of our fleshly nervous system. Holy Spirit will tell us when there's a problem, if it's a real problem, and what to do about it either way. That way of responding is easiest when we are daily meditating and studying the word, reading the Bible with intent, thinking about what it really says, not just what we've been taught, wrestling with it, looking to see Jesus and receive revelation. Remember, Holy Spirit was given to us as counselor and teacher, John 14, 26. Holy Spirit will bring to mind scriptures we've read. He will enforce all the good teaching we've ever got and correct anything that we heard wrong or was taught wrong. Holy Spirit never contradicts the word, never contradicts the Bible. You will never be told anything that doesn't agree with the word, not from him. We can read the word in accordance with the teachings from great men and women of God that are available to us. With the digital age, we have access to more teaching from more people at every moment of our day that has ever been available to anyone ever in the history of this planet. Using the guidance and asking for the wisdom of Holy Spirit, we can take in the teaching and use it to complement our own study of the word. We can be grounded and built up in so many ways on a daily basis. This strengthening of our faith enables us to respond with it, to choose what we are or are not going to do, to reject fear and to walk in faith. This is the peace that Jesus gifted us, John 14, 27. The quiet assurance of faith that the Lord God won't steer us wrong, Isaiah 41, 10. The feeling of tranquility in the midst of storms, the knowledge that God is a God of healing, of growth, of blessing, of covenant, of truth, of power, of mercy, of majesty, and I'll just stop there because I could go on all day. If you want God in a nutshell, read the book of Psalms, every one. You'll see the nature and power of God being referenced again and again through calling out to him and in acknowledging his splendor. If you want a snapshot of the ability of God, read the book of Job, especially from chapter 38 onward. If you want to get a glimpse of the authority of God, read the book of the Revelation to John. God is with us. God is holding us, talking to us, soothing us. Problems exist, but his peace and his authority say that the problems have no power to affect us. In him, they aren't problems, but occurrences, mere circumstances. They have no authority over us. Only God has authority over us. Jesus is the Lord over all of our life, and he says he is giving us peace forth through all of it, and also he gives us his authority to navigate it. See a problem? Say the word at it. See and say. Not fight or flight. Faith, not fear. Rise above the classifications that the world wants to put humanity in. We're not just another mammal. We are not the product of evolutionary adaption. We are created by a divine God of love, mercy, and power with intent, with purpose. Nothing can touch us when we abide in Jesus. Jesus made us new, better than what we should have been in the first place because we have his spirit, his righteousness. Receive his peace and never again let fear kick up anything in your spirit. Instead, kick it from your path and walk on in Jesus. The Lexham English Bible translation of Isaiah 54-17 says, Every weapon formed against you shall not succeed, and you shall declare guilty every tongue that rises against you for judgment. This is the inheritance of the servants of Yahweh and their legal right for justice from me by declaration of Yahweh. Believe it. Receive it. Walk in it. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Genesis 2. We were made by God's own hands. He breathed his breath into us and gave us life. He gave us so much more than we could fathom without his help. We see our bodies and we can recognize our souls, the mind, emotions, and personality. As humans, we investigate and improve those two things. We can make our bodies sculpted to near perfection. We can train our minds and reach heights of intellectualism that is truly genius. But neither of them are all that hot. They're both short of what we can be. The body is the bottom, the mind is the middle, and no matter how great those two things are, they are not the top. The top is the spirit, the true us, our true existence. God is spirit and we are spirit. We communicate, recognize, and fellowship with each other as spirit beings. There is nothing on earth that was created as a spirit being but humanity, male and female. Think about that. Think of all the wonder of our natural world, the natural universe, the diversity of species and beauty, and there we are, unique. In the book of Genesis, hand formed and blessed above all, the breath of lives within us straight from the lips of God Almighty, His spirit imbuing us. Don't settle for the middle. Let God renew your spirit in Jesus. Let God retrain your mind in the Word. Be all that He says you can be. It's wonderful and cannot be explained by human mind or science. It is spiritually discerned, learned, and meditated on. Rise above all that the world and natural process has for you and live in the kingdom. It's glorious. As we close, remember that you have birth. 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. He just can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.