A Moment, Not a Mountain

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear and promote faith. Fear is described as a spiritual force used by Satan to keep people down. The importance of faith in God and His word is emphasized, as well as the victory and authority believers have through Jesus. The authority and dominion given to humans are discussed, as well as how Jesus regained that authority through His death and resurrection. Believers are encouraged to abide in Jesus, obey His commands, and rely on His grace for righteousness and obedience. The power of speaking in alignment with God's will and using Jesus' authority against spiritual forces is emphasized. Prayer for enemies and trusting in God's deliverance is encouraged. Believers are reminded that they may face persecution and trials, but they have peace, victory, and prosperity in their souls. 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 Joshua 10.8 Yahweh said to Joshua, Don't fear them, for I have delivered them into your hands. Not a man of them shall stand before you. That is a promise from the Lord himself. No one of them shall stand before you. Isaiah 54.17 No weapon that is formed against you will prevail, and you will condemn every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of Yahweh's servants, and their righteousness is of me, says Yahweh. That means your victory by declaration of Yahweh God is your legal right of inheritance as a believer. Micah 7.16-17 The nations will see and be ashamed of all their might. They will lay their hand on their mouth. Their ears will be deaf. They will lick the dust like a serpent. Like crawling things of the earth, they will come trembling out of their dens. They will come with fear to Yahweh our God, and will be afraid because of you. Revelation 2.26-28 He who overcomes and he who keeps my works to the end, to him I will give authority over the nations. He will rule them with a rod of iron, shattering them like clay pots, as I also have received of my Father, and I will give him the morning star. This doesn't sound like we're going to have a problem with people when the Lord is telling us what to do and where to go. Nothing can stand against us when we are in alignment with the will of the Lord by being saturated with His word and renewed in it. Now why? Because Jesus is the Christ, the Lord, the Word, and He has glory, majesty, power, and authority from before all time and now and forever. Jude 1.25 This was all decided a long time ago. Before time, in fact. Before creation. Before anything was said and before anything happened. It was decided. It has now come to pass. Jesus has won. Jesus said in Revelation 1.17-18, Don't be afraid. I am the first and the last and the living one. I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever and ever. Amen. I have the keys of death and Hades. Do you doubt that your boss at your workplace can make things happen? I mean, like the head boss. The person on whose desk the buck stops. Well, of course not. If they couldn't get things done, they wouldn't be the one in charge. Investors and stockholders have a way of getting rid of people who can't make them money. If you're not producing, you're not going to be head boss for long. God works the same way. If we don't produce fruit, we're cut off. John 15.2 The Father is a spiritual being. He gave dominion and authority on earth over certain things to humankind. Genesis 1.26 tells us exactly what. God said, Let's make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Man, after the image of God. Now that was something new that had never been seen before. Spirit beings with physical bodies. Beings with dominion in this place. Now that's where the devil gets his power. The borrowed authority of humans. The authority we handed over to him. Jesus came in physical form and BAM! Took those keys and authority back. Now it again rests in a physical being because Jesus was both man and God. Human and divine. He has a resurrected, spiritualized body, but it has form. We can hug him. He isn't just a spirit. He's a living being. Revelation 1.18 He holds those keys because he is physical and spiritual. He has the authority and the dominion. He is the second in command. Father is number one. Jesus is number two. And best news, he makes you part of the family. Same name, same blood, same spirit. And we get to use his authority and dominion on earth the way we were supposed to. Co-heirs side by side with Christ Jesus. If we do as Jesus commands us in John 15, we must abide in him. Outside of Jesus were just us, people. Humans who have not obeyed from the beginning. In Jesus, we are just that because Jesus obeyed from the beginning. Jesus was as human as you and me. No special powers and abilities. Jesus performed not one miracle before the Holy Spirit descended on him at his baptism. Not one. He didn't know people's thoughts. He couldn't see into their hearts. Nothing. Nothing that the Holy Spirit did, he did until the Holy Spirit came on him. But Jesus obeyed. That means he painted over the walls of his house as a toddler. But when Mary got upset and said no, he never did it again. He would have been tempted to. But the no stood and he obeyed. Once he knew it was wrong, he did not do that thing by choice. When Mary told him to be nice to his brother or his sister, Jesus obeyed. He obeyed all through his growing up. Jesus had free will. He could have chosen to sin, to disobey the moral law of Yahweh God. But he didn't. As the son of God, he had no inherent weakness. He had no fault. And he chose to obey. Now when we abide in Jesus, we gain all of who he is because he comes to dwell inside us. We acknowledge him as our Lord and Savior, out loud confessing that he is our Lord. We believe that he died for us and was resurrected to life again. We get baptized to symbolize our joining him in that process. And we're saved. Once we're saved, he comes to dwell in us by grace to give us what we never had. Obedience, righteousness, faith, love, joy, and all the rest of the fruit of the spirit. In him, with him, and through him, we have back the position we started in as a species. But we must be broken before him because it is only in and through Jesus that we have these things, that we share in these things. But in him, we become what he is, overcomers. It's one of those great mysteries that being broken and on our knees, he simultaneously places us on our feet with crowns and victory. But we must stay broken before the Lord because it is the Lord who does it all. It is not us, it is him. And we need to acknowledge that. But none can stand against us when we are abiding in him. Not one single thing can stand against us. Not physical, not spiritual, nothing. God delivers our enemies to us. The demons and spiritual forces can't stand against us. They have no authority here. Jesus has the authority. Do not buy into the propaganda of darkness. They are not powerful beings. They are not scary, mighty things full of power and abilities. They can appear any way they want, but they are withered little creatures twisted and broken. They have nothing except what we give them. They are piggybacking on our authority and claiming that it's theirs. It is pitiful. Remember, angels are a class below where humans were created. But we fell. We fell down. Without the authority that Jesus got back, angels are above us and so are some other spiritual beings. But with the authority that Jesus got back for us, wielding that authority in Jesus according to God's word, nothing can stand against us. We again have our dominion back. We again have the ability to subdue what is around us by grace, through faith, by the power of Jesus' name, in and alongside the word. We have the right to exercise our will, use our speech, and say whatever we please. Genesis 1, 26-28, Deuteronomy 30, 19, and Proverbs 18, 20-21. But like Jesus, if we say things the Father doesn't tell us to say, that's where we're going to step wrong. We have to do it in accordance to the will of the Father. We have to do it in Jesus. We have to let God do what God wants to do if we want things to work out. Jesus has the name above all names. Does what you're facing have a name? It has to submit. However, there is one proviso on that. God doesn't mess with free will. He laid it down as a law. He laid down His sovereignty by choice in order to give us choice. Otherwise, we'd be puppets. So don't bother praying against another human being. Pray to God to help you, not to harm someone else. Lift up your enemies to the Lord and ask Him to bless them, to send angels to minister to them. Hebrews 1, 14. God is the deliverer. Rest in Him. Dwell in the secret place. Spend time in the Word and worship and in praise. Pray for those who come against you. Matthew 5, 44. And He will tell you what to do about your fellow humans and He can change the circumstance in which you will find yourself. But against demons, spirits, thoughts, emotions, diseases, sickness, Jesus has the authority and we get to use it. So use it. Believe and be strong in faith which develops by spending time in the Word which renews us and brings us into alignment with the will of God so we are not talking or saying or asking for things that aren't His will. The world won't like us. The world will persecute and hate us. Jesus said they treat us just like Him. John 15, 18-27. Because with Him dwelling in us, we are just like Him. We will have trials. We will suffer. We will be martyred. Through it all, we have His peace, His victory and prosperity as our souls prosper. From the world's point of view, we will have ups and downs. There will be times that believers will be on top of the world spreading wealth, blessing others and enjoying their kind of peace. There will be other times that the believers are persecuted, shunned, imprisoned and have a lack of worldly wealth and a lack of what the world calls peace. But from our point of view and from Heaven's point of view, we are rich, joyous, peaceful and succeeding at all times and in all things because we're on the Jesus plan. We're looking to that which is not seen, not that which is. 2 Corinthians 4.18 We can't be depressed and afraid because we're in Jesus. We'll sing in the prisons, sing in the banks, sing in the streets, sing in the workhouses. We'll sing praises to the Lord God Almighty wherever we are because all that the world counts suffering is both a privilege, Acts 5.41 and a moment. 2 Corinthians 4.17 and 1 Peter 5.10 A flash in the pan, nothing to worry about. We are overcomers. We can do it because Jesus said we can, because it is Jesus' name inside us that takes hold of it because of His sacrifice at the cross and His resurrection by the Father into life. And because the Father above Himself watches over His word to see it come to pass, Jeremiah 1.12 and Isaiah 55.11, we have nothing to worry about. Jesus is with us always right up to the end of the age, Matthew 28.20, so we never, ever, ever need to be afraid no matter where we are, no matter what is happening. The world may think it is winning, but we are killing it in the spiritual realms where the real fight is. We're succeeding because Jesus is doing it, not us. His strength, not ours. His righteousness, not ours. His victory, not ours. We're a walking loaded gun with the triple trinity barrel of righteousness in action. Praise Him for it, whatever it is, and let Him turn a negative into a positive His way. Align yourself with His will. Stand on His word. The word is the key that unlocks our deepest praise. Study it out. Believe it. Receive it. Walk in it. It will change your life. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Psalm 55. Jesus became human, 100%. He knew what it was to pray and not be sure you were heard. He knew what it was to be bullied. He knew what it was to build something on your own, to craft the picture in your head and have it turn out. He also knew what it was to fail at it. Jesus was totally human. He was a child that had to learn to walk and fell down a lot. He had to grow up, just like us. He got to know what it was like on a good day and also on a bad day. Few people have had bad days like Jesus had a bad day. Here's the guy who is love, totally, pure, unselfish love, and he was betrayed by one of his close friends, given up to be killed. It was horrible. This psalm is about David feeling like everyone is against him, that he's been betrayed by his close friend. He complains. He rails. But what is the overall message of the psalm? Verse 22, Cast your burden on Yahweh, and He will sustain you. He will never allow the righteous to be moved. God loves us, even when we screw up, even when it feels like everyone is against us, especially when we feel like that. He loves us. He loves us. He loves you. Feels good, doesn't it? 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 love 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.