Showing posts with label Fear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fear. Show all posts

Sunday, June 18, 2023

Dread of the Enemy

“Preserve my life from dread of the enemy.”

Dread is a strong word, but a relatively common one in scripture. The Hebrew word translated “dread” in my ESV turns up 49 times throughout the Old Testament. Its most common object is the Lord himself, as we might expect, and its second most common object is the nation of Israel.

That also is predictable. To mess with Israel was to mess with Israel’s God.

Sunday, September 18, 2022

The Right Kind of Fear

In the scriptures the word “fear” may be used to describe the reaction a person might be expected to have in response to at least three different situations.

If surrounded by enemies fear would be equal to terror. David said, “Fear is on every side ... they scheme to take away my life.” On the other hand Moses commanded respect to be shown to parents by saying, “Every one of you shall fear* his mother and his father”, and Jeremiah was advocating reverence as being rightfully due to the Lord when he exclaimed, “Who would not fear you, O King of the nations? There is none like you, O Lord.”

Sunday, April 10, 2022

Outlooks and Uplooks

Expectation ... fear ... hope. What do they have in common?

Each is a way of anticipating the future. Each inevitably excites a response. This is true even if we refuse to think about what will happen tomorrow or later; we cannot avoid reacting. Even burying one’s head in the sand is a reaction which says “I choose to not think about what the future might hold.”

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

The Fearful Expectation of Judgment

“For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.”

What does it mean to “go on sinning deliberately”? That’s a very important question. Our sense of security in Christ and our enjoyment of the experience of following him in this world depend on how we answer it.

Tuesday, June 09, 2020

Unhelpful Friends and Uneasy Times

When Job’s three friends came to show him sympathy in his time of distress, they wept, tore their robes and sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him because they saw that his suffering was very great.

The week of silence was a genuine gesture of solidarity and goodwill, but everything Job’s friends did from that point on was a bit of a bust. Why? Because they opened their mouths and started talking — and arguing at great length — about something they weren’t going through and clearly didn’t understand.

We Christians may be at risk of doing much the same thing with respect to the current racial tensions in the U.S.

Sunday, April 12, 2020

The Fate of the Coward

We are living in scary times. People are afraid.

Biblical fear can be good or bad. Perfected love banishes it, but in a fallen world, fully mature love is a rarity and fear still serves the occasional valid purpose in God’s dealings with us. For one, Christians are encouraged to bring our pursuit of holiness to completion “in the fear of God”. For another, fear sometimes gets your attention in a busy world when nothing else will.

Our modern translations tell us one of the things the miracles of Christ regularly produced was awe, usually accompanied by giving glory to God. The word for “awe” in Greek is phobos, more commonly translated “fear”. This is fear at its most useful.

Monday, November 18, 2019

Anonymous Asks (67)

“Are intrusive thoughts sin?”

Intrusive thoughts can be distracting, distressing and very, very hard to get rid of. They keep us from focusing on things we know are more important, and things we really need to deal with. They raise issues we are eager to put to bed. They make us question whether we have truly forgiven others, and whether we even have full control of our own faculties.

Intrusive thoughts are certainly a pain. But are they sinful? Good question.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Bringin’ the Crazy

I’m watching a bunch of crazy people. Or at least they’re acting that way.

YouTube is full of videos of disappointed young liberals screeching out their rage and fear at the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency. Mainstream media outlets run pictures of crowds carrying signs that read, “If you don’t REVOLT, you can’t complain”, “Not my president” and “I’m afraid for my country”.

I’m reminded of the proverb that says, “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”

Monday, April 13, 2015

Nothing To Fear

Some years ago I drove through upstate New York on my way to visit a client in Massachusetts. The road rose and fell as we wove our way through the Adirondack Mountains and I was amused to see signs like the one pictured on a regular basis; there were dozens of them. I wondered about them a fair bit as we drove because really, if you’re driving a car over a mountain pass with vertical drops on the immediate left and right side of the car and you see a plane approaching the front windshield, well, what exactly does one do aside from brace for impact?

Where I live and work there is not a single one of these signs. There never has been and I dare say there never will be and the reason is pretty simple: There are no mountains here at all. So even though it is always good advice to be wary of low flying aircraft, the warning is only needed and provided when there is an actual risk that there could possibly be an impact. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it?