Week Thirty-Five, 2018
“FEAR”
By John Grant
So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10
Most every day I talk to someone who is afraid or anxious. Maybe you fear what people think of you… Not having enough money… Public speaking, flying, being far from home, or spiders… Failure or rejection… Losing a loved one… Disease or pain… Death… We all long for more of God’s peace in the midst of the stresses of our lives.
“Fear not!” is the most repeated command in the Bible. There are 365 “fear nots” in the Bible — one “Fear not” for every day of the year. God doesn’t want us to go a single day without hearing his word of comfort: “Fear not”. It is the most repeated command in the Bible.
In his book, What are You Afraid Of, Dr. David Jeremiah talks about fear with a Bible verse to illustrate each of the fears he writes about. He identifies fear of calamity, fear of serious illness, fear of financial collapse, fear of failure, fear of being alone, fear of rejection, fear of sudden trouble, the fear of mental breakdown, the fear of dying and many more.’
Like me, surely you have some personal fears that apply only to you. Some of us are simply afraid of fear. It was Franklin Roosevelt who said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Billions a year are spent on the secular dealing with fear, but Dr. Jeremiah puts a different spin on it. He turns to the Bible and proclaims that the opposite of fear is faith. We are in a fallen world and evil has a foothold on every corner of it. There are only two ways to face the future: with fear or with faith.
Only faith in Christ will truly combat the evils of the world. Through His Son, God gave us the amazing gift of our being able to be forgiven for our sins and live with Him forever throughout eternity. The joy of that revelation far exceeds fear on this earth.
If you live with fear in your life, overcoming that fear is as easy as replacing your fear of life with faith in a new life through Christ our Lord.
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SOMETIMES TRUE STORIES
New dog… St. Pit… a cross between a Pit Bull and a St. Bernard. It will bite your hand off and then go for help
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Never:
Thomas Edison once expected alchemy to be perfected, so that “it will be an easy matter to convert a truckload of iron bars into virgin gold.”
The New York Times announced in 1920, “a rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” In 1949, Popular Mechanics predicted that, “computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only 1.5 tons.”
And in 1977, Digital Equipment Corporation founder Ken Olsen claimed, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” (To be fair, his computers were larger than many people’s homes at the time.)
“Behind every “no” from God is a greater ‘yes.’” —Dave Ferguson
There are over three thousand promises in the Bible.
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QUOTES YOU CAN USE
Proverbs 28 – He who trusts his own heart is a fool.
Do you worship the leaves on the tree or do you worship the roots?
“My greatest strength is that I am an ordinary average guy.” —Ron Upton
The first President of our country’s greatest asset was that Washington knew he was dispensable. Put your hand in a bucket of water, pull it out, and note what happens…the hole that remains is a measure of how much you’ll be missed.
“Life is not about success, but rather about significance.” —Danny Wuerffel
“We are the Bibles the world is reading; we are the creeds the world is needing; we are the sermons the world is heeding.” —Billy Graham
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©2018 John Grant | Florida State Senator (Ret.) | 10025 Orange Grove Drive | Tampa, FL 33618