Stay sober, stay alert! You enemy the Adversary,
stalks about like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.  (1 Peter 5:8)

 

Nothing Can Separate Us from God’s Love
For the Believer, our only fear should be of our God. (Exodus 20:19)  Otherwise, there is never a reason to fear.  Not because of disease, calamity, civil unrest, war, or persecution, but because nothing can separate us from God’s love.  (Rom 8:38-39)

What We Say Will Rule Us
If we speak failure, we will experience and become failure; but if we constantly speak of God’s work in and through us, it will become our truth more and more.  By always uplifting His Name in this way, we will experience spiritual successes. 

What We Fear Is What We Believe In
Satan delights in our fear, but God never wants us to fear anything or anyone except Him.  HaSatan attacks us with fear to pull us down, because he cannot wait for us to be ineffective for HaShem (the Lord).  HaSatan knows that once we fear, we no longer have faith in God’s promises, and we cannot be used by God to accomplish any work.  (Isaiah 41:10; Proverbs 10:24)

Fear Is a Temptation
It appeals to the nature of man, to the nature of our flesh.  When Satan tempts you, resist him and he will flee from you. (John 4:7)  Recite Scripture, because haSatan cannot stand in the presence of God’s word.  Satan flees because he is a coward.  He is afraid of you and your power through God.  Remember that Yeshua/Jesus in you is greater than Satan in the world.  (1 John 4:4)

HaSatan Is a Coward
He knows his only real tactic against Believers is by using fear.  This is why he resorts to force, weapons, bloodshed, and threats to our physical well being.  He knows that if he can make us fear, we have lost the fight and he hopes/wants God will lose the victory.  HaSatan is so stupid that he does not realize God will never lose the battle.  However, HaShem (the Lord) wants to do that through us. 

Examples of How Fear Can Affect Us
It was fear which caused Israel to be cursed with wandering in the wilderness another near-half century.  Israel chose to believe that because they were not physically prepared to face sophisticated giants, which made them look like grasshoppers in comparison, they would lose the fight. (Numbers 13:33)  They did not believe and remember miracles that HaShem (the Lord) had shown them. It was their fear which made God’s promises null and void for them.  What was His promise? To bring them into the Land of Israel . 

It was fear that motivated Pharaoh to enslave an entire nation and to annihilate a generation of infant males. 

Fear Does Not Merely Affect Those Who Have It 
Fear affects those around us.  Fear in the hearts of only a few men can discourage an entire army and change the course of history.  HaShem (the Lord) told the people not to send forth into battle any man who was fearful.  Fear is a powerful element of human nature which we cannot succumb to. 

Fear Means There Is No Hope
When there is no hope, there is no vision.  When there is no vision, people perish.  The verse in Hosea 4:6 which states this is not referring just to moral and ethical death.  It also refers to physical death. 

HaSatan wants to silence us
HaSatan wants us to die, because he knows that when we die we cannot operate in our God-given visions.  HaSatan knows that he can bring the end of the world faster if he can get rid of vision.  Vision is not just preparing physically for the end.  That is not our main goal. 

Vision is what the Holy Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh) plants in us as individuals and as families to fulfill.  The Lord will send a prophet like Elijah at the end to turn the hearts of the fathers to children and the hearts of the children to the fathers before the great and terrible day of the Lord before the final Judgment and day of wrath.  Ministry of all kinds will still very much be an important part of life, and perhaps more so in the future than in the past because people will be hungrier for it. 

God Often Takes Human Failures and Turns Them Into Works That Glorify Him 
In the end, He will ultimately be glorified.  It is not incumbent upon us to fear or worry.  We have to take each day as He shows us and thank Him for it. Even in the midst of chaos, we can have perfect peace, and yes, absolute joy. 

We Must Remember That Simply To Be Alive As a Gift
This gift is one that we can never take lightly.  We must never forget to enjoy this fact and live life as well as sacrifice our lives.  Many times men will write for their religion, wrangle for it, fight for it, and die for it, all but live for it.  Living for our faith is the most important aspect of our walk.  God can and will give us victory in death, but the true glory and winning of souls happens through us while we are alive.  No matter where you are, life is worth living until the end.  The lily of joy often grows in the most inhumane and decrepit circumstances. 

Our Joy Is Messiah
Joy is also found in those He has allowed us to be close to.  Each of us reveals a piece of His nature.  When we look at each other, we do not see Joseph, Paul, Mary, Linda, or Jane.  We should see the Messiah because He lives in us.  

Go and Make Disciples of All Nations
Regardless of what our function is in the body of Messiah, we individually and communally share in the duty and privilege our Master gave us.  His last and perhaps most important words to us were to go and make disciples of all nations.  Fear or concern should not stay us should we choose to go.  In the words of one Colombian believer and prisoner of guerillas,  “[Yeshua] said to go.  He never said we would come back.” 

It is our never-ending and primary goal to teach the Word so the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) can turn these unbelievers into Believers and disciples for Yeshua/Jesus.  If this is not our main focus, we are failing and God cannot use us effectively because our priorities are not in the right place.  Not everyone can be on the mission fields in foreign countries; however, there is a mission field wherever we are.  We have to concentrate our resources and live to that end. 

If our focus is on physical preparedness without first seeking spiritual preparedness, we will suffer greatly.  Yes, physical preparedness is extremely important; but far more is our spirit.  We can live anywhere without being physically prepared, but we must be spiritually so and doing things to glorify our Father.  This is what is most important. 

It Is Not Our Theology and Beliefs That Are Paramount  
Dying for Him is not the most important thing, either.  It is how we live and carry out our Master’s charge which is most important.  We will be judged not by how we so willingly died for Him, but by how we lived for Him.  Living out our faith is what we are to do, and this, passionately.  Otherwise, we die because we have no source of inner joy and no purpose for being alive. 

We Must Make Disciples for Our Master 
If we do not make disciples, we take the gift of salvation He has given to us, and we return it to Him without interest like the wicked servant did in the Gospels.  Salvation does come with a price.  It is free to obtain, but not free to maintain.  We have to work it out daily with fear and trembling, continuing in our trust.  We deny that God is capable, that He is our Provider, that He has given us a job to do and the strength and desire to do it.  We, in a sense, deny God.   

A Major Part of Our Salvation Is How It Affects and Draws Other People
We need to always be speaking of it and living it out.  The more we teach other people God’s precepts and the Gospel, the more it becomes a physical part of us.  We are constantly purified, regenerated, and renewed through this process.  Our effectiveness grows. 

We do not reach people by insulting them.  We reach them by showing them truth in a kind, loving way, and letting the Ruach (Spirit) convict them.  We do not have to convict.  The Ruach (Spirit) does that.  We do not want to force our beliefs and opinions on other people, because force never made true converts.  We want to be so passionate about it that people are drawn to it, when they see our joy and blessing. 

It Is Never the Wrong Time To Do the Right Thing 
It is not too late to reach people.  God mercifully gives us the opportunities to do this.  But if He sees that we are not actively interested in this, He will not have any reason to put us into ministry circumstances.  Why should He use someone who is only concerned about the physical aspects of life?  Do we spend more time in idle talk than proclaiming God’s character and work?  Have we kept silent when we had a chance to share His love with someone who needed to know Him?  We will be judged for our idle silences as well as for our idle words.

The Great Tribulation Is Known in Jewish Tradition
This period is called the Time of Jacob’s Troubles.   It is named so because it resembles the night that Jacob went through before his encounter with Esau.  That night Jacob had a lot to worry about.  He was not prepared for Esau and 400 men.  He was not prepared for his family to face sudden destruction and slaughter.  Wrestling with the angel showed him that he could not fight or run, because it was in HaShem’s (the Lord’s) hands anyway.  Those were the times of Jacob’s Troubles because of one problem: fear.  Jacob did not have anything to fear, because of God’s promises to him, but he balked because he thought he was not prepared, and spiritually, he was not. That was his real problem.   

The Real Fight Is with Us First
We have to remove fear and sin before we are ready to face the battle, which we should be facing for our faith every single day.  The future may look bleak and dark; we have to be a light in it.  This is when the real fight begins and we cannot back down.  We cannot stop and become complacent or preoccupied with the thoughts that hell on earth is going to break loose and there is nothing we can do about it.  On a political level, that may be true, but we could be judged for not standing up for our faith when people mock our God. 

The Only Time We Fight a Losing Battle
It is when we have become desensitized to the fact that God will win and our orders are to continue advancing.  If these are the days of Elijah, we cannot let the prophets of Baal blaspheme.  Nor can we blaspheme.  When we are not in God’s will, actively pursuing His ministry in other people, we are ripe for judgment and for a curse. 

We deserve destruction for not upholding His great commandments.  When HaShem’s (the Lord’s) people suffer because of sin, it blasphemes His name before our enemies. For this reason, we cannot back down.  If we remain silent, it will be as if we ourselves are actually bringing about the destruction.