Category: <span>Devotional</span>

2 Timothy 1:7

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”

Think for a moment about some of the amazing miracles Jesus performed. Water to wine, multiplying a few loaves and fish to feed thousands, calming the storm, calling Lazarus out of the grave… In John 14, Jesus tells us that those of us who come after him will do what he has been doing, plus even greater things. How is that possible? Because he would give us his Spirit.

In today’s verse, Paul reminds Timothy that the Spirit we have been given is not timid or fearful, and if we live according to this Spirit, we won’t be either. The Spirit that is alive and active in us is characterized by power, love, and self-discipline. 

A lot of us have discovered that our typical coping mechanisms for fearful or troubling times are not serving us well when the time is measured in weeks or months instead of days. Over-indulging in our favorite comfort foods, for example, may have us feeling sluggish and slightly sick. Numbing our feelings with online shopping may give us a fun package to look forward to each day, but we can also look forward to a credit card bill arriving soon that will be anything but fun. To say nothing of even more dangerous methods of dealing with fear that can lead to destructive addictions.Wherever we are after weeks of coping, it might be time for the Spirit to bring a little power, love, and self-discipline into the situation.

Where I most need that self-discipline lately – and see if you can relate – is when it comes to news and social media. Being informed is important, but riding the 24-hour news cycle is like strapping in on a roller coaster you can’t get off of. Social media has been so helpful for maintaining community while we’re all social distancing, but if I think I’m there to relax I’m kidding myself. One practice that I’ve found very helpful is to avoid all news and social media before noon. This keeps me from reaching for my phone instead of my Bible first thing in the morning and it also lets me set a good tone for the first few hours of the day before letting too many other voices into my head. I also make sure I don’t consume any of this within an hour of going to bed, to give those voices time to clear out before it’s time to sleep. Sometimes it’s a real struggle against the voice of fear that compels me to be sure I know what’s going on at all times, but the Spirit of power and self-discipline is on my side so the battle is already won.

What areas are you struggling with since this pandemic started where you need the Spirit of power, love, and self-discipline to give you victory over a fearful and timid spirit? 

Moment of Beauty:

Used with permission from https://poetrybydeborahann.wordpress.com/

1 John 4:18 (NIV)

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Ok, raise your hand if you have not been made perfect in love.

My hand is up and I imagine yours is too. I’m honestly not even sure what that would look like, except to look at Christ. This verse comes in the middle of John’s well-known “love passage” where we also learn essential truths such as, “God is love” (verses 8 and 16), and “We love because he first loved us” (verse 19). It’s well-worth reading – or re-reading – to put this relationship between fear and love in context.

If I were to stop people on the street (from a safe 6-foot distance of course!) and ask them, “What is the opposite of fear?” chances are they would answer something like bravery or courage. If I asked for a list of 10 words, how likely is it that any of them would be love? We don’t typically understand these two things as opposites, or even contrasting ideas.

In some ways, they seem to go hand in hand. I could make a pretty good-sounding argument that fear is born out of love. After all, if I didn’t love my family so much, I wouldn’t be afraid of losing someone to this virus. It’s because I love my kids that I fear not being able to provide for them if I become unemployed. It makes a lot of sense… but it isn’t biblical.

Jesus is our example of perfect love. Jesus loved his friends, but when the storm battered their boat in the middle of the sea did he fear for their safety? Nope. Not only was he without fear in that moment, but he questioned their fearful response. It seems we may have gotten the relationship between fear and love a little wrong. Love is not the source of fear.

Perfect love (a.k.a. God) drives out fear. When we fully receive and trust his love for us, there simply isn’t room in our hearts for fear. It doesn’t mean that nothing difficult or painful will ever happen to us, but that we trust him to be in it with us and to work all things together for our ultimate good. This is a lot easier to say than it is to live out and I’m definitely a work-in-progress in this area. But I’m learning to let fear act like a smoke detector in my life. When fear starts calling the shots it is like an insistent beeping that demands my attention. I can either respond from a place of fear or from a place of love. Choosing one automatically excludes the other. Maybe it’s time to ask God to put some fresh batteries in your smoke detector. 

Don’t forget that love is a verb. It is something you do, not just something you feel. When we focus on loving the people around us well, there’s no room for fear in that either. I don’t recall another time in my lifetime when there were this many needs so readily visible around us. Do we have to find new ways of meeting needs and expressing love in a time of social distancing? Absolutely. Is fear a reasonable excuse not to do so? Hardly.

How does love drive out fear? The same way anything is driven out – the new thing occupies the space where the old used to be. We receive a love that contains no fear and allow it to fill us until it overflows onto those around us. The calling is the same as it was before we found ourselves in a global pandemic. The temptation to fear may be greater but so are our opportunities to love. We always have a choice.

Moment of Beauty

Look around your local area for beautiful examples of people loving each other well. Read articles, find videos, and look for ways to join what God is doing in the midst of difficult times. Find the drive-through food banks, the teachers comforting struggling kids over Zoom, the friends delivering groceries to vulnerable friends. Thank God for these acts of love, big and small, that conquer fear. Ask him to show you where he’s at work and where he wants you to join him.

Joel 2:21

“Be not afraid, O land; be glad and rejoice. Surely the LORD has done great things.”

Okay, it’s one thing to ask us to not be afraid in the face of daunting circumstances. It is quite another to suggest that we should be glad and rejoice. Can you even imagine if someone made a public speech right now and said, “People of Earth, great news! There is a worldwide pandemic! Let’s celebrate the arrival of Covid-19!” Or perhaps the financial reporter is appearing on the news to let us know about how many people filed for unemployment this week. “The numbers are staggering! Rejoice!” Surely the prophet Joel got part of the message lost in translation. Maybe God was speaking about a situation far less dire than what we’re all facing.

If you read the book of Joel (go ahead and do that – it’s only 3 short chapters), the context here is a plague of locusts that devour everything in their path. All crops are destroyed and there is no food. A plague that has an entire nation of people fearing for their very survival should sound familiar to us. And yet this call to replace our fear with gladness and rejoicing. How is that even possible?

The end of the verse clues us in. Surely the LORD has done great things. 

He has done great things. It is implied here that this means we can trust him to do great things again. The harder the circumstances, the more amazing it is when God does something dramatic. Just like we read about in Exodus when God led his people into seemingly inescapable danger in order to reveal his glory when he provided an escape, we know that the more impossible the situation, the more clearly we can see that the solution could only have come from God. God is a bit of a showoff in the best possible way.

When God shows up and shows off in the midst of frightening circumstances, we who know him are comforted and reminded of who he is. We also get one more reference point to remember the next time trouble comes – remember what God did last time? And those who don’t yet know him have a chance to see God’s power and mercy in remarkable and undeniable ways. 

To be clear, I do not believe that God created the coronavirus just so that he could rescue us from it. That isn’t consistent with what we know of his character. But he is choosing to allow it and though I don’t pretend to understand his reasons, I do trust that he will use it for our ultimate good. With God nothing is ever wasted.

Just a few verses later in Joel 2 comes a more well-known passage that means a lot to me. “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten… You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the LORD your God, who has worked wonders for you.” (Joel 2:25-26 NIV)

What a hopeful promise! Other translations use the word restore instead of repay. Nothing is ever wasted and God is able to restore what has been lost, even precious time. It may feel like we are spinning our wheels, stuck in quarantine, wasting our time at best and fearing for our lives at worst. But he who restores all things is still in control. 

Therefore we can choose to silence our fear with rejoicing, for he has done great things. And we believe we’ll see him act again, even in this scary time.

Moment of Beauty

Take a few minutes to worship the God who has done great things with two different worship songs along this theme:

Exodus 14:13 (NLT)

“But Moses told the people, ‘Don’t be afraid.

Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today.’”

A command to stand still sounds pretty familiar, right? Whether we’re calling it quarantine or lockdown or shelter in place or stay at home, most of the world is being asked to stand still in one way or another. Is anyone else a little surprised by how hard that actually is?

My husband is a big fan of movies where either a disaster is threatening to end the world, or the world has already ended and the drama happens in some kind of post-apocalyptic society. Have you ever noticed how many movies there are that fit this genre? Since I don’t share his enthusiasm, I haven’t watched nearly as many as he has, but they are typically heart-thumping adventure stories. We picture what we would do in a similar situation. 

The Covid-19 crisis would make a pretty dull movie. You could probably write a good medical drama, but for most of us there isn’t much action. Imagine a narrator saying, “Then the family streamed movies, played board games, and ordered groceries for curbside pickup.” 

Don’t get me wrong – I’m thankful that I can keep my family home for the safety of ourselves and others. I’m not wishing for more drama in the midst of this. But I am a doer, and I know I’m not alone. Give me something to do in a crisis and I’ll gladly do it. Ask me to sit still and wait? It should be easier, but in many ways it’s not. 

Exodus 14 is a familiar scene for many of us. The Israelites have finally escaped from slavery in Egypt and they’ve begun their journey through the desert, but then Pharaoh changes his mind and sends the army after them. So there they are, cornered against the sea as the army approaches. Destruction seems certain and no one sees a way out. At least they didn’t have a dozen 24-hour news channels describing just how dire the situation is from every possible angle, right? Even without in-depth analysis, they knew the situation was bad. Were they scared? Um, yup.

So how dumb does Moses sound when his two-fold advice is a) don’t be afraid, and b) stand still? Fear is a reasonable response and standing still is absolutely ridiculous. What kind of leadership is that? Do nothing?

I don’t know how much time the Israelites had to contemplate the situation or argue about what to do about it. It doesn’t sound like they had a lot of warning, yet verses 11-12 tell us they took a few minutes to complain about the situation to Moses. I imagine there was a “live to fight another day” group organizing themselves to surrender and return to slavery in Egypt while the “live free or die” gang was preparing to drown themselves in the sea rather than face bondage again. What other option was there?

The beginning of Exodus 14 is pretty clear that God was pulling some strings behind the scenes to walk the Israelites into a seemingly impossible situation so that he could build their faith and reveal his power and glory to them. Generations upon generations pointed back to this day in times of difficulty, reminding each other that they served a God who had made a way through the sea. 

But first, was the choice. They chose to follow instructions they didn’t understand. They chose not to give in to the fear but to simply stand still. Sometimes standing still is the ultimate act of faith – to quiet the voice of fear and watch for the Lord to rescue us from a situation that seems impossible. 

Moment of Beauty:

Take a few minutes to close your eyes and listen prayerfully to the soothing tones of the song Peace Be Still by Stephen Iverson.