Not Moved by What I Fear

Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom (Luke 12:32).”

Someone has said that “Fear is the cheapest room in life’s house, and at the same time the most costly.” 2nd Chronicles, chapter 15, gives us an episode in the life of King Asa of Judah. Having just won a great victory, he was passing the home of Azariah. The spirit came upon this man and sent him out to the king, saying, “If you seek Yahweh he will be found by you, but if you forsake him he will forsake you.” We are left to wonder, why would God need to give these words of faith to King Asa? He had just been blessed by the Lord’s intervention, an answer to prayer. Before going into battle, Asa had prayed, “Lord, there is one like you-we rely on you—in your name we come against this vast army. Do not let man prevail against us.”

Maybe after such a great victory he needed to be reminded of who had won the battle. Our egos are all too ready to take the credit for the good stuff that happens, even though we have watched and fought and prayed for it to happen. Our egos tend to be stronger than our prayer life. Because we often fail to thank God as the apostle taught—In everything give thanks, we are likely to take the credit.

Our egos constantly overpower our sense of need for a deep devotional life with God. We have time for what we need to do, but God takes up too much time—time with God is not essential in our natural-earthbound minds—until like Asa, we face an enemy, be it the enemy of poverty, or sickness, or death, threats to our domestic tranquility. In the same manner, the Hebrew Bible bears witness to the fact that Israel constantly turned away from God toward idols of their own and their neighbors making.

Sometimes, because we are not really grounded in the Word, grounded in our prayer life, grounded in our devotional life, grounded in our praise life, our egos allow our obsessions, our attachments, our preoccupations, our additions, to take us away from understanding who we are and whose we are. We forget that God made us for himself, and our hearts will find no rest until they find their rest in him.

The enemy uses these natural human weaknesses, this tendency to yield to self-will over God’s will, to create unknown tears in the fabric of our faith where fear can seep in. So as Asa came back victorious, basking in the defeat of his enemies, God said to him—“The Lord will be with you, as long as you stay close to Him.” God was preparing Asa for what was to come. In the TV dramatic series West Wing, each episode ended with the President asking his staff, “What’s next?”

In the third chapter of Ezra, we read, beginning with verse 2, that Jeshua and Zerubbabel and their associates began to build the altar of the God of Israel. They were the first exiles to return from captivity. They were surrounded by hostile people. It was hard to recognize Jerusalem after 70 years of decay as an isolated ruin. The Persians had even changed the name of the area to “trans-Euphrates.” The late Dr. Chinua Achebe reminded us in his writing that this was the same manner in which European colonial powers divided up Africa and made national boundaries across previously intact tribal lands,
renaming these nations to suit their imperialist designs.

The temple had been destroyed, walls torn down, dwellings demolished. But Ezra 3:3 tells us, “Despite their fear of the peoples around them, they built the altar on its foundations and sacrificed burnt offerings on it to the Lord, both morning and evening sacrifices, and verse 4, Then in accordance with what is written, they celebrated…. They were not moved by what they feared.

After 70 years of exile, it was not just the decree of King Cyrus that brought them back to Jerusalem. God had made a promise 70 years earlier through the Prophet Jeremiah (29:11),
For I know the plans I have for you—plans
To prosper you and not to harm you,
Plans to give you hope and a future.
So they were not moved by fear of real dangers, real strife, real hardship, and real chaos. They did not get depressed or discouraged by the decimation they found. How did they do this?

They got to work. The first thing they did was “build.” They built on the foundation that was already laid there. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth (1 Cor 3:11), “There can be no other foundation beyond that which is already laid; I mean Jesus Christ himself.” Jesus is the Word made flesh. When things fall apart, when challenges rise, we must always continue to build. And we must build on God’s foundation, for all other ground is sinking sand.

The second thing they did was to offer sacrifice. There are many sacrifices that God’s work requires of us. They offered the burnt offerings in accordance with God’s Word. The third thing they did was in accordance with the written Word of God, they celebrated. They had a party. Maybe they composed some new songs based on the words of Jeremiah 29:11, because God had been faithful. This is how they overcame fear. This is how we overcome fear. If we build our lives on the revealed Word of Christ, the transmitted witness of scripture, and the sacrificial living of subjecting every issue, every situation, every fear, every question, every action to God, then no matter how determined the challenges, deceptive our enemies, or unrelenting the onslaught, we will not be moved by what we fear.