This week, God has pointed me to another Max Lucado message from his Grace For the Moment daily devotional. This particular lesson is titled Fear and Faith, and appeared on September 9. The scripture Max uses is:
Acts 16:25 – After midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing songs to God as the other prisoners listened.
Max then states Great acts of faith are seldom born of calm calculation. It wasn’t logic that caused Moses to raise his staff on the bank of the Red Sea…. It wasn’t medical research that convinced Naaman to dip seven times in the river…. It wasn’t common sense that caused Paul to abandon the Law and embrace grace….
And it wasn’t a confident committee that prayed in a small room in Jerusalem for Peter’s release from prison. It was a fearful, desperate, band of backed-into-a-corner believers. It was a church with no options. A congregation of have-nots pleading for help…. And never were they stronger.
At the beginning of every act of faith, there is often a seed of fear.
It is natural to have a sense of fear in our lives from time to time, and this is the point Max makes in this message. Each of us has undoubtedly been worried over the past few months about the seemingly growing number of acts of violence against people in our country.
The key is how we end up choosing to respond to these violent acts when they occur. I would like to offer two thoughts that I have had recently on our needed response to these feelings. My first thought is that we need to think about these actions when they occur, and pray to God with vigor and frequency to be with the families impacted by these acts, and with the police to capture those responsible for the senseless acts of violence that occur. We desperately need to return to law and order in our country, and throughout the world, and we need to always start with prayer.
We also need to never give in to fear, and to never let it dominate our lives. That may sometimes seem to be the only viable option we have, but it is not. Last Sunday, Pastor Don gave a great sermon on the Parable of the Talents, which appears in Matthew 25:14-30. It spoke of two slaves, one given 5 talents and one given 2 talents by their master, who invested them, had them grow, and returned the “profits” to the master. The third man, given only one talent, instead chose to bury his talent in the ground, and later dug it up and returned it to the master.
This slave felt “afraid”, so lacked the confidence to use the talent for the purpose it was given to him. We each need to have the confidence to use the gifts God has given us to make a difference for Him in our world. We need to be willing to share our talents, whatever they are, in a Godly manner to all those we know and also those with whom we may simply cross paths with occasionally in our lives.
1 John 4:18 – There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.