Category Archives: character of god

Freedom Friday: Fear of the Unknown

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I became a Christian halfway through my 3 years at Second College (I went to college elsewhere for 2 years, took 2 years off, and transferred to a new school to finish).

Initially, I was amazed. God revealed Himself to me, daily, in big ways and little ways.

He came through.

He showed Himself strong.

He was faithful.

Then life happened. I made some bad choices. I didn’t ask God for His help in certain areas. And I found myself in a destructive, and yet familiar, relationship with a woman who “needed my help.”

It’s no secret that I was gay-identified for almost a decade. By the time I came to know Jesus, my identity was firmly planted in being gay. It was who I was, and it was what I knew. It was familiar. It was comfortable in its discomfort (as I talked about last week).

I didn’t know anything else but being gay. So when this relationship began, it simply stood to reinforce my fear: the fear of the unknown.

The fear of the unknown is a powerful force. It keeps us in unhealth because the unhealth we know is familiar. It’s a known pain, a known chaos.

It also keeps us in situations that aren’t necessarily unhealthy, but are not God’s best for us. They are not the next step in God’s plan.

Fear of the unknown keeps us chained.

It keeps us from moving forward.

It keeps us from our Promised Land.

Exodus 14 begins with the Israelites camped by the Red Sea. Pharaoh decided he made a mistake in letting the Israelites go and began to follow them.

We pick up the story in verse 10:

As Pharaoh drew near, the sons of Israel looked, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they became very frightened; so the sons of Israel cried out to the LORD. Then they said to Moses, “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you dealt with us in this way, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

People stay in or run back to miserable situations because of the fear of the unknown. The above quote from the Israelites is a perfect example of that.

I was a perfect example of this. The woman I was in a relationship with had a lot of problems. I had a lot of problems. Even in the best of circumstances, we would have made a horrible match! Underneath that rebellious choice to enter into a relationship that I knew to be wrong was a broken child crying out to her heavenly father, “Are You really enough for me? Can I leave behind everything I’ve known and built my life upon for the unknown that is a relationship with You?”

I have to remember, as I read the above passage, that the Israelites were just beginning to walk out of generations of slavery. It was all they had ever experienced. It was all they knew. They had no context for the Promised Land.

Continuing on in Exodus:

But Moses said to the people, “Do not fear! Stand by and see the salvation of the LORD which He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them again forever. The LORD will fight for you while you keep silent.” Then the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to Me? Tell the sons of Israel to go forward.”

Moses raised his hand over the sea, and God opened a path through the water for the Israelites. In my case, my girlfriend dumped me, and I decided, painstakingly, one-step-at-a-time, to choose to trust God, not only in the area of my sexuality, but also with my whole life.

When God calls us to something new, it’s not surprising that we will experience fear. Like the Israelites, we have no context for this new journey; all we have is context for the old one. The “what if’s”, the questions, the obstacles – they overwhelm us. They keep us standing still.

But in those moments, you have a choice: stick with the pain you know, or choose to trust God and forge ahead into the pain you don’t know. The latter is a choice to trust that God is who He says He is and He will do what He has said He will do. It’s a choice to believe that He must have something better for you, that this can’t be all there is, that if He’s asking you to move forward, then He will carry us through.

If you are overcome by a fear of the unknown today, surrender it to God. Give Him your questions and hesitations; He’s not afraid of them. Then, stand by. Wait and see how God will fight for you and what He wants to accomplish for you. And “do it afraid”, as Joyce Meyer says. As God commanded the Israelites, go forward, despite the fear. Do not let fear of the unknown paralyze you or keep you from living in the fullness of all God has for you.

I’m praying Romans 15:13 for you today: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Freedom Friday: The God Who Bends

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Every once in a while, I stumble across a characteristic of God, an attribute of His, a behavior, a response, that catches my breath.

I wrote a few months ago about the God who sustains, the God who stoops to make us great.

I’m still reading the books of 1 Chronicles and Psalms, and yesterday’s psalm was Psalm 86 (a prayer of David).

The Psalm begins:

Bend down, O Lord, and hear my prayer.

The God who bends.

I had to pause as I was overcome with this image. Our Heavenly Father, all-powerful and all-knowing, able to speak just one word and entire universes are created – this awesome God. Was He really the God who would bend down to hear our prayer?

First, I wanted to learn more about this word that is translated “bend”.

The transliterated Hebrew word is “natah“. Here are some other ways it’s translated:

to bow
to bend, turn, incline, to bend down
to stretch out, to spread out
to incline, influence, hold out, extend

I then went to the Word to see if there were other mentions of God bending (using my Life Recovery Bible, which is the New Living Translation).

“Bend down, O Lord, and listen! Open your eyes, O Lord, and see!” 2 Kings 19:16

“Lord, hear my prayer! Listen to my plea! Don’t turn away from me in my time of distress. Bend down to listen, and answer me quickly when I call to you.” Psalm 102:1-2

“I am praying to you because I know you will answer, O God. Bend down and listen as I pray.” Psalm 17:6

“Bend down, O Lord, and listen! Open your eyes, O Lord, and see!” Isaiah 37:17

Thus far, these are all declarations from people, requests that God bend down and hear their prayers. These are desperate cries from people desperate for God to show up. Psalm 102 even contains the description: “A prayer of one overwhelmed with trouble, pouring out problems before the Lord.”

And then I read Psalm 116:1-2:

I love the Lord because he hears my voice and my prayer for mercy. Because he bends down to listen, I will pray as long as I have breath!

The God who bends. He bends down to listen. He inclines His ear. He stoops, and then He sustains. He rescues. He comforts, and He answers.

He is the God who bends.

The ultimate picture of God bending is when He sent His Son, Jesus, to carry the cross in order to correct the problem of sin and disconnection from our Source. The perfect picture of Jesus, literally bending under the weight of the cross, so that we would be freed to become the people God created us to be, His flawless sacrifice of love, so that we would walk in the freedom and abundant life that only became possible through Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Verse 5 of Psalm 86 says, “O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help.” Verse 15 says “You, O Lord, are a God of compassion and mercy, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.”

That is a picture of the God who bends.

Good.
Ready to forgive.
Full of unfailing love.
Compassionate.
Merciful.
Slow to anger.
Again, full of unfailing love.

The God who spared no expense, who gives, and gives, and gives some more.

Today, the God who bends is calling you to call to Him. Stop trying to become “good enough” to come to Him. There is no such thing! As the song “I will arise and go to Jesus” states, “If we tarry till we’re better, we will never come to all.”

Come. As you are. It sounds trite, almost too simple. That’s the beauty of grace, the beauty of God’s character.

We serve the God who bends.

Freedom Friday: The God Who Sustains

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We are back from the conference! It was an amazing time, refreshing and yet tiring (I’m sure being in the car 24 hours over the course of 3 days added to that!). There is a lot to think about & reflect on. In addition to that, there are several situations within my circles of family & friends that require lots of prayer & attention.

Yesterday, as I leaned against our chest freezer, wondering what to make for dinner, I became keenly aware that God alone is my Sustainer. I went to a Bible search tool to remind myself of Scriptures that speak to this.

I came across a gem:

“You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great.” Psalm 18:35

Since returning home, Holland Davis’s words on the last night of the conference have been at the forefront of my mind (he lead worship). He reminded us that the devil comes to kill, steal & destroy, and prayed that we would not allow him to take away from us what God did in us at the conference.

So I’ve been praying for myself and others, that whatever God spoke and/or called us to at the conference, that we would stand firm and tell Satan he has no power in our lives. That we would obey what God has called us to & the areas He may have challenged us in.

But I was missing an important piece.

I am now also praying that God the Sustainer would fulfill His Word, being confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in us will perfect it (also translating “carry it on to completion”) until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:6).

The God who leaned down to earth, who stooped down, to rescue us & make us great.

God is our Sustainer. But we need to accept His gift of sustenance. We need to allow Him to maintain and nurture those things He’s deposited into our hearts.

“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.” 2 Timothy 1:6-7

I need to be reminded that Satan wants to steal God’s best out from under me, just like he did in the Garden of Eden. Satan’s power is limited; God’s power is unlimited.

So my prayer for all of us today is that we would continue to cling to Jesus, that we would allow God to sustain and preserve the good work He has begun in us, that we would be aware of the work of Satan, but not intimidated by him.

God is Sustainer.

Read these Scriptures. Pray through them. Memorize them. Devour them. Soak them in.

Psalm 54:4
Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me.

Psalm 55:22
Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.

Psalm 89:21
My hand will sustain him; surely my arm will strengthen him.

Psalm 119:116
Sustain me according to your promise, and I will live; do not let my hopes be dashed.

Psalm 119:175
Let me live that I may praise you, and may your laws sustain me.

Psalm 146:9
The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

Psalm 147:6
The LORD sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground.