“’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” –Matthew 22:37-40

“For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, but My lovingkindness will not be removed from you. And My covenant of peace will not be shaken.” Says the Lord who has compassion on you.-Isaiah 54:10.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.-John 3:16

God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?-Numbers 23:19.

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.                     James 4:7.

But An Ordinary Sinner

 The day the Father spoke to me
Was a day like all the rest.
And like any other day, I’ve lived
I was not equal to the test.
For, I am just an ordinary sinner
My need for repentance is unmet.
My soul is just short of bankrupt
And morally, I’m deep in debt

Yet, still He chose to speak to me;
To actually call me by my name.
To tell me I am forgiven,
And that He loves me just the same.
The warmth of His voice was overwhelming,
The joy of that moment was profound.
Nothing could have prepared me for
The transcendent beauty of that sound

He told me I could never lose His love
Nor make Him turn away from me.
He assured me of His faithfulness
And that His love and grace are free.
I asked what I might offer Him
As His beloved child and His heir.
He asked if I might share my life with Him
Offered up daily as a prayer

“Lord, I long to honor you,
I told Him as I began to cry.
“So let me be quite honest here,
I can only promise that I’ll try.”
“For, I am but an ordinary sinner,
Traveling a road I did not seek.
“My will is strong to follow you,
But as you know, my flesh is weak.

“For the Devil creates unreal obstacles
Then taunts me with fear that’s quite real.”
“Hoping that I will thus be ruled
By the insecurities, he’s revealed.
“So, I hope the safety of your grace and love
Will convince me of what’s really true.”
“That I’m a joint heir with Jesus Christ
Who, through faith, can always turn to you.”
©Linda Troxell 07/26/2018

I cannot express how much I love the redemptive story of the cross. I cannot express the joy I feel knowing that the love of God extends so far that He literally sacrificed His son to save us from death. And when I fully contemplate the love of Christ, the Son, who willingly went to that horrible death in obedience to the Father, it humbles me. And it brings me to tears knowing that Jesus loved God and us even unto death.

 Yet I go on sinning. So why can’t I just do what God calls me to do? To love Him and love others as I love myself? Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” –Matthew 22:37-40.

Why is it so hard for me to just follow his commands, be loving, giving and kind to His people and worship and obey my God? Well, I know it’s my responsibility to do just that, but in mitigation to my utter failure, I would point out that I come from a long, long line of humans who also failed, going back to…….well, creation. In fact, I think in some ways we were set up to fail.

Now, before you decide I’m a blasphemer, let me say that I don’t think God, in any way, deliberately set us up to fail. It’s just that with our dominant traits of weaknesses, selfishness, disobedience, and fear, which He certainly foresaw, what else could have happened? Especially when He introduced into the mix our nemesis who stalks us looking to devour, while he taunts us and pours into us with his fear and lies.

All of that taken together makes it a pretty sure bet that our dominant traits would overcome our recessive traits of love and compassion, kindness and giving.  I mean, when push comes to shove, I don’t know too many people who find trusting in God easier than fearing……well everything.

It’s interesting that when I am hearing about God’s love or I am reading about His plans for me and I’m safe and dry and comfortable, I feel so good that all I want is to serve this glorious God who is so good to me.

But somehow, when I go out in the world and I am trying to make a living and trying to keep my family safe and I am trying to make ends meet on an amount of money that just doesn’t stretch that far, that good feeling dissolves very quickly into fear.

And not the vague kind of background fear that I can push away. No, the overwhelming anxiety provoking kind of fear that the devil loves to feed on. During those times I usually cannot easily turn my mind to my loving Father who is there to protect me.

I keep asking myself why I find fear so real that it can almost always dictate my actions. Yet love, an emotion I believe is much more powerful, I honestly believe is more real than fear, I can easily override for self-interest or comfort. If I look at my life logically, almost none of my biggest fears have amounted to anything. Whereas, love has affected my life in unbelievably positive ways. So why do I still give in to fear every time?

I don’t know the answer to that but, obviously, God realized how prone to fear we humans are because over 365 verses in the Bible have some arrangement of the message “Fear not.” So, like it or not, fear is a serious obstacle we must defeat if we ever want to be the people God calls us to be.

Well, then, how do we defeat this issue of fear? Love is the universal healer and as such, it is the only thing that will heal fear. Maybe you’re thinking well, faith is the opposite of fear so doesn’t faith heal fear? And you’re right it does. However, it is faith in the unlimited love of God.

So, I guess, if we want to win against fear, we have to build our faith in God’s unshakable, unconditional, reliable love. In the NIV version of the Bible, there are 610 mentions of 3 different kinds of love. That is an almost a 2:1 ratio of love to fear.

Clearly, the most important message of the Bible is God’s love for us. ‘And it tells us, many times, in many ways, that God’s love is faithful, trustworthy and reliable. For example:  “For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, but My lovingkindness will not be removed from you. And My covenant of peace will not be shaken.” Says the Lord who has compassion on you.-Isaiah 54:10.

And it assures us that His love is unconditional and eternal, For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.-Romans 8:38-39. So, why then, do we still struggle with our faith?

We know that the Bible is the literal, infallible word of God. So, obviously, just reading about or hearing about God’s love, even from His own mouth, does not convince us. Clearly, there must be another piece to the puzzle.

I’ve read the Bible and I believe what it says. If I may paraphrase, it tells us that God loves us so much that he sent his Son to die for us: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.-John 3:16.

It tells us that the love of God is eternal. God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?-Numbers 23:19.  It tells us that if we have faith in Him and if we trust Him, He will protect us. But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.-2 Thessalonians 3:3.

And it tells us very plainly that if we submit to God the devil cannot hurt us.  Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.-James 4:7. So I reiterate if all it took to believe in God’s love was reading it in the Bible or hearing it read in church than we would no longer be slaves to fear.

Or would we? I said above that faith in God’s love heals fear; that if we have faith in God’s eternal love it will overcome fear. And the Bible tells us God’s love is faithful, reliable, unconditional and eternal. And we believe it. But there is a difference between believing and having faith.

Believing involves our heads and it means we accept an idea or a concept. Faith comes from our hearts and it is belief supercharged with trust and hope. When we simply believe that God loves us we can think about following Him bravely, and we can picture ourselves doing it.

But when the time comes to actually step out, belief will not allow us to conquer the fear that stops us short. However, if we supercharge that belief with hope and trust we transcend mere belief and walk in faith. Only then can we step out despite the fear because we have faith that God will be there to catch us.

Well, that’s a beautiful thing. I want to live that. Don’t you? But once again we are back where we so often find ourselves when we speak of God. How? How do we do it? How do we take our belief, and supercharge it with hope and trust so it becomes faith? 

Hmm… I kind of figured you ask me that. And I want to put in a disclaimer here. I am not an expert, so anything I suggest is just that, a suggestion. But, I can share a few things that I have found helpful. And that’s not to say that my faith is anything close to perfect, or even reliable for that matter. For me, faith is a hit or miss thing. Sometimes it is strong and I’m really living in it. And other times it is nowhere to be found. So remember whatever I say, it’s only a suggestion.

I’ve found that what most stands in my way when it comes to faith is my belief that I’m not worthy. It took me a long time to identify this because my feelings of unworthiness are not overwhelming or debilitating. I had to dig to find them.

I don’t have any big trauma in my past that would account for my feelings of unworthiness. But there are things in my past that I began to realize are behind those feelings. As I dug, I found things that I had allowed to make me think I was unworthy.

Notice how I said I allowed them to make me think. That’s important because I found that, almost without exception, I was responsible for the feelings I carried from my past to my present. In most cases it was not what happened that made me feel unworthy, it was how I reacted to or interpreted what happened

But how does that help in going from belief to faith? Well, given what I found, it became clear that, for me, the first step was to lay down my baggage from the past. I needed to resolve my feelings of unworthiness from my past before I could resolve my feelings of unworthiness before God.

Finding out how to do that was a matter of trial and error. And my success came from a series of things, each of which contributed to the whole. First, I went to therapy. I know that many people, and it seems especially Christians, have a negative view of therapy.  But I have never understood why. I found it invaluable in helping me to unravel my past and learn the truth.

At the same time, I attended small community groups through my church. There is much healing to be found in being accepted and loved by a community of your peers. And finally, I found someone I totally trusted and told them everything in my life, past and present, of which I was ashamed.

This last step is essential. If you want to develop faith you must root out and banish all of your shame. Shame makes us want to hide in the dark. Faith requires that we shine the light of God’s love on all of our secrets. Alcoholics Anonymous has a slogan, “You are only as sick as your sickest secret.” It’s another way of saying that when the light is shined on a secret it loses its teeth. Healing requires shining the light on every secret by sharing it.

After we have healed the past, we must reimagine our futures. We need to be able to clearly see a future where we are able to follow Jesus faithfully. A future where we are able to think, feel and behave as God calls us to, more often than not. We have to be able to see what we want to be before we can become it.

And then we need to proclaim it. If you remember, God speaks things into existence, like the sky, the sea, the birds, and animals. The world did not exist until God spoke it into existence with His words.. …And God said, “Let there be light and there was light…-Genisis 1:1-31.  And there are many, many scriptures in both the old and new testaments that tell us that through our thoughts and words we create. Proverbs 18:21; Isaiah 55:11; Psalm 33:9; Romans 4:17; Mark 11:23; Matthew 12:34-36, and many, many more.

There may be many ways of proclaiming and calling things into existence but I can only share the ways I know. One way of successfully creating is through meditation. Certainly meditation on the scriptures, but also meditation on ourselves. If we spend time picturing ourselves as we want to be, imagining ourselves walking and talking and living that life, we are creating it. And, after all, what is it we do when we meditate? We picture and imagine things as we want them to be.

For me, one way of doing this, perhaps the easiest way, is through affirmations. Affirmations are quite simply an example of calling what isn’t as if it is; adding scripture brings supernatural help, Bless the Lord, you His angels, that excel in strength, that do His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word.-Psalm 103:20.

Scripture is God’s word and angles harken to God’s word. And scripture can be used to back up that which we are affirming.  I start by writing an affirmation about something I want to become true or something I want to believe more fully and consistently. One thing to remember, affirmations must be written in the affirmative and in the present. I am instead of I will be; I am… instead of I am not…. Here’s an example:

When I call on the Lord He answers me and supports me:

Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.-Jeremiah 33:3

When I said, “My foot is slipping,” your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.– Psalm 94:18

Sometimes I use two or three scriptures that are relevant to my affirmation.  One is sufficient, but sometimes I find more than one that “speaks” to me. I say affirmations every day and I believe in them.  It’s worth a try, isn’t it?

I think that if we all start now, not only imagining and speaking what we want to create but acting on our images and our words, we can create a world in which God is honored. The more we imagine our faithfulness and combine it with action, the more we will develop that faith we are all looking for and become the people we want to be.

Maybe if we all tell a few Christians friends about this and ask them to tell a few more, we will soon have hundreds of people, maybe thousands, imagining, speaking and acting in a manner that reflects what God asks of us. After all, in the end, all God really asks is that we love Him and we love others. How hard can that be?