Faith Over Fear
February 24, 2024
Faith
February 24, 2024
Faith
As I have journeyed through life with and without Jesus, I’ve learned about sin and the depths that Satan will go through to capture souls, and I’m left with a single fact—Jesus saves. But before we get ahead of ourselves, what is sin anyway? From Wayne Grudem’s “Systematic Theology” sin can be defined as: any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature. We are all born with a sinful nature, it’s everywhere inside us. We don’t have to ask too many people about our sinful attitude to prove this out. Ask my wife or son. Sin lives in us and from the moment we begin crawling; trouble we will find.
We are given rules to follow, impossible rules by a Father that is righteous and just. I believe that as fathers of the flesh we raise our children utilizing the same fear that God used in the Old Testament, hence the term, “putting the fear of God into someone”. As with most genealogy this is passed down from father to son or mother to daughter. Tweaks from generation to generation, yet still the same core fear messages used to protect us from going to hell. My parents never really put the fear of God in me, I grew up just wanting to please them. Most of the time I felt like I fell short. I was far from an easy child to raise, and they were not equipped to handle me so there are no grudges here. By the time I got to college I was just as equipped for life as my parents were to raise me all those years ago.
As I got older and into my twenties my parents were no longer around to hold me accountable. I was finally the master of my own universe, or so I thought. Behavior to satisfy myself and feeding my desires became a full-time job. My goal; fill a black hole. I became enamored with things and stuff. This ultimately led to drugs and alcohol. I should have done research on black holes; they are bottomless and no amount of shoveling will fill them. I had no forgiveness for myself, often looking in the mirror and hating the reflection. I gave up on trying to follow the rules. I said to myself, “If I can’t beat them, I’m just going to join them.” For a decade I operated by my own rules and had a lot of ‘fun’. Eventually emptiness overtook me, and I was alone in a world full of people, living outside of society in darkness not seen by those that loved me the most. I was twenty-six when I had this revelation, and it would take another eighteen years before I found Jesus.
I love my parents for giving me everything they had; however, it took years to appreciate them. Becoming a parent myself brought full clarity to how none of us are equipped to raise a child when leaning on the laws of the Old Testament. I found forgiveness and acceptance for my parents at the age of Forty-Two, when my son was Six.
Fear is a weak parenting tool. Then add personal feelings to the equation, feelings of desire, or self-righteousness and Godly fear can be justified away into nothingness. Fear isn’t rooted in Christ Jesus and serves to amplify the self. All kinds of self-actualizations, self-love to self-loathing. None of these are healthy for us. We embrace lies, our own lies— our creation. Holding myself accountable almost brought death to my flesh, never mind the trail of destruction the previous decade leading up to my bottom left in my wake. In the end, I felt like a chewed-up piece of meat being spit out on a hot sidewalk. I was alone, sick, tired, and unable to see His light, I had fully snuffed Him out.
Being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, without fear of judgement or shame appeals to most people. It sounds a lot easier than what we were taught as children, especially if you were raised with Old Testament parents. Once we give into the self and release His accountability there is no end to what becomes okay. Throwing aside the accountability my parents held over me gave me a fresh litmus test for what was right or wrong. Having a new accountability lens, I never fell short of my own expectations. It was freeing until sin overtook me, and there was no limit to what I was willing to do, not only to myself but to those around me.
Dying in the spirit isn’t a mortal sin, it’s not blasphemy, it’s what the Bible says will happen to all of us living in sin. The verse ends with, “when sin is full-grown it will give birth to death.” There was a time when His spirit in me was very much dead. I was completely and totally unaware of God’s existence. Even when I was seeking God, reading verses, and writing prayers, I was unable to see Him or experience His glory. It wasn’t my marriage, the Church, or a heart attack that brought me to Jesus. It was God giving me a vision of myself in a dark pit trying to claw my way out with chains wrapped around my neck. All of this took place on my way to see my dad, my measuring stick to life, in the hospital after an emergent health crisis.
Upon surrender, He pulled me out of the pit I’d spent a lifetime digging. Despite His saving my life multiple times, I kept my back turned to Him. I chose to be a good person and to be in the service of others. However, I unknowingly or unconsciously lived in sin, daily. I had no idea of what Living through Jesus looked like. Nor did I know He could break the old covenant given to Moses on Mount Sinai, which was passed down generation after generation, all the way until it reached the hands of my parents. Each law represents a chain around our necks, born outside of perfection we could spend our entire lives trying to live outside of sin.
Surrendering to Jesus is to accept His love for you. Allow Him inside of you to become one with the Father through the Son. Obedience to Him flows out of His love and faith in us, not our love and faith in Him. I’ve had it backwards all along. My favorite book in the Bible is James. He was the half-brother of Jesus, and some say his book is the Proverbs of the New Testament. It’s no coincidence that my first name is James, we are both righteous in our own way.
No one should say God is tempting me, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone. God is perfection, He is light, and darkness cannot exist when He is alive in you. Satan is the temptress, all the way back to Genesis 3:
James says, “dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed”. Again, enticed by Satan as he did in the Garden of Eden, not by God. Living in justification is living in this world, not living through Christ Jesus. Eve was tempted by the serpent, who enticed Adam and so on. Whether you are facing sugar, foul language or moral sins, the temptation and enticement come from desires of the self where Satan has full dominion. His enticement says we can be just like God! Heck yeah! Sign me up. Hold my beer while I grab my shovel, we have a black hole to fill. Relying on ourselves is a one-way ticket to spiritual death.
As parents we find ourselves always needing to exert control over our children; showing strength of course. I was in awe watching how things seemed to come so easily for my dad. His ability to negotiate and achieve his goals put foundational goal setting in me with the will to succeed at any cost. He was held high on a pedestal, one I never thought I’d reach. I saw him as infallible. However, being witness to his weakest moment, where he found himself unable to control anything, was the most humbling moment in my life. He had only one option, faith.
I never knew or understood the level of control he exerted upon himself, likely an echo from how his dad was raised and his dad’s dad, all the way back to the beginning. As parents, we are obliged to break away from the laws of Moses and breathe life into the New Covenant. Otherwise, Jesus came here for nothing. Teaching our children forgiveness, acceptance, and softness with a firm boundary instead of fire and brimstone. For me, I felt I was always unable to meet expectations in everything I did. In turn, I grew up to be an over-achiever which is great for entrepreneurship, but awful for serving Jesus.
Empowering our children with knowledge that mom and dad have weakness, waters His seeds in the entire family. Otherwise, we are left to white knuckle our lives, playing dodgeball with Satan, unaware of our role in His glory. God the Father had a son named Jesus Christ, He was perfection, and through His death and resurrection forgave us of our sins and through His Spirit in us lives today. We are merely a reflection of Christ with free will for only one question. Do you believe? If you do, then He will take care of the rest, it won’t be easy. If you don’t believe, don’t be fooled. It may feel like free will, but you’ve become a slave to sin, and Satan; death will overcome you in the darkness.
