Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Here it is, April 4, 2020, and I feel a strong compulsion to address fear.

We are surrounded by negativity and fear.

The daily news is feeding into the fear by amplifying aspects of the most recent virus while inflating the death tolls.

What am I talking about?
What we now call Covid 19, and what it has done to global populations.

Here in America, we are supposed to be on home quarantine. Obviously, some could care less.

We have yet, at the time of this writing, to be put on mandatory facial mask usage, and we can still go out to the store for groceries, if necessary. I, personally, have not experienced the lines and mazes, as stores now monitor the number of people that enter, all to maintain “social distancing.”

Watching my pastor on YouTube this morning, he spoke of something that I had made a note of several days ago, as we encounter those in the market, who have masks on, there is an immediate reaction that says, this person is very fearful, or, they are a threat. This last aspect became vital to me about a week ago, as I stood in a self check out line at Walmart. In the next line, approximately eight feet away from me, a lady began to cough repeatedly. I looked to see her inadvertently form a cone with her hand, to do what, direct whatever she was hacking up toward me. I thought, how obnoxious. The ladies behind me and I wished that she was wearing a mask.

This self quarantining, along with mandatory closures of our Churches, has done a great job of adding to the fear.
My wife recently asked me, aren't you afraid of touching surfaces. I responded with, no more than I have ever been, and yet, for all I know, I have never contracted a hideous disease from grabbing a shopping cart. Now I have been entirely disgusted, particularly when some non-caring employee wipes the seat of a chair and then the tabletop.

Recently, before we got excluded from all sit-down restaurants, we went to a small one, that had, at least, closed off every other table to maintain some distance between customers. This particular place is small and always packed. I touched my hand to the tabletop and found it to be sticky no matter where I put my hand. My wife told me, as though she had seen them do it, that they had installed too much resin in the epoxy. Garbage, they did a lousy job of cleaning.

It would seem that we are naive, believing whatever they tell us or we are being lied to.
I just learned that Bill Gates attended a conference in New York, last October, to talk about this very thing, and yet nothing was done to stop it. This was about the same time that the Wuhan/Covid virus was beginning to be talked about.
We all assumed that this stupid disease, much like bird flu, would stay there, but it did not. I have since learned that the author, Dean Koontz, was writing about this very thing, as far back as 1985 in one of his action novels.
Many have spoken of how this so-called virus was intentionally weaponized, and that the Chinese, whom the United States had applied many tariffs, to get them to comply with reason, may have done this deliberately, as the Chinese are now scooping up businesses and properties in Italy – who is next.
It turns out that the powering up of 5G antennas in and around Wuhan may have initiated this disease, as 5G cell towers have been proven to have detrimental effects on living things, and they cause cell disruptions to the point that the cells produce fatal toxins in the body.
It is also possible that the 5G towers can cause these deadly toxins to exude from our bodies in an aerosol form; hence, they now believe that the act of breathing can make us deadly to others around us.

I opened by saying this all feeds into the fear.
Until recently, I had no idea about the ramifications of the 5G cell towers, and they are everywhere at this point.

So, did my naivety leave me fearless?
Are you kidding me? I have been battling with fear my entire life, and sadly, I suspect that many of you have as well.

Is there a Biblical response to this Fear?
Absolutely. Let's start with this.
Isaiah 43:1 NASB But now, thus says the LORD, your Creator, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine!
Many translations say, Fear Not, that is not so easy to do, especially when you are getting hit from multiple directions at the same.

God is not asking us NOT to Fear. He is telling us, directly, why?
The answer is in the passage, and the passage tells us, because He redeemed us, and called us, personally, by our names, and we are His.

If you were passing by, would this work for you? Probably not, for it seems as if something more is needed, and that is precisely why the Apostle Paul spoke this prayer over the church in Rome, and recorded it in Romans 15:13. It goes like this.

I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. (NLT)

If God went to the trouble of learning our names, regardless of what we would do, calling us personally, and then redeeming us; then He surely wanted us to have an expectation that someday all the promises he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then us, were going to come to pass, and that they applied to us as well. All this means that NO MATTER what happens and what becomes of us, we will be secured in His hands, with Him, forever.

Does this make facing tough times easier? Perhaps not.

Have you ever seen the movie Braveheart? 
I bring this up because, in the movie, common men had to steel themselves and encourage themselves to fight. There was no doubt that some would die in these battles, but to do nothing meant certain death. I don't know that we are in that position as yet; and, I am not sure that I can tell you what to do if we were, but I do know that we are called to pray, and as I have stated on previous occasions, pray as if your life depended upon it.

God is NOT telling us to take up swords and fight; this becomes clear when you read this.

“Put away your sword,” Jesus told him. “Those who use the sword will die by the sword.” Matthew 26:52 NLT 

Then what do we fight with?
We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. 2 Corinthians 10:4 NLT 
We pray!

Jesus told us, in Matthew 24:8, that the things we have been seeing are the beginning of birth pains.

Do birth pains go on for years?
Perhaps on God's timeline, but take note that He is using human language so that these birth pains can be understood in relatively human terms. The ceremoniously religious will tell you that we can't know when Jesus is coming for His church; they will even quote where Jesus said, no man, not even the Son, knows the day or the hour, but they leave off the part about how He was answering a Jewish question, in a manner that His audience would understand. Those hearing these words that Jesus spoke, knew how the new moon would be here and detectable, on either, one expected day or the other, depending upon the cloud cover; and, if it could not be seen, then the high priest would declare the beginning of the new month because it should be here.
Can you see the variability in this?

 Not knowing the day or the hour is a relative thing, and anyone, with half a brain, understood approximately when the new moon would arrive. Jesus, however, said nothing, at this point, about not knowing the season, and folks, we are in it, neck-deep.

This entire scenario that we are in was created to migrate us into a much larger, full-scale operation.

Do people like Boris Johnson, the Prime minister of Britain, have to end up in the ICU at the hospital in order for the scenario to play itself out? 
Apparently.

The closure of Churches is not a coincidence, and yes, you can scream at me all day about the health reasons, but I have had to make ventures to Walmart, and trust me on this, it is scarier there than in church.

What's the biggest difference between Walmart and the church?
In the church, we pray for each other because the Bible tells us that the prayer of faith will heal them.

What if what is going on around us, was meant to draw you away from God?
Are you going to let that happen? Are you going to live in fear?
Why would you do that when scripture tells us that anything not done in faith is fear, and fear, is missing the mark (sin.)

Here is how you are to live in these last days.

“... And live peacefully with each other.

Brothers and sisters, we urge you to
warn those who are lazy.

Encourage those who are timid.

Take tender care of those who are weak.

Be patient with everyone.

See that no one pays back evil for evil,

but
always try to do good to each other and to all people.

Always be joyful.

Never stop praying.

Be thankful in all circumstances,
for
this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus."
(1 Thessalonians 5:13-18 NLT)

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