“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” -Isaiah 41:10, NIV
Throughout the Bible, God commands his children to not fear regardless of circumstance such as an advancing army, or the unknown. As human beings, we are prone to fear what is beyond our control. Natural disasters, economic collapse, looming war, the end of a marriage or friendship, or a bad diagnosis can leave us spiraling, and many people are experiencing anxiety, depression, and fear as a result of these things.
Speaking through the prophet Isaiah, God commanded his people not to be fearful because he was with them. Those who place their trust in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are commanded not to fear because he has absolute knowledge, wisdom, and power. We must remind ourselves that God is not like individuals who are trying to cheer us up without any knowledge of what is to come, or how to get us out of difficulty. His command is rooted in his character. From Genesis through Revelation, we see how God shows up for His people although he often has to discipline them for disobedience.
Those who walked closely with God, like David, often reminded themselves of his character when they were faced with fear-inducing circumstances. In Psalm 27:1-3, NIV, he writes,
“The LORD is my light and my salvation- whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life- of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked advance against me to devour me, it is my enemies and my foes who will stumble and fall. Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident.”
Take a moment to acknowledge before God what or who is causing you fear. Whether you write down your thoughts, speak them, or pray, know that God is concerned about what is troubling you and is more than capable of guiding you through difficult times.
Gather other scriptures that remind you not to fear such as what Jesus said in John 16:33, NIV,
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Incorporate these scriptures in prayer throughout the day to shift your focus from your problems to God’s power and sovereignty.
This day I call on the heavens and the earth witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD you God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. – Deuteronomy 30:19-20
Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you halter between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” – I Kings 18:38
…my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of our God, I will also ignore your children. – Hosea 4:6
To say the United States is in turmoil would be an understatement; however, we’ve been this way for a while. Our approach is usually the same, to turn to politicians to solve our issues even though we know lobbyists, corporations, and extremely wealthy individuals make campaign contributions to ensure their agendas are accomplished. We ask ourselves and one another why there is so much chaos and death, and we are desperate for relief.
A few months ago, my pastor made the following statement during a Sunday morning message, “Christians have been quiet about a number of things for a while, but there is coming a time when you will have to take a stand.” One of the main ways Christians have become silent over the years on several issues is to allow people tell us how we should love them. That love generally equates to us lying to people so they don’t see us as self-righteous and judgmental. Are those two attitudes sometimes present in the church? Absolutely. Do we also need to show grace to people? Yes. At this point, I’m sick of these arguments because they imply that non-Christians have somehow overcome their hypocrisy and inconsistency. As Christians, we’re still battling our human nature. Furthermore, we need to acknowledge that there are “wolves in sheep’s clothing” in many of our churches. Although that scripture is often used to criticize church leadership that have the wrong motivations, it applies to the people in the pews. We’ve also allowed ourselves to be played when people use the one verse everyone seems to know, although they take it out of context, “Judge not lest you be judged.” Yet, I’ve also noticed that people don’t mind the hypocrisy of Christians when it supports the way they want to live their lives.
If anyone in the church is asking why or how our nation is in its current condition, it is because of extreme compromise in the body of Christ. If we’re honest, the Christianity of this nation is largely cultural, and not built on following Jesus. It has been tainted with political affiliations from which we need to repent, myself included. What many of us have done over the last few decades is decide we can come into agreement with fornication, promiscuity, pornography, adultery, witchcraft, gossip, unforgiveness, jealousy, and other mess and please God. As a matter of fact, many Christians are not concerned about pleasing God, we’re mainly concerned with whether the church service will have a good vibe. We have even tried to appease ourselves by saying, “God knows my heart.” We can’t afford to flatter ourselves that our decisions, public and private, have no consequences.
I absolutely believe that God is gracious and gives us chances to turn from wrong beliefs and behaviors; however, many Christians have manufactured a God who is all love and no consequences.
I have been thinking about several scriptures lately, three of which I placed at the top of this post. I am deeply grieved by the rage, murder, and violence that are rampant in the United States; however, the root of this mess in people rejecting God. Let’s be clear, I am not naïve enough to think this nation was ever as good as revisionist history would have us believe. Evil has always had its place in this nation, but there were still boundaries.
Photo Credit: Tom Parsons on Unsplash
I also know many Christians focus solely on the love of Jesus and don’t pay attention to spiritual principles outlined in the Old Testament. Jesus also spoke about hell (Matthew 13:36-43), something that is almost never mentioned in church anymore. He also stated there was a narrow and broad road (Matthew 7:13-14). The narrow road leads to life while the broad one leads to destruction. Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice for sin, so we did not have to continue animal sacrifices and is our high priest forever; however, I believe the blessings and curses outlined in the Old Testament still apply. There is a reason why so many young people are dying as a result of school shootings, and the cause is not just the lack of effective gun laws. Children are also dying because of suicide, murder, accidents, and being aborted in the womb.
For the past few decades, young people have been fed the message that they are wonderful and special, but many have not had boundaries enforced. They are not honoring their mothers and fathers that their days may be long. Rampant disrespect leads to early death, and yet people insist on their right to sow death while complaining about the consequences of their behavior. In addition, many grow up in chaotic homes raised by parents who have not addressed their own traumas. I’m a firm believer that going to therapy and talking to God about trauma in your lineage is important for healing of individuals, families, and communities.
To compound matters, nature is out of control. In the Old Testament, beginning in Genesis, the earth was cursed because of Adam and Eve’s decision to disobey God. If you read throughout the Old Testament, drought was often a sign of judgement for the people’s rebellion. Every time I hear the word climate change, I think, “No, this is judgement for rebellion.” Our problem is we don’t really believe the stories in the Bible occurred. To us, they are just morality tales.
The Bible indicates that judgement begins with the house of God (I Peter 4:17) and Jesus is returning for a Bride (the church) without spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:27). We are ridiculously spotted and wrinkled. When we see the fall of certain well-known pastors and ministries due to scandals that are being exposed, I believe God is cleaning house; however, the cleaning is also for the congregants and casual church goers who believe they can continue their private sin and rebellion because they’re not as well-known as Joel Osteen and TD Jakes. Unfortunately, we are like the emperor in the children’s tale who insisted that he was dressed in the most beautiful clothing although he was naked. We cannot be healed if we do not acknowledge our sin before God. I am not coming from a place of perfection, but we have to get back to having reverence for God. Right now, we often treat Him as a casual lover who we go to when we need to feel good or help.
Photo Credit: Harry Cunningham, @harry.digital on Instagram
Last week, I started a long piece about the shootings in Atlanta but, I could not get the words out although I spent the week working on it. This morning, my friend told me about the mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado. The photos on CNN’s website seemed familiar and, I realized two friends and I had been there in October 2019. My suspicions were confirmed when I saw the King Scooper Supermarket sign. We had gone into that supermarket to buy groceries for our Airbnb stay. I wanted to spend time with my close friends who had been with me almost every night over my three-week hospital stay at the end of 2017 when I was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer. My time in Colorado was the first time I had taken myself on vacation although I have travelled to other countries, visited half of the states and returned to the island of my birth, Saint Vincent. I am almost out of tears for what is happening in this nation. It is possible to weep yourself dry.
I hesitated to write this post because, I find it much easier to write about a number of things although I have a dissertation to complete. I feel that I should shut my mouth and apply myself to schoolwork. However, I am reminded that it was not the theories that I learned in graduate school that preserved my life when I was sick. The living God and the people He placed around me, carried me through the valley of the shadow of death so I have to honor Him.
At this moment, most of us feel the weight of evil in our nation and around the world. As we grieve, pray, demand justice and a change in policies, it would appear that we are experiencing a never-ending wave of destruction. I submit to you that the rise in violence is another opportunity to change course after careful examination of what we value an individual, familial, communal and national level. Finger pointing is not sufficient to address societal wrongs. Calling out evil out in the world without sitting with the evil inside of me is problematic. I also contribute to collective evil and I have to ask God to examine me. I know that’s not what people want to hear right now and I hear you. I too am wondering how long racial violence will operate in this country. How long will white men be allowed to act out their depraved ideology with deadly consequences? How long will we fail to have proper gun legislation? How long will we pretend that US military presence and policies in other nations have nothing to do with the tide of people at our southern border? How long will this nation lie to itself that we are the best?
I am reminded of Nehemiah chapter one in which this prophet leader receives news from Hanani about the conditions of the Jewish people in exile and those who still lived in Jerusalem. The context is that the Jewish people were under Babylonian rule after Jerusalem was sacked years before and its people taken away. A were few behind to work the land. The Babylonians had destroyed the walls of the city which left its residents vulnerable to attack. Even though Nehemiah was in a privileged position as cupbearer to the King in the capital of Susa (Iran), he had a heart for those among his people who were in destitute conditions. As a black woman who is a naturalized citizen from the Caribbean, I see all too often how people like me are tempted to buy into certain aspects of white supremacist capitalist ideology in order to achieve the American Dream. Education along with my mentor’s challenge to interrogate interracial issues and my own racial encounters forced me to begin to divorce white supremacist thinking. I am still examining myself to see which roots still need to be removed.
What draws me to Nehemiah is that he takes responsibility for collective sin. He repents for his personal sins and the sins of his ancestral family then proceeds to repent for the sins of the nation. Collective repentance is what is needed in America, first beginning with the church. I am not going to wait for institutional leaders to repent for national sins past and present. I have been in repentance and prayer for my sin, the sins of my family and this nation.
‘Then I said: “LORD, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my ancestral family, have committed against you. We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.”’
Nehemiah 1:5-7
I also submit to you that it is problematic for me to think that I am only part of the solution but not part of the collective evil in this nation. Self-righteousness takes different forms, and we defend ours while castigating people for theirs.
As I have listened to people’s arguments about why they question the existence of God, their reasons usually boil down to the evil in the world. These individuals always discuss the external evil but omit their personal evil. Evil exists because we have free will and we would do anything to hold onto it. The mantra of the United States is “I have the right to…” I cannot only discuss the misogyny, racism, xenophobia, sizeism, colorism, texturism, classism and, sexual assaults that I have experienced. I have to consider how my internalized racism negatively impacted students. I have to consider how my self-righteousness led people to believe that they had to fix themselves before they approached God. I have to consider my own sins that are separate from personal quirks. I have to contend with how my failure to accept God’s invitation to healing led me to harm myself and other people. To say that I did not mean to inflict harm does not remove the evil that I committed or its consequences.
If we want healing in this country, we have to get raw before God with our own mess and the historical devastation that continues to bear fruit in this nation and around the world. We do not get to invoke Jesus for our Gospel of snark, sarcasm, self-righteousness and social justice. I believe God cares about addressing the needs of marginalized people. However, if we do not get to know the God in whose image we and other people are made, our efforts will fail. We have to be careful of invoking Jesus to take our side in arguments in an effort to shame and manipulate people to agree with us yet resist how His words expose our own darkness. When we quote the words of Jesus in memes and slick posts, we are inadvertently saying that His words have authority and by default, He himself has authority. We do not get to invoke Jesus but resist His demand that we submit to Him. That goes for church folks and non-church folks. This truth applies to the church writ large regardless of the racial and socioeconomic demographics of its congregants. To invoke Jesus without knowing Him is an attempt to manipulate Him for our purposes. We are lying to ourselves if we think God is under our control and He exists to do our bidding. We can’t even try that mess with our parents!
To my fellow Christians, “It is time for judgement to begin with the people of God” (I Peter 4:17). We’re off base. We have made church about strobe lights, coffee and donuts, how well the choir sings, the size of the congregation, the style of the preaching and the pastor’s personality. Christians all too often preach the gospel of feelings instead of the Gospel of Jesus. We will be held accountable for our failure to center Jesus which has led people astray. Jesus is the gospel, not principles of right living and social justice even though our walk with him should reflect a heart for justice. The church lacks authority and anointing because we are off base. Repent. The book of Revelations begins with John’s address to the the seven churches (Revelations 1-3). God deals with His people first before He addresses the world because,
“The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”
Healing Joy Ministries 
You must be logged in to post a comment.