“Make the Lord of Heaven’s Armies holy in your life. He is the one you should fear. He is the one who should make you tremble. He will keep you safe. But to Israel and Judah he will be a stone that makes people stumble, a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare.”
Now I can already hear you saying, “So, if God doesn’t want us being paralyzed with fearful thinking, then why would He call us to fear Him?” Well, you see, the fear of God is not equivalent to being afraid of God. The fear of God is to take seriously the One who loves you and gave you mercy. It is to live in reverential awe of His character of love revealed in Christ. To fear God is to love and respect Him enough to live in harmony with His commands by His Spirit, because you know He’s committed to keeping you safe. Therefore the last thing we’re learning here is when we’re presented with a conspiracy theory we need to…
Shift Our Focus to Revering God Who Keeps Us Safe.
The great preacher and founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, recounts the story of being caught in a deadly storm in a ship on the Atlantic Ocean. During the storm, he, the famous English evangelist, and several other people on the ship feared greatly for their lives, while a group of Moravian Christians were gathered together with their families in perfect peace and calm. Shocked by their serenity, he asked them if they and their children weren’t afraid of dying in the storm. Their response changed his life from that moment forward. They told him that they did not fear the storm or dying in it, because they feared God and trusted Him with their lives, and taught their children to do the same. Yet the problem that some of us have is that we fear conspiracy theories more than we fear God, so we are robbed of our peace and it shows!
If you would like to learn how to live in reverential awe of God’s character of love revealed in Christ, then click the image to learn more!
No! Instead of making conspiracy theories holy or set apart in your life, which is what you’re actually doing when you fear them, God says to make Him holy or set apart as special in your life. Fear Him! Live in awesome wonder and reverential awe of Him, especially when He’s given you such abundant grace, of which you don’t desire at all! He is the One whose faithfully committed to keeping you safe no matter what’s going down in the world. Isn’t this is the message we’re supposed to be giving in these last days? According to the 1st angel of Revelation 14:6-7, upon our sharing of the Good News about Jesus, we’re supposed to call people to fear God or live in reverential awe of Him, instead of being afraid of the Devil and his beast system, which are fallen!
My friends, preparation for the last days is not to be spent in obsessive absorption with conspiracy theories. Jesus never commanded us to do that! Instead we’re commanded to foster love and respect for God by deepening our relationship with Him, taking His commands for our lives seriously and abiding in the peace of His presence through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
The Lord is warning us today. He’s laying a choice before us, by which we’ll either rise or stumble. His desire is that we’ll rise by faith in Christ. So how should we as, believers in Jesus Christ, respond to conspiracy theories?
When we’re presented with conspiracy theories we need a calm confidence in the presence of God, we need to reject fearful thinking that sees a conspiracy in everything, and we need to shift our focus to revering God who keeps us safe.
This is because your safety, both now and for eternity is found only by faith in Jesus Christ.
CJ COUSINS Speaker/Author
Follower of Jesus, Husband, Father, Associate Pastor for Younger Generations at Vienna SDA Church and Speaker/Author for Living For Him. CJ’s passion is to live, preach & teach the Good News about Jesus and multiply disciples for His Kingdom.