I am inwardly fashioned for faith, not for fear. Fear is not my native land; faith is. I am so made that worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is the oil. I live better by faith and confidence than by fear, doubt and anxiety. In anxiety and worry, my being is gasping for breath—these are not my native air. But in faith and confidence, I breathe freely—these are my native air. A John Hopkins University doctor says, “We do not know why it is that worriers die sooner than the non-worriers, but that is a fact.” But I, who am simple of mind, think I know; we are inwardly constructed in nerve and tissue, brain cell and soul, for faith and not for fear. God made us that way. To live by worry is to live against reality. – Dr. E. Stanley Jones
I love this quote by Dr. Jones. Having the right picture of God in our spirits keeps us in balance. It keeps fear at a distance and keeps faith a reality. Our God, the God of the Bible is big.
Psalm 33:6-22 (NIV)….. by the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses. The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations. From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth—
Gulp!!! God is big and powerful. When He breathed the universe into existence, He did not even lift a finger. He just spoke and it happened. Can you imagine? The universe with its billions and billions of stars, so great and so vast and they existed because the God we call ‘Father’ spoke. How great is our God. He is called El Shaddai- The Almighty. The God who can do anything He wills to do.
We live on one of nine planets that revolve around the sun, which is so big that you could put 960,000 earths in it. The light from the sun gives off much more energy in a second than all the energy that mankind has produced since creation. Yet our sun is only a “run of the mill” star, just average. The star of our solar system is just one of the 100 billions of stars. The Betelgeuse Star is 427 light years away (5.88 trillion miles= 1 light year). You could fit 262 million earths inside Betelgeuse. If the earth were the size of a golf ball, Betelgeuse would be the size of six Empire State Buildings. That is enough golf balls to fill up the Superdome… 3,000 times! The God you pray to about your situations, He just breathed that magnificent star into existence.
Isaiah writes, “Look up into the heavens. Who created all the stars? He brings them out one after another, calling each by its name. And He counts them to see that none are lost or have strayed away.”
So why are we fearful? If God can create the universe (and I only mentioned a very small part of it), surely He can take care of your checkbook, your job, your children. No, the problem is not God. It is us. We have allowed our minds to shrink God into kind of a nice elderly old man who is kind and gentle, but unable to get the important things of our lives accomplished. I am sure the angels must scratch their heads and wonder what in the world is wrong with us. It will take living as though what the Bible says about God is true, in order for great things to happen.
Mark 9:23 Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”
Let’s live our lives as though Jesus meant what He said!
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