Two weeks ago, Husband was away for less than 48 hours, and I lay in my bed at 2:30am and could not sleep because I was terrified at every creak and noise I heard.
My best friend starts a a new job in the centre of the city, and I wonder about a terrorist attack.
Many people dear to me live in Germany and Sweden, and day after day I’ve scanned headlines about shootings, bombs and stabbings and wondered, where next?
I watch conventions and read tweets and fear washes over me wave after wave after wave.
Fear shows me my expectations, it unveils my entitlements. Fear highlights where I place my confidence. If my expectations are security and safety, anyone who threatens it causes fear. If I am entitled to a stable society where I can retain the privileges of my life, someone who aims to take it away or adjust it gives me reason to be afraid. If my confidence is in the way I look, my accomplishments or the contents of my bank account, the loss of any of these elements causes insecurity and uncertainty.
Our fears grow out of the grief and pain of not having the life we want. It blossoms when we believe something we deserve is being taken away from us, and our fears are then exploited by the people and systems who have something to gain from our fear.
But we have a better hope.
Hope that is stronger than fear.
Hope that is beautiful. Hope that is eternal. Hope that cannot be taken away.
Hope that will not disappoint us, hope that will not put us to shame.
What role is fear playing in your life today? If its voice is louder than than anything else, maybe these truths will give you strength for today.
We think our minds are enlightened, we read, ponder and debate the opinions of pundits and pastors, and we find lifelines in their ideas. But it is your spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Jesus that we need. You truth brings life to our soul, your breath forms our bones. The eyes of our heart need your enlightening, we need to know, experience and believe the hope to which you have called us. (Ephesians 1:15-18)
We feel small and lonely, like there’s a huge army of people out there who believe differently, who hate us, who want us dead. We feel like our territory is shrinking, stolen a meter at a time by laws or bombs or people. We think we deserve to be in power because we are right. Our eyes are full of the dirt of the world, our ears are full of pride. Wash our eyes, cleanse our ears. We forgot that the only power worth having is your immeasurably great power, the power that walked Lazarus out of the grave, the same power that lifted Jesus out of the tomb, and this power is for the working of good, it is not to keep giving us the life we think we deserve. Your power is for the raising of the dead. Send us out to raise the dead in our world. Take us to the wounded, to the one who cowers in terror and let your power restore. Remind us that the word of truth we heard, the gospel came to us not because of our racial superiority or our inherent worthiness. We received it through grace, we did not deserve it. We did nothing to earn it. And this same gospel is in the whole world, and it is bearing fruit and growing because it is alive, and God is patient, not wanting any to perish but all to come to eternal life. (Colossians 1:3-6, Ephesians 1:15-23, 2 Peter 3:9)
We confess that the thought of physical and emotional hardship and injustice terrifies us. When we suffer, we want to find whom we can blame. We want to vote away the anguish in our minds, we will buy our way out of our pain, we will follow the one who promises to take our suffering away. We will do everything except receive that it may be from you, and that we could even rejoice in it. The strongman is not the answer because we already have the answer. It is Christ in us, the hope of glory. You are alive in us, nothing can harm us. No one can promise us glory or safety or freedom that you have not first already put in us. (Colossians 1:24-27)
We believed irreverent, silly myths—that our worth and value came from our marital status or that how we parents determines our children’s faith or that we have undue political influence—we believed that it is our work that produces faith in people, we lived like every success of our family had something to do with us. We needed a stable marriage, well-behaved kids and the trappings of a well presented life to feel like we succeeded. Retrain us, God. Retrain us for godliness, and show us that we toil and strive not for something on earth but because our hope is set on a living God. Help us set aside our weak and useless rules and draw us closer to you through the better hope you offer us in Jesus. (1 Timothy 4:10, Hebrews 7:19)
We want to believe that the life we had was a good one, that we were essentially good, nice people, making decisions that benefited people. We shared, we gave, we were good. But we know better now, that the life we had without God was foolish, we were disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures. Remember our hearts? We hated, we envied, we thought horribly of other people. But goodness and loving kindness rained down on us, God appeared. He saved us. We were entitled to nothing in and of ourselves, we were entitled to nothing in our society, but he washed us, he renewed us, he made us right by his grace, and instead of our passport or the flag to which we pledge our allegiance, we became royalty. Heirs of a kingdom that cannot be moved, altered or shaken, according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:3-7)
Our confidence is not our access to people who are important or information that no-one else has. Our confidence cannot be found in the strength of our might, our ability to outwit terrorists, or the wisdom of our economists and policy makers. Our confidence is that we can walk into a new and living way, opened for us by the blood of Jesus. We can draw near with a true heart, believing that our hearts and bodies have been washed clean, there can be no greater confidence than this, that God has done everything for us to be with him. Being with him is better than being safe, being with him is better than being secure, being with him is better than being right. Hold fast to the confession of your hope. He promised. He is faithful. (Hebrews 10: 19-23)
Holding on to our hope is the only way to walk through fearful days. When the darkness closes in, we know there is a light shining in the darkness for the darkness cannot be light to Him. When the world shakes, we know we have a precious cornerstone, and He cannot be moved. When we feel robbed of the life we think we deserve, we recognise that our inheritance is not written in a constitution or an amendment, our inheritance is not held in a bank, a tax code or a will. God gives us a living hope, and our inheritance is imperishable, undefiled and unfading (1 Peter 1:3-9). It will last forever.
Our hope is in the finished work of God, it is not in our circumstances, in our own transformation, or in the state of affairs in our communities and nations. Nails and a cross gave you and I free access to God in three days he gave us power over sin and death. Jesus’ act of love on the cross means we are accepted as we are. The trying can stop. The performing has no place. Fear is impotent and irrelevant. When faced with the truth that God himself loves us, died for us, rose again and will one day return, only hope can live.
The hope that what our eyes see is not the full story.
The hope that the fear assaulting me is empty.
The hope that the ending is good because of his innate goodness.
The hope that the cross has the final word, the empty grave is the final answer.
Our hope is in him. Jesus will not disappoint us.