When Afraid Let God Have The Last Word

Welcome to the New Life Ministries podcast. Sometimes we are scared, afraid of what we see, anxious at what might happen. What do you do? Avoid looking at the potential danger? Force yourself to think about something else? Being afraid is a very common experience for people in the Bible.

When it happens, their attention is called back to God for perspective and instruction. Let’s look at this in the words of 1 Peter 5. So we’re at the end of the book of 1 Peter, this book that was written to help Christians who are being persecuted, folks who are suffering because of their faith. And their suffering might include feeling rejected by their culture.

They might find that opportunities are just being closed to them. They might be losing friends or family because of their faith, or family relationships are just more difficult. In all of this, there is an element of fear and uncertainty.

Like what is this faith that I have costing me? How do I navigate this? So fear and uncertainty show up all over the world. Christians are not the only ones who feel afraid and uncertain sometimes. We see that at work right now in this thing called doom scrolling.

Folks reading about and watching a world that feels like it is falling apart, and people are not sure how to navigate it. They don’t know how to prepare, they don’t know how to set themselves up for success, and it just leaves them feeling afraid and uncertain. So doom scrolling is when a person spends a lot of time online reading about things going on in the world that are awful, that are unjust, that just don’t make any sense, and often other situations that they’re not personally involved in, so there’s nothing they can do about it.

From what I read online, doom scrolling can lead to just personal anxiety, depression, sleep problems, muscle tension, headaches, and even panic attacks. And it results in this feeling of helplessness, but also a reduced desire to engage with living. Like if the world’s falling apart, why even try? So Dr. Susan Albers, who’s a psychologist, said, when we’re depressed, we often look for information to confirm how we feel.

Doom scrolling operates with the same mindset. If you’re feeling negative, then reading negative news confirms how you feel. And then once you’re in that habit, that negative news tells you that you actually should feel bad, so it becomes a negative spiral.

So we understand what it’s like to live scared. The world is kind of on edge right now, and that’s how the folks that Peter is writing to felt. So as we wind up this letter, we’re going to look at it through the eyes of people who are afraid.

What does scripture say? So let me offer a prayer, and we’ll begin. Father, as we look at this passage, please speak to us and call us to that, even that single idea that you want us to ponder and absorb, that single idea that will help us become more free as your disciples. May your word be alive.

May your word edify us and bring glory to yourself. Amen. Okay, so I’m going to start on verse 6 of chapter 5, and I know that we did verses 1 to 5 last week, and this kind of just keeps going.

So humble yourself under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. Stay alert.

Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him and be strong in your faith.

Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are. In his kindness, God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation.

All power to him forever. Amen. I have written and sent this short letter to you with the help of Silas, whom I commend to you as a faithful brother.

My purpose in writing is to encourage you and assure you that what you are experiencing is truly part of God’s grace for you. Stand firm in this grace. Your sister church here in Babylon sends you greetings, and so does my son Mark.

Greet each other with a kiss of love. Peace be with all of you who are in Christ. So verse 6. Humble yourself under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor.

Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares for you. To do this, you have to have a clear understanding of what God is like, who God is. Because if you think God is just a little bit stronger than you, that’s going to be very hard to trust him when life gets overwhelming.

And if you think that God’s actually not really cared, doesn’t really care for you by name, like he doesn’t really know your name, you’re not likely going to trust him for help. So if you pause and bring to mind stories from the Bible that show his large and mighty acts, we see that he is always working, always able to rescue his people. So when he was rescuing his nation out of Egypt, we see him do things like turn water into blood, bring a plague of frogs, a plague of gnats, of flies, sending a plague to kill the livestock, giving people boils, all of this happening kind of overnight, bringing hail and locusts and darkness.

He’s even then able to divide large bodies of water in two, which he does twice. He is able to control this physical planet, and by controlling the physical elements of the planet, he can accomplish anything he wants to do. In another story, when King Hezekiah is surrounded by this Assyrian army, this enemy army, this dangerous army, the people are in the city, they’re scared, they’re exhausted.

Hezekiah humbles himself and asks God for help. And after he does, the prophet Isaiah arrives to the city, and he says on behalf of God to the enemies that are surrounding the city, he says, God says, you are in power because I decided it. I had a plan, and I am making, I’m sorry, I have a plan, and I am making it happen.

But I also know you are raging against me, so I will put a hook in your nose and make you return on the same road you came from. The next morning, when people get up, half of the army is dead, and the other half is running home. The people did nothing, but the king humbled himself and prayed to God.

There’s another passage in the Bible, this unusual moment in second Kings, where Elisha, who’s a prophet, his servant is scared because there is this approaching army, and he rushes in and tells Elisha, what are we going to do? And Elisha says, don’t be afraid, there’s more on our side than on theirs. There’s two of them, and there’s an army. So Elisha prays for God to open the eyes of his servant.

The servant goes outside, and he sees the hillside is filled with horses and chariots of fire. There’s a whole invisible army surrounding them. You’ll be okay.

In fact, in the Old Testament, whenever we hear that phrase, the Lord God Almighty, what it means is the one who is the leader of the armies of heaven. That’s what that word means. He is most definitely able to do whatever he wants to do.

And even in the New Testament, we see Jesus with his disciples, and they’re in a boat during a storm, and his disciples are scared. They’re afraid they’re going to drown. They wake Jesus up, and Jesus says, why are you afraid? You have so little faith.

And he rebukes the wind and the waves, and suddenly everything is calm. So that mighty power of God, the mighty hand of God, is more strong than any force that would seek to do us an injury, whether that’s another nation, whether that’s things like the economy, the internet, whether it’s a group of people who surround you, whether it’s a single person. Whatever’s making your life difficult, God is able to rescue his people, regardless of what they’re going through.

So we have to start with letting God become bigger in our mind. He is so aware of everything that’s going on. He is present everywhere.

He’s able to do whatever he wants, and he is spirit or non-material, which means he cannot be controlled, because we have to contain something or trap something in order to control it. God is his own being. He is his own person.

He has his own agenda. He has his own wants, his hopes, his loves. He’s going to do what he wants.

So we can trust our situation and our concerns over to him. So a few of us this week met with an architect to think about a solution for our apartment buildings, or a solution to a problem that most likely is going to come at us in a few years. And so in it, in this little tour, we went to the roof of 518.

And I’ve never been on the roof of 518. It’s a whole different view of the neighborhood, because most of the buildings in our neighborhood are at that roof height or lower. So you can just see everything.

In fact, Paul and I were noting we could finally see the eavesdrops on that side of the building, just to see if they were okay, because otherwise you can’t. Our perspective tends to be ground level, right? We don’t get the sky view. God gets the sky view.

He’s the above-it-all guy. And then as we listened to this architect, Paul and I noted how different it was to talk with an expert who had an experience. Like this is not a couple of us going, well, what should we do? I don’t know.

We could try this. Maybe that would work. This was a guy saying, oh, this is how the problem gets resolved.

And this is how you fund it. It was like, oh, an expert with experience who knows what he’s talking about. God is an expert with experience with a sky view who knows what he’s talking about.

So we can trust. So when things in life get difficult or when we get afraid, we’re called to humble ourselves before this great and loving almighty Lord. To trust ourself to one who is immeasurably powerful and immeasurably good.

So there’s two pieces on how to do that. One is just the discipline of bringing our concerns to his attention. Like, and that’s part of prayer.

Lord, I am really worried about this and what might happen. Or Lord, I don’t know what to do. Or Lord, I don’t even know how to persevere and continue through this.

Like, there’s the discipline of telling him. And the second one is to submit the issue to his will. To let him bring about justice, to let him solve the problem.

And if God requires it, to let the difficulty we are experiencing continue. Trusting he has a plan. I need to say that again because it’s a crazy sentence.

If God requires it, we let the difficulty we are experiencing continue. Trusting that he has a plan. So now obviously we’re talking about situations that are difficult because you are a Christian.

And to get out of those situations would mean denying your faith. Or this is a situation where your behavior is tempered, it’s controlled, because you want to respond the way God wants you to respond. This is definitely tied to your faith.

So I’ve got about three ideas on when it comes to submitting our issue to the will of God. So the first thought has to do with pride. We’re called to humble ourselves in the act of giving our worries and cares to God.

The act of humbling is the act of giving our concerns to God. Which means if we don’t give our worries and cares to God, we’re actually not humbling ourselves before him. It means it’s the, I can figure this out, I will solve this, I will keep thinking about this, it’s going to roll around in my head until I find my answer.

And I think it was Pastor Timothy Keller who said, this is a sin of omniscience. This is a sin of thinking you know everything. That we act like we know all the details going on in a situation and therefore we have enough wisdom to solve the situation.

But we are not omniscient, we are not all-knowing. And we might need rightly to confess that we sometimes act really arrogantly when we refuse to accept this limitation that we have. Like if we refuse to acknowledge that we don’t know everything, we can do some real arrogant things.

And it might be worth considering, you know, are you, are we actually afraid to trust God because he might not give us the answer we want? So we’re called to humble ourselves and to trust what he’s doing. When the Lord gave his people the Ten Commandments, how he wanted them to live, the first commandment is, you shall have no other God before me. And that includes you, or that includes me.

I cannot be my greatest God. So we want to elevate the power of God in our eyes and really give God the benefit of the doubt that he’s working on something and he just needs me to be patient and go through what I’m going through. So that first one is pride.

Another difficulty we have in submitting our concerns to the will of God comes by how you feel your life is going in comparison to others. Like if you’re looking at other people and you think, oh their life looks so easy and I am losing in my life. Like I’m not getting what everybody else is getting.

That makes it very hard to submit to God. He’s just not giving me a fair shot here. And I’m going to suggest that actually this passage says that’s the evil one roaring at you.

So verse 8, stay alert, watch for your great enemy the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion. He’s not quiet, he’s yelling, looking for someone to devour.

Stand firm against him, be strong in your faith. That roar is meant to scare you so that you stop following God. It’s the roar that’s meant to make you think I’m losing, this is an unnecessary risk following God, I’m going to stop following God.

Like it’s designed to make you unfaithful. And you undermine what the devil is trying to do by staying faithful. So I’ve mentioned this before.

Years ago I was at the Toronto Zoo and they have a lion enclosure. And I was close but not right in front of the enclosure and the male lion started to roar. And it was shocking the visceral effect that had on me.

Like deep inside I thought, oh danger, there is something big alive and I don’t want to meet it. And I was like, oh interesting that a roaring lion causes, your body gets it. This is trouble.

So this devil, sorry our devil, the devil, this lion is roaring to scare you. So what does the lion say? Well the lion says things like, if God loved you, wouldn’t he make your life easier? Give up your faith. He says, this way that you’re on seems scary and uncertain.

Look at all the dangerous things. Look at all the dangerous things. Keep paying attention to all those dangerous things.

God can’t be asking you to go through this. Give up your faith. Or God should rescue you now because love means fixing things.

Give up your faith. If you give up your obedience, you can have what you want and God can forgive you later. Because what you want is what you need to make your life better.

Give up your faith. God’s not really paying attention. You don’t matter that much.

Just do what you want. Give up your faith. If you’re going to make it in life, you have to be thinking about yourself first.

Like all of these things that just unsettle us deep in our core. To resist the devil is to stand firm in your faith, to turn to the evil one and say, you’re lying to me. God is good and he is more powerful.

I will remain faithful. One commentator said, you know it’s interesting. God cares for you, lifts you up, calls you to humble yourself in front of his power, and the lion hates God, wants to destroy God’s work, and wants you to take up your own power.

And so you have these two lions against each other. You have the lion of Judah, the protector of God’s people, versus the devil lion. Jesus is so much more powerful and the devil just knows how to make you scared.

So the third item I have in submitting what you’re going through to God’s will, and letting him do what he wants to do, and being patient through it, is the idea that he is the God of grace. So it says in verse 10 in our translation, in his kindness God called you to share his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and place you on a firm foundation.

So that phrase, in his kindness, I think kind of misses what this is saying. In another translation it says the God of all grace, which is what the language says. The whole idea of salvation and restoration comes from God and God’s grace.

And because it’s all his story and his plan, he has every intention to complete it. So it’s helpful to remember the story we are in is one where we receive. Salvation is not something we’re doing ourself.

So God called you to know him. He gave you the prompt to respond to him. He showed you what your life was like without him.

He ignited your mind or ignited your curiosity. You know for yourself what it was that began to call you to seek after God. But he initiated that, and then you responded, and then we received his forgiveness, and then we received his spirit to upgrade our heart.

He’s even doing the work in leading us in our obedience. Like most of salvation has been his activity, his initiation, his gift. So if this is all his work, why would he not bring it to completion? To the time when it’s all restored and we are free.

So a thought that I found helpful for me this week on this subject, because I was wrestling through earlier this week this question of, you know, it’s the line. Why do I do some of the stuff I do? Like some of the stuff’s really hard. And I had the sense that God say, you’re not in the promised land yet.

This is not the promised land. In the Old Testament, the promised land is where you have a peaceful, successful life. You have a spouse who loves you, and you have healthy children, and your farm and your garden produce food for you to eat and extra to sell, and your neighbors are at peace with you, and the government makes sense, and all of life just works.

That’s the promised land. We’re not there yet. And some of those things we get now, some are in a work in process, some of those pieces we don’t get in this life.

But in the age to come, when Jesus returns and restores all things, then we are in the promised land. Right now, we’re called to trust and persevere. But we are given eternal life now, because we are currently reconciled to God the Father.

We are restored to Him. Jesus is in heaven praying for us. He gives us the Holy Spirit.

Life has begun. But we’re not in the promised land yet. So at the end of this letter from 1 Peter, we are reminded of the mighty power of God.

When we are scared of what’s going on, we’re scared of what’s coming, we’re wondering how are we going to endure, how will we make it through this hardship? We’re reminded that all through history, the Lord has shown the mighty power He has at His disposal. So we’re to humble ourselves under it, which means give Him our cares and our worries. Trust Him, trust His ability, and then submit what we’re going through to His will, to His plans.

And that means rejecting our pride, that part that wants to figure out all our problems on our own. We are not all-knowing. It means rejecting the roaring lion, the evil one who’s trying to make us afraid so we give up our faith.

We reject him by remaining faithful. And it also means remembering this whole salvation plan is God’s idea from beginning to end. He’s doing most of the work.

We’re just kind of responding. So He’s not going to stop the work yet. But we’re not in the promised land yet.

So that’s how Peter ends his letter, reminding us who we are and who God is and where we are in this story. So where does this passage connect with you this morning? Where does it speak to you or encourage you or just kind of poke into your life a little bit? So it’s interesting. This, I think, was something that I needed to hear this morning.

So we’ve been kind of fighting with this a little bit this week at our house. I’ve been in therapy a couple weeks, and it’s been going great. And I’ve been bringing these really healing things home and telling Rani about them.

And what he’s seeing from these really healing things are the wounds being healed. And it’s making him very afraid. I’ve been seeing that he, growing up, learned how to not be afraid by not knowing what there was to fear, which is fine.

It’s part of the innocence of youth. But there’s a point in your life where you start to see those very frightening things. And especially when you’re a parent, they get extra scary because kids are very small and breakable and precious.

And so we’re hitting that point where now comes the wrestling match of you have to not be afraid because you cannot teach your kids to be afraid because then they don’t do things. They don’t live their life and become who they’re supposed to be. But you know how scary things are.

So that’s where we’re at, which is awesome. But yeah, I know, right? Right. But Jess, that was beautiful because this is where faith meets reality just head on.

And if you don’t, you know, if a person doesn’t come to trust God and God’s goodness, like an overly anxious parent who’s afraid of everything, that, yeah, can do harm. That’s beautiful. Shanna has been really excited about Christmas, about having not just a family Christmas, but Christmas includes others, something special for Everly.

She’s been organizing already. As of this morning, we’re going to have sort of a Christmas thing with her mother when she comes up next weekend. And then over Christmas, she is including a couple of her friends who have no family, and she wants them to be part of our celebration.

She told me that she has invited her ex, and I got a problem with that because of what he’s done and what he does. But God impressed upon me that saying no to him was not what was right, that we will include him, allow him to have Christmas with his daughter and with us all. Perhaps God can use that to do some healing.

So, you know, last night I told Shanna that I was all right with it. I am really happy that she’s being planned to include people who wouldn’t have Christmas because they don’t have family here. And what she’s planning is a reflection of her heart.

Yeah. How this passage struck me was exactly that, that I have to put aside what I want in favor of what God wants. Yeah.

Yeah. He will make things right. Yeah.

Beautiful. One of the things that kind of came to me as you were speaking it out was about the way that Satan attempts to undermine our confidence. Yeah.

And that is that all of the things, the how scared I feel, how unfair I feel this is, how distant God feels to me, how inconvenient this feels, how unloved I feel, how unhonored I feel. It’s emotions that it seems to be the primary target. Obviously, he influences other people to influence our lives, but those whispers or the roar that comes at us seems to be, this is how you feel, so this is how you should do things.

And in that, I thought, wow, how profound it is to, when we have especially intense feelings, to analyze it and say, what’s the truth behind?

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