In Christ Alone – Fear is Stilled

Greetings Dear Reader,

I have written extensively about fear.  Recently I had a conversation with someone whose fear has frozen her for years.  She has great potential but has stayed in a job she hates due to her fear of change.

The love and peace of Christ can still fear.  Fear is what keeps us from taking up whatever cross Christ has for us to carry.  I was pondering this very thing when I read yesterday’s entry for Streams in the Desert.  I will add it below.

I think too often we fear that when God leads us into a wilderness that he will not be there with us.  The point is that is where we can discover just how close he really is.  If we do not carry the burdens he asks of us then we will not learn the lessons he has for us. 

It is fear that drives us away from God, toward despair, and into failure.  It is fear that takes away our peace and keeps us from being loving.  Fear kills our thinking and cripples our faith whenever we let it have reign.  We must use the love and peace of Christ to still our fear. 

I can only follow if I do so without fear.  I my feel afraid but I must not give fear movement or momentum.  It is at the heart of my selfishness and anger.  It is the soul of my fallen nature.  Only without fear can I face the journey before me.

From Streams in the Desert – September 14 – Lettie B. Cowman

The cross which my Lord bids me take up and carry may assume different shapes. I may have to content myself with a lowly and narrow sphere, when I feel that I have capacities for much higher work. I may have to go on cultivating year after year, a field which seems to yield me no harvests whatsoever. I may be bidden to cherish kind and loving thoughts about someone who has wronged me--be bidden speak to him tenderly, and take his part against all who oppose him, and crown him with sympathy and succor. I may have to confess my Master amongst those who do not wish to be reminded of Him and His claims. I may be called to "move among my race, and show a glorious morning face," when my heart is breaking.

There are many crosses, and every one of them is sore and heavy. None of them is likely to be sought out by me of my own accord. But never is Jesus so near me as when I lift my cross, and lay it submissively on my shoulder, and give it the welcome of a patient and unmurmuring spirit.

He draws close, to ripen my wisdom, to deepen my peace, to increase my courage, to augment my power to be of use to others, through the very experience which is so grievous and distressing, and then--as I read on the seal of one of those Scottish Covenanters whom Claverhouse imprisoned on the lonely Bass, with the sea surging and sobbing round--I grow under the load.

--Alexander Smellie

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a home owner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)