Thursday, November 09, 2006

You can refuse the spirit of fear

If God is for us, who can be against us?

I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:31, 37-39


Infectious fear

Amy Carmichael

Have you ever thought how infectious fear can be? It spreads from one person to another more quickly and certainly than any of the fevers we know so well.

You can refuse the spirit of fear, which never comes to us from God. [And if He does not send it to us, who does?] Instead, open your heart wide to the Spirit of “power and love and a calm and well-balanced mind, and discipline and self-control.” Because fear is so infectious, let us, for the sake of others and ourselves, refuse it.

Thank God…! Courage is as “infectious” as discouragement. Haven’t you often felt the cheer and strength that seem to flow from a person whose mind is fixed and firm on God? I have.

And I have been thinking of another, greater reason for rejecting fear.

When we are downhearted or fearful or weak, we are saying to everybody [by the way we look and by our timidity, if not by our words], “After all, the Lord can’t be absolutely trusted.”

Somewhere near us, though we do not see them, are others: Men and women who we can see; and also good angels and evil spirits we cannot see. To all of these, when we give into fear, we say the same dishonoring thing.

We have a Savior who has never once failed us. He will never fail us. He has loved and led and guarded us all these years.

Look to Him now, and pray from the barren bedrock of your heart, if that is the ground you are standing on – “Lord, give me courage!”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dearest brother,
I have just learned how to get to your blog spot! What an inspiration! I havent read your archives yet, but your basic file I have. I feel healing from all the woes of this week! Thank you so much for baring your soul for me! Thanks also for expanding my world by sending pictures. Love you. Sis. By the way, what is a html tag?

Loy Mershimer said...

hi Sis!

That's so awesome that you found my blog. And, that some of the articles encouraged you... it brings a smile! :-)

And, html enables your email to receive rich text -- for instance, like if I sent you an email in blue letters, you'd get the blue letters. Or, if I included a smiley face in it, you'd get the smiley. Or, even stationary, etc.

And, on these blogspot posts, the html tags create italics or bold print, when you post. For instance, I'll put these next few words in italics. And, I'll put these next few words in bold.

The way to do that is simple: you just put these little brackets <> before and after what you want in italics or bold. For instance, for italics you'd put an i inside the <> where you wanted italics to begin, and then where you wanted the italics to stop you'd put another <> with /i inside it. If you wanted bold, you'd do the same thing, just switch a b for the i. Got it?

Now you are a computer geek! :-)

Not quite, lol. But at least you can post!

Anyway, God bless you, Sis, and have a great day!