“[F]or God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control”
2 Timothy 1:7
I believe that, but I am seeing a spirit of fear in Christians today, and it makes me nervous. It seems like Christians are afraid to stand up for things, we are afraid of the world. We are afraid of the school systems, we are afraid of tricker-treaters, we are afraid of the corporate world, the secular world, we are afraid of those who can kill the body, even though Jesus told us not to be. We hid ourselves, our kids and we try not to let the world get to us, as we wait for the magical pre-mill rapture to take us away and let God destroy the pagans (that’s another blog).
I recently have seen this spirit of fear (that doesn’t come from God) in my life. God has called my wife and I to do something that involves some risk. I don’t want to do into details, because there is still a long process to go, but we feel that it’s something we have been specifically commanded to do. As we have shared with others, they have said “you don’t want to do that” and people proceed to give us all the reasons why we should be afraid. People who we thought would encourage us are those who have tried to make us afraid.
My wife heard a quote and we have taken it to heart. “Follow God and let Him deal with the consequences”. That is not to say that things will be easy, following Christ is hard, and there is cost. There is risk and people have given their lives, but we are called to do that. When we see the great cloud of martyrs in Heaven who walked into death for their faith, what will our excuse be? We were protecting our kids? What about the kids in Muslim and Communist countries? If they have faith, they are in danger, so do we not share the gospel with them so they can be “safe”?
What about this country. As the religion of secular humanism has become the state religion, we have dropped the ball. Men like Roger Williams who fought for the freedom of religion would be horrified to see how we have let organizations like “Freedom From Religion” make this a communist, secular humanist state. I dream of starting a non-profit that takes schools to court for the promotion and establishment of secular humanism as the State Religion. I am tired of sitting down and cowarding in fear.
Christian stood up and died and changed an Empire. Christians stood up and reformed the Church. Christians died for their faith, in communist countries families are broken up and family members are beaten and killed, all for the cause of Christ. What happened to American Christians? We can’t even manage to clear our busy schedules enough to attend half the time. Church has become a societal non-essential for those who call themselves Believers. They use to die and risk torture just to come together to pray and worship. Why are we so afraid?