Fear Diminished.

"Never forget you were born to do great things."

And dear friends, that is the truth. You were created with purpose, with greatness. You were born for greatness. You were made to do great things. But realize where you were created for greatness, the enemy will try to come against you. "The exact place where you're hit with the most fear is where you're created to do great things." But don't stop there. YOU WERE MADE FOR THIS. There are ways to come against fear, you were made to come against fear. In fact you were made to defeat fear.

In the well-known song No Longer Slaves, it says:
You split the sea

So I could walk right through it
My fears were drowned in perfect love
You rescued me
And I could stand and sing
I am a child of God...

And that last part is key. Realizing who we are, whose we are, that we are royalty, that breaks the chains of fear and ushers in freedom. Freedom from fear, freedom to live out the life that Abba dreams for us. And know that it's not you, otherwise you will fail every time. We are a child of the King, because He is the king, we are victorious, because He is victorious, we never go into battle alone, because He goes with us. But if our focus is on that, we have nothing to fear. 

Over and over again, God proclaims these truths to our hearts, waiting for us to truly grasp it. There is no fear in love, and His love is perfect. God has not given us a spirit of fear, why would we need that? He has made us powerful, made us to love with His love. If we are first surrendered to God, the devil will flee. Are we surrendered? His power is unlimited, His grace sufficient. 

We must first believe this, about Him, about ourselves. We cannot expect to defeat the enemy if we can't recognize the attacks he's dishing out and then tell him they're simply not true. We can only throw back what we first know is truth. Through our words, truth, worship, these things can be mightier than the other fears in our lives and lies in our heads. 

And when I have the right perspective on all of this, I'm excited and thrilled. Friends we were born for greatness, WE ARE BORN WITH PURPOSE! "Fear grows in the absence of knowing who God is." If this is true, the opposite is also true, Fear diminishes in the presence of knowing who God is! If we know who God is and what He has given us the ability to do, there is nothing stopping us. Nothing! Just go and read Isaiah 61, I mean right now. I couldn't decide which part to include, so you should just read it all. This is what God gives us the ability to do. And we can. 

I have grown to love the term co-laborer in the last couple weeks, mostly because I've been learning about labor, in the birthing sense, but it's the same word that it used for other labor as well, coincidence? I think not. Friends, we get to be co-laborers with Christ! Labor is hard, you suffer through labor, you have pain through labor, sometimes it's long, sometimes it's short. But all the time, a mother doesn't remember much of the labor, or thinks it's all worth it at the end. And we get to do that, we get to work along side and labor with Jesus, and it might be hard, rough, tough, the enemy might come against us, attack us, but we have nothing to fear, and better still, we know that there will be greater joy at the end of it all. And I get it, sometimes what Jesus has called us to seems too great, too big, impossible, and unachievable. But cool story time, ready for this? In the Bible in Nehemiah, they wanted to rebuild the wall, a huge feat, something that was crazy big, that was questioned, but Nehemiah pushed through. You know what they did? Each person only built on their section, just the piece that was in front of them, and do you know how quickly the wall was built? 52 days. FIFTY-TWO DAYS. Boom. And that's what God asks us to do. We get to be co-laborers with God and bring about change. 

"The kingdom of God intersects in that place of who you are and who you will be." 

An excellent sermon on this is HERE, following this link.