Embrace the Within no. 28

“Anxious care is out of place in a heavenly Father’s presence.”

• Kenneth Wuest

“Biographies of bold disciples begin with chapters of honest terror. Fear of death. Fear of failure. Fear of loneliness. Fear of a wasted life. Fear of failing to know God.

Faith begins when you see God on the mountain and you are in the valley and you know that you’re too weak to make the climb. You see what you need . . . you see what you have . . . and what you have isn’t enough to accomplish anything.”

• Max Lucado, Fear Not For I Am with You Always

"Jesus has so incomprehensible a love for us that he wills that we have a share with him in the salvation of souls. He wills to do nothing without us. The Creator of the universe awaits the prayer of a poor little soul to save other souls redeemed like it at the price of all his Blood."

• Therese of Lisieux, a Carmelite nun who died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four, writing to a friend.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”(Galatians 5:22-23).

Fear should be reserved for God and not for anything else in life. I spent a lot of my time in the beginning of these fourteen days, which I am likely to stop referencing soon since it appears all BUT a few staunch statists are moving away from worry and fear about that whole Rona thing, when I felt like the world was out to get me. And guess what? The world is out to get me BUT just not in the way I had thought in the beginning of this story.

I was consumed with temporal problems. How was I going to feed my family? What is going to happen? How can I solve this now? And I was so consumed by the moment because that was where I was living my life back then. I was center of my universe. The sun arose and set on me and my life. My philosophies, my thoughts, my knowledge, were going to be enough to get me through all of this. And, don’t get me wrong, those ideas were working on getting me somewhere. They were just getting me somewhere that I wasn’t planning.

There is no need to fear because God always has a plan. I was too busy worrying and working my plan that I failed to think about God’s plan. God’s plan was no where on my mind or my radar. And even though I wasn’t consciously working out God’s plan, three years later, here I am right in the middle of God’s plan.

So, my fear, my worry, my work, did nothing BUT get me further into God’s plan. And that is what the plan was all along. That wasn’t my plan. BUT it is my plan.

I never knew where this journey was going to go and I still have no illusions that I am in any way in control of the journey. BUT I no longer need to fear where the path is leading. I no longer need to worry about all those distractions. I no longer need to be concerned about the temporary situations of life because there is a constant God there. And all sorts of things in my life will change. I will encounter new diseases, new taxes, new regulations, new laws, new social movements, new ideas, new government tyranny . . . BUT through it all, I have a constant God that is with me. I am not alone and I need not fear.

Folks are out there right now worried about the next thing that the organized fear squads are pumping into our consciousness BUT we don’t have to be afraid. There is nothing they can invent that God has not already allowed. There is nothing that can happen that God doesn’t already know. There is only one way this all eventually ends. And that is the way God intends.

I am going to choose to live abundantly. I am going to choose to live a life of love and grace. I am going to choose, “. . . love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” in the face of everything. I am not alone and I need not fear.

Peace to your home. Bless your being. The reign of God is now. Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyNepheshMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain #EmbracetheWithin