Journal 4-7-14

 “Fear not my child – I’m with you always – 

I feel every pain – and I see all your tears –

Fear not my child – I’m with you always – 

I know how to take care of what belongs to me.”

ISAIAH 41:10 – Fear not, for I am with you; do not look around you in terror and be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen and harden you to difficulties, yes, I will help you; yes,  I will hold you up and retain you with my righteous right hand of rightness and justice.
HEBREWS 13:5-6 – “I will never leave you or forsake you.” So we can confidently say “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”

I have had to deal with fear many times in my life. Fear is not from God. It is a tool Satan uses to cripple us. He might use it to get us to make poor choices that will have negative consequences on our life or he may use it to hurt our friends and family. Either way, it is one of his tools. It is effective and it is evil. It is not from God. Some traits of Christ likeness would be: Patience, kindness, unselfishness, humility, love, forgiveness, honesty, morality, unity, peace, growth, knowledge, fruitfulness, etc. Now throw in fear – it just does not fit. It’s a good place to be in life when you can realize that fear is of Satan and that God can overcome that in your life if you align yourself to receive what He has for you. There are many people in this world that suffer from something that keeps them in the pit because Satan has them  fumbuzzled. They indulge in sinful things because it feels good for a while but the end result is them going further into the pit. They are afraid of change. Fear takes their ambition out of them and keeps them struggling and fighting for every breath of air they can get. I have been at that spot in my life and it is miserable. You don’t know what to do. You hear people say “look to Jesus” and you say “how?” So you call yourself looking to Him and you expect to be shot out of the pit and dropped on the mountain top! It never worked that way for me.  Sorry. But with consistent and sincere Bible reading, prayer, turning from sin, surrounding myself with people doing the same, and obedience to Christ daily God winched me out of the pit just like my buddy winched me out of the mud hole with his old ford. Slow and steady. Before long I was down the road at the car wash getting all cleaned up!

Prayer
Heavenly Father, I pray that you will give us all insight and direction to see clearly when we find ourselves in the pit. Some of us need a little extra help Lord. Help us to find that old winch cable so you can slowly and steadily winch us out of the mess we’ve stepped in. Amen

Thoughts: 
I realize that I may not appeal every day to my children and the things on their heart or the things going on in their lives at the time, but we are a team and we need to work together to be prepared to handle anything that comes at us. It is important that you guys read these daily so that you don’t miss any that you might need one day. You can just put it on reserve till you get to the spot in your life when you need it. Love you.