The face of joy

I’m thinking about two faces: one belonging to an elderly woman, the other to a little girl.


Both radiate pure joy.

The woman’s face appeared in a photograph taken during a fall concert tour of Ukraine by the Singing Men of Texas, a gifted ensemble of Texas Baptist music ministers, pastors and laymen. Their mission: “to glorify God and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus” — and they do it all over the world. In recent years they’ve frequently visited the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, where a rich tradition of men’s choral music draws large crowds to their performances.

Many Ukrainians have decided to follow Christ — or deepened their faith in Him — through the concerts. But the woman’s face captured me. It was framed by her arms, reaching for heaven, palms raised upward in expectation of God. Her eyes shone from deeply lined cheeks. Her toothless smile was more beautiful than anything Hollywood can produce. Who knows what hardships she might have suffered during communist times, or since? All that faded as she lifted her face in worship.

The little girl’s face appeared in a missionary’s story. The missionary teaches women who offer palliative care to dying people in a part of Africa wracked by AIDS. One day, the missionary asked one of the women how her patients were doing.

“I need to go visit a little girl,” the woman responded. “Would you like to go with me?”

The missionary describes the visit:

“She grabbed a baby doll that someone had given their palliative care group, and we started off. She told me this little 9-year-old girl had cancer, and she had promised to bring her a baby doll. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? We walked through the dirty compound a distance until we reached her small home.

“I’m not sure I was truly prepared for what I was to see. As soon as we walked in the home, this sweet little girl broke into a huge smile, even though her cheeks were shallow and her eyes dark. Her small frame was wrapped in a blanket except for the thin little arms, which sat motionless on top of the blanket. She was also paralyzed in both arms and legs.

“The lady I was with asked me to give the doll to the little girl. So I showed it to her, took it out of the package and laid it on her stomach, propped up against her little arm. She kept grinning. She said, ‘I love you!’

“The woman taking care of the sick little girl [was] her aunt … since both her parents had died; they probably were HIV-positive. As the aunt shared about the little girl’s blood cancer and her chemo treatments, the girl just sat there, limp, staring down at her new doll.”

But she was filled with joy. Her face showed it.

“I prayed for the little girl and her family, and we left,” the missionary writes. “I thanked my friend for allowing me to go with her. She said, ‘No need to thank me; it was all part of God’s plan.’ She is one woman, along with a few other palliative caregivers, who are trying to reach out to their community and help those who are sick. She is making a difference, one by one. …

“Sometimes I get so overwhelmed when I go into the homes of these patients — seeing how they live, how little they have, the health care they are provided with, and yet they still manage to have a smile on their face. I get overwhelmed because I feel so helpless sometimes. I can’t possibly help everyone I come into contact with. But I like what my friend said to me — that what we had done was all part of God’s plan. I had no idea this morning what my afternoon would look like, but God certainly did!”

Less than two weeks later, the little girl died. But the joy on her face — and the face of the elderly Ukrainian woman — came from a love more powerful than sickness, age, suffering and death.

Would they ever have known that love if faithful followers of Christ hadn’t pointed the way?

“I pray that God will let me be His light wherever I go and that I will influence the world around me, one day at a time,” says the missionary. “Please pray for my friend and the other palliative caregivers. They work in a huge area with a lot of hurting people. Pray that these men and women will be the light of Jesus to their community.”

And pray that you will be the light of Jesus in your own community. There’s nothing better than seeing the joy on the faces His light illuminates.

For adventure seekers only

A magazine headline recently caught my eye: “What adventures are actually left?”

Summits reached for the first time. Deserts crossed. Daring journeys never before attempted — or survived, as the case may be.

It’s a subject worth considering in memory of one of the greatest adventurers of them all: Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon. Armstrong, who died Aug. 25, made no secret of his disappointment in America’s flagging commitment to human space exploration. How long will it take us to get back to the moon, he wondered aloud in his later years, much less Mars? The cosmos awaits.

Back here on earth, though, “are there many meaningful challenges left for intrepid explorers?” asked an article in the BBC News Magazine. “[G]enuine firsts in exploration are getting hard to find. The world’s greatest peaks have all been climbed. The earth has been circumnavigated many times by plane, foot, bicycle and balloon, among other means of conveyance. Many of the major rivers, lakes and seas have been swum or canoed. There are few genuine unknowns. Satellite navigation technology allows mankind to see almost every river, copse and hill.”

It’s a far cry from the great ages of discovery, when wanderers trekked and sailed across vast, unknown expanses in search of new lands and peoples, trade routes, knowledge, gold.

“In the late 19th century a ragbag of missionaries, gentlemen explorers and speculators began the scramble for Africa with little knowledge of what awaited them,” the article observed of the last such age. “Exploration today is a dying art. The new feats are often about endurance as much as discovery. Firsts are ever more specialist and technically defined — first successful dive at the North Pole … first person to jetpack across the English Channel … oldest woman to climb Everest. …”

There are plenty of such specialized challenges for adventurers with the time, money and guts to pursue them. Want to ski the fearsome heights of K2 in the Himalayas? Go for it, if you have your will in order. Want to swim the Pacific? Someone is planning to, but if you hurry you might beat him. Or take a dive: The world’s ocean floors remain a greater mystery than the surface of Mars, according to the BBC.

The spirit of adventure also burns brightly beyond the arenas of extreme sports and scientific exploration, however. There are people willing and eager to do whatever it takes to speak the name of Jesus where it has never been heard.

Aaron Juergens,* for instance. He’s a 20-something guy who grew up climbing mountains in Colorado for fun.

“[A]fter high school I started climbing ‘fourteeners,’” Juergens says of Colorado’s 54 peaks that soar above 14,000 feet. “I would climb three mountains a week.”

Today, as a Christian worker, he hikes the Himalayas, the “roof of the world,” adapting inadequate maps and using GPS units to find people who have never heard the Gospel. Read more of his story, or watch a video about his amazing mountain adventures.

“Not all people live in the cities where you can take a taxi to their front door,” Juergens says. “People live in places that we would never dream of living in but the fact is they live there. That’s where they’re put and they’re not coming to us. We have to go to them.”

That’s exactly what he and his teammates do. The people groups in the remote regions he visits aren’t just hard to reach geographically. Juergens also must cross mountains of superstition, tradition and spiritual resistance. But that isn’t a reason to quit, Juergens says, even when you’re freezing and sick on top of a mountain.

“I’m up there, wearing six jackets and three gloves and five socks and I really just kind of want to sit in a bed,” he says. “But then you think about those people [who haven’t yet heard about Jesus]. If we turn around, who is going to come next? I mean, how many people have turned around? The world is getting smaller. The day is coming when everybody is going to have no excuse whatsoever for not hearing. There’s no excuse for turning back. We keep going.”

That’s the kind of determination that moves the Gospel across mountains, physical or spiritual. Think about that the next time someone tells you the age of adventure is dead. Many mountains remain unclimbed. Are you up for it?

*(Name changed)

A greater dream

                                              

With the national political conventions over, the frenzy of a seemingly never-ending presidential campaign shifts into even higher gear as Election Day approaches.

Only two more months of 24/7 political ads — at least for those of us living in battleground states. I can’t wait.

I don’t mean to sound cynical. I’m thankful. Democracy is messy and often dirty, but it sure beats the alternatives. And I’m proud that my kids — I mean, the young adults I still claim as dependents on my tax return — will both be voting for the first time. It’s an interesting election season for them to begin full participation in the privilege of democratic decision making as citizens. Sure, politicians across the spectrum are delivering lots of low blows and half-truths, as usual. But amid the mudslinging, they’re debating key issues such as the proper role of government, how best to serve the public in difficult economic times and America’s role in the world.

They also are jousting over who is the better custodian of “the American dream.” Speakers mentioned America’s “dream” or “story” more than 150 times at the Republican and Democratic conventions, according to the Associated Press. It’s a timely topic, as fears increase that Americans now entering adulthood will comprise the first generation to experience less prosperity over the course of their working lives than their parents did.

What is “the American dream,” anyway? Everyone has his or her own spin on it. My pastor reminded me that the term itself was coined in 1931 by historian and author James Truslow Adams (1878-1949). Adams described it as the “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. … It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

The second part of that description, written as the nation was descending into severe economic depression, is instructive. Adams saw the dream as more than just “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage” (one of the promises of the 1928 presidential election) — or two garages with luxury SUVs attached to every McMansion, which has typified the dream for some folks in more recent years. Rather, Adams dreamed of a society where every member could freely go as far as his or her striving could take them, unfettered by an oppressive state or the old class system of Europe.

Many people, particularly the immigrants entering America every day, still dream that dream. Noble as it may seem, however, it’s not enough. And as prophetic voices such as David Platt have reminded us, it inevitably conflicts with God’s dream. God did not create us primarily to chase self-realization, prosperity or even “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” as Thomas Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence. He created us to love Him and to glorify Him among the nations.

“Radical obedience to Christ is not easy. … It’s not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And He is more than enough for us,” Platt wrote in his 2010 book, “Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream.”

If believers continue to opt for the typical American version of Christianity rather than the biblical one, Platt warned, the price will be “high for people who don’t know Christ and who live in a world where Christians shrink back from self-denying faith and settle into self-indulging faith. While Christians choose to spend their lives fulfilling the American dream instead of giving their lives to proclaiming the kingdom of God, literally billions in need of the Gospel remain in the dark.”

It doesn’t have to be that way. And for a new breed of Christ followers responding to the timeless biblical vision — as opposed to a limited American one — it isn’t that way. Their dream: to proclaim the kingdom of God to their own generation.

Despite the aging of the populations of many developed nations, the world population “quietly hit a tipping point in 2010: Over 50 percent of the people around the globe are now under the age of 25,” reported Mindy Belz in WORLD magazine earlier this year. They’re increasingly part of an “emerging global youth culture in which youth around the world have more in common with each other than they do with the adults in their own culture.”

They’re looking for more than jobs, material things or even freedom. They’re looking for God.

Counting the cost

                                         
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Harry* has a decision to make. A big one. The direction he takes might change history, at least in his town.

It will definitely change his own life forever.

Harry’s town lies in one of the most rigidly traditional parts of the Muslim world. He’s a prosperous and respected businessman, 50ish, his hair and thick mustache mostly gray. He deserves the respect he commands. Unlike some businessmen in his town, Harry doesn’t cheat his customers or gouge the tenants he serves as a landlord.

“Landlords say, ‘Yeah, you fix up the place, you pour your money into it, and I’ll raise the rent on you,’” says an American Christian worker who lives in a house Harry owns. “But he’s not that kind of guy. He’s kept the rent the same for four years. He’s just a good guy.”

With his children growing up and his family well-established, Harry has reached a stage of life when men in his culture grow more introspective and serious about religion. For several years he has talked about going on the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

In the meantime, however, he has developed a friendship with his American tenant. They’ve talked a lot about spiritual things — from the Islamic festival of sacrifice to the supreme sacrifice Jesus Christ made as atonement for humanity’s sin.

“He started asking some things about our Scriptures, and I just took a shot and brought them out to him one day, the full Scriptures in the local language,” the worker recalls. “He took them home. Two months later he was in 1 Samuel. I asked him why, and he said he’d read from the beginning to 1 Samuel. The next time I saw him he was in Jeremiah, and the next time I saw him he was in the Gospels.

“He’s asked all the [common Muslim] questions of me, like: Why do you call Him the Son of God? How do you get your Scriptures? Did Jesus really die on the cross? I told him at least two or three times the crux of the Gospel, about what it takes to get into heaven, that it is repentance toward God and faith in God’s sacrifice. I didn’t try to ‘close the sale,’ but he knows everything I could say about Jesus, who He is and what He has done. I’ve just got to believe he’s counting the cost because he’s listened to me. He’s been very intent. He’s got to make a decision about who Jesus is.”

What does counting the cost mean for Harry? If he makes a decision to follow Christ — and makes it public — he would likely lose his standing in the community very quickly. His children would lose their opportunities for higher education and good jobs. If a Muslim mullah decided to preach against him during Friday prayers, he could lose his life.

His decision could go either way.

“Actually, the last time I saw him, he didn’t look very good,” his American friend says. “He’d been in a life-threatening car accident and had his arm all bandaged up and in a cast. He looked kind of scared. … I’ve seen a man of this age and stature come into the kingdom and then turn back because there was so much pressure [from the community]. Harry’s saying to himself, ‘Could this really be true? How could I ever become a follower of Jesus?’”

If he follows Christ, he won’t make it alone. Nor should he have to. And as an influential man in his town, he could bring others with him if he shares his faith wisely — perhaps starting with his own family.

“We’re looking for a movement,” says the worker. “We’re not looking for one man of peace who has to weather the whole storm. It’s very hard for one person to do that. But if 12 or 15 or 20 pop up, he has some fellowship. We’ve got to have movements. In places like this, when one guy comes to Christ it’s just hard to stand against a raging flood. You’re trying to go upstream.

“So pray that he will listen to what God is saying and count the cost.”
And pray for all the other Harrys now counting the cost in the Muslim world. There are many of them.

* (Name changed)

The 'disease of Me'

Listen to an audio version at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/158/15884/15884-87522.mp3

Legendary NBA basketball coach Pat Riley has led multiple teams stocked with superstars, so he knows something about dealing with egos.

He also knows about winning and losing. What prevents potentially great teams from winning championships, in his view? Not lack of size, speed or talent. Rather, they are sabotaged by what Riley calls the “disease of Me.” Selfish stars focus on themselves. They resent others getting any glory. They’re frustrated, even when the team is winning, if things aren’t going their way.

“The most difficult thing for individuals to do when they become part of a team is to sacrifice,” Riley says. “It is much easier to be selfish.”

That pretty much describes the central challenge of the spiritual life. Following Christ requires sacrificing your own agenda. To do that, you have to get your eyes off yourself — and onto Him. You don’t have to be a superstar to struggle with that. As human beings, our natural tendency is to focus on ourselves, our wants and our needs. Others, including the Lord, get the leftovers.

“I start many sentences both out loud and in my heart with the words, ‘I feel like … ,’” admits a missionary in her most recent blog post. “That’s such a dangerous place for me. I’m a feeler and a discerner and many times that gets me in trouble, spiritually speaking. It causes me to presume that things are a certain way and that people think certain things about me. It makes me focus on myself. The enemy loves to use this in my life — to make me forget that it’s not about me at all.”

Why is it so hard to keep our eyes on Jesus? Sometimes it’s because we don’t believe He is enough. We want Him, but we want other things, too. Comfort. Perks. Recognition. Guarantees. Safety and security. Roadmaps. Faith doesn’t work that way.

Brad Bessent, a missions-hearted pastor who has taught me a lot, gets to the heart of the matter in a reflection on the Gospel of Luke, chapter 5: “Jesus calls Levi, a tax collector, to follow Him. The thing is, tax collectors were the scum of the earth. They were extortionists and hated by everyone. But Jesus says to Levi, ‘I want you.’ He had already assembled a pretty motley crew, a mosaic of people. Fishermen, a leper, a paralytic, all in the same chapter, and now Levi (also called Matthew).

“When Jesus calls, Levi gives up everything to follow Jesus. He was a wealthy man and he left all of that behind him. When you follow Jesus, there is only one guarantee. You are not guaranteed security; you are not guaranteed safety; you are not even guaranteed shelter. All you are absolutely guaranteed is if you follow Jesus, you will get Jesus. So everyone considering becoming a believer has to decide: Is Jesus enough?”

For Levi, Jesus was enough. And he believed Jesus was enough for everyone else. Before leaving all he had to follow the Master, he threw a big party at his house, gathered all his lowlife friends and invited Jesus as the honored guest and center of attention. Levi didn’t say, “Look at me and what I’m doing,” although his friends surely noticed the radical change in his life. Instead, he pointed his friends toward Christ.

Levi has something crucial to teach us today, whether we are reaching out to our own fallen culture or to an unreached people group far away: Jesus is enough, and we must point searching people toward Him alone.

Missionaries learned that truth in a particularly resistant area of Asia that had long been known as a “graveyard of missions.” Christian workers tried again and again to confront the evil practices accepted in the culture, to no avail. They tried to introduce their own customs and values — and failed miserably. At the edge of despair, they remembered Christ’s words: “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself” (John 12:32, NASB). They stopped cursing the darkness and began lifting up the Light that shines in the darkness. At last, seekers became followers, and a Christian church movement was born.

“Missions exists because worship doesn’t,” John Piper declares. But the most effective form of missions is worship — lifting Christ over all things. “Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions. … The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God. … ‘Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. O let the nations be glad and sing for joy’” (Psalm 67:3-4a, KJV).

Culture warriors and social justice seekers, take note. You can battle the encroachments of secularism, humanism, greed and injustice all you want, and you might succeed — for a while. But pasting Christian values onto fallen cultures is like putting makeup on a corpse. Without the transforming power of Christ Himself, Christian social and political movements inevitably falter.

It is a matter of focus. Are your eyes focused on the world, on yourself or on Jesus? Jesus says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how do you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (John 14:9b, NASB).
A great old hymn puts it this way: “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.”

The power of influence

He didn’t have time to encourage a confused kid, but he did anyway.

He was Hoffman Harris, the busy pastor of fast-growing Briarlake Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga. The confused kid was me.

I was a new member of his church back in the ’70s. I was finishing college and struggling with a call to serve God. Pastor Harris had sermons to write and things to do. He had hundreds of other people and priorities clamoring for his attention. But he made time on a regular basis to talk to me, patiently answer countless dumb questions and connect me to key people he knew from his many years in ministry.

When I became a Mission Service Corps volunteer with the Home (now North American) Mission Board, he persuaded an understandably doubtful mission committee at Briarlake to provide partial support for an untested, untried young man. After I left the Atlanta area to join the International Mission Board staff in Richmond, Va., he kept in touch with me — more faithfully than I kept in touch with him.

There was something about “Hoff.” When he preached or talked to you, he wasn’t just saying words. He was giving you his heart. You felt you were the sole focus of his attention. Jesus’ disciples must have felt that way during His earthly ministry.

If not for Hoffman Harris, I probably never would have gotten involved in mission communication. If not for Bill and Joyce Dillard, I probably would have quit after the first few years. Bill was pastor of Parham Road Baptist Church, the congregation I joined after moving to Richmond. The Dillards not only welcomed me as a member, but fed me countless meals (the sure way to a single guy’s heart) and let me sleep on their couch when I was feeling lonely and discouraged. No advance notice was required: The door was open, the place at the table was set. They had their own sons, but happily “adopted” many guys like me through the years.

I could name other friends, relatives, mentors and missionaries who have freely given me their time and wisdom, with no agenda beyond love and no expectation of return beyond the joy they received in giving. If you look back, you will find people in your life who have done the same for you. They are the people you will remember with gratitude when the finish line comes into sight.

I am amazed at the number of books, articles, speeches, sermons, seminars and videos about “leadership” flooding the market these days when so little real leadership is on display. Never has so much been said about something so rarely practiced. Why are so many institutions, businesses, churches, families and relationships crumbling? There are many reasons, but one of them is lack of authentic leadership at every level of society.

“Leadership is about influence,” writes Jeremie Kubicek. “Influence is power. And how you use that power will affect your world and those around you. Will you choose to empower or overpower? To liberate or dominate?”

Kubicek, who runs a company that coaches and develops leaders, is author of Leadership is Dead: How Influence is Reviving it, published in 2011. Yet another book about leadership, you groan. But Kubicek is on to something. He thinks leadership is dead because many so-called “leaders” have abandoned their real responsibility in pursuit of self-aggrandizement, which devalues others, or self-preservation, which defines mediocrity.

“You don’t need massive power or a prominent position to lead positive change in an organization,” he says. “You need only influence: the most potent and underutilized professional resource on the planet. … Great leaders with true influence build relationships by serving the needs of those within their spheres of influence, even as they serve the needs of their businesses. This isn’t just a business tactic; it is a lifestyle.”

And it applies to every area of life. Influence comes from trust, according to Kubicek. No one trusts — or willingly follows — a leader who looks out only for No.1. But people will follow a generous influencer almost anywhere. “To have influence, you have to reach beyond your walls and give yourself for the benefit of others.”

That takes time, commitment and humility.

Maybe this sounds familiar: “For we never came with flattering speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed — God is witness — nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or from others, even though as apostles of Christ we might have asserted our authority. But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:5-8, NASB).

That’s the Apostle Paul, who knew something about leadership, and he didn’t need a fancy seminar to learn it. He mastered the art of true leadership under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit — and the guidance of faithful believers who prepared him to be the great missionary and disciple-maker he was.

Above all, Paul loved and served the disciples he made. His words were powerful, his example more so.

I learned that truth from Hoffman Harris and Bill and Joyce Dillard, who understood what real leadership is all about.

Fear itself

Listen to an audio version of this post at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/156/15646/15646-86331.mp3


Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was known as “the republic of fear” among opponents — those who were still alive, that is.

The deposed dictator, who was hanged in 2006, so effectively instilled dread among Iraqis during his decades in power that the mere rumor of a visit from his henchmen was enough to make most citizens tremble and submit.

It’s an old tactic in the tyrant playbook: Rule by fear. Spill plenty of blood early on. Pit various social, ethnic and religious groups against each other. Crush any hint of resistance. Later, you can make a bloody example of the odd rebel here and there — or even a random victim plucked off the street — to keep the rest of your subjects anxious. They must believe that you have eyes, ears and knives everywhere. If you’re a good tyrant, you probably do.

Arab strongmen who have fallen from power more recently used the same methods to greater or lesser degrees, until their populations had enough.

“[T]he Arab awakenings happened because the Arab peoples stopped fearing their leaders,” writes New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman of the Arab Spring revolutions. “But they stalled because the Arab peoples have not stopped fearing each other.”

The dictators carefully nurtured the culture of fear and ran their countries like Mafia dons, Friedman observes, “doling out patronage and protection, while ruling with an iron fist. But it will take more than just decapitating these regimes to overcome that legacy. It will take a culture of pluralism and citizenship. Until then, tribes will still fear tribes in Libya and Yemen, sects will still fear sects in Syria and Bahrain, the secular and the Christians will still fear the Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia and the philosophy of ‘rule or die’ will remain a potent competitor to ‘one man, one vote.’”

Fear runs deep in human hearts and minds — and not just in tough neighborhoods like the Middle East.

A few years ago I wrote about the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s glittering capital, economic hub, cultural center and home to a third of the nation’s 40 million people. If you look beneath Buenos Aires’ frenetic pace, wide avenues, trendy bars, tango cafes and European atmosphere, you find deep undercurrents of isolation and fear.

“In a big city, the spiritual strongholds are loneliness and fear,” said a missionary based there. “People live their lives scared. They’re afraid to go out at night. They’re afraid someone is going to take something from them. People who don’t have anything are afraid they’re not going to eat the next day. Fear drives people to do irrational and immoral things. It makes the wealthy become reclusive. It makes the poor get involved in crime or drugs to find an escape.”

The crime rate in Buenos Aires is no higher than in other major world cities. The metal bars guarding doors and windows there represent something deeper than simple fear of crime. Waves of political violence, economic chaos and social turmoil experienced by Argentines since the 1970s have left a legacy of suspicion, disillusionment and cynicism.

“People just don’t trust anyone anymore,” explained the missionary. “They don’t trust their government. They don’t trust the police. They don’t trust the mechanic they take their car to. … It’s a huge barrier to the Gospel, because it makes it very difficult to approach people and share. You’ve got this priceless gift you’d like to give everybody, but fear keeps them from being open to even talking about it.”

What if fear paralyzes not the person you want to tell about Christ, but you? Another missionary believes that’s one reason many Christians don’t reach out to the spiritually hungry immigrants and refugees who come to America.

“God is … bringing the nations to us,” he says. “But the thing that is driving the church is fear. Until we get over our fear, we will not welcome the lost in our midst. We’re afraid of Muslims and we’re afraid of foreigners. … We’re in a free country, and yet we’re not exercising our freedom to witness to the nations in our midst.”

Fear poisons relationships, or prevents them from ever beginning. It sabotages families and nations, motivates murders and sparks wars. It infects whole cultures. Believers should be immune, but we are not.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt told a nation mired in the Great Depression that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he put his finger on a spiritual reality rarely acknowledged by political leaders. Roosevelt urged Americans not to succumb to the “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” He challenged the country to keep its face turned outward, meeting the needs of others also caught in the global economic crisis: “These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.”

The devil loves fear. He is a master at using it to manipulate, hurt and destroy. But he cannot succeed unless you submit. That’s why the Lord tells His children again and again throughout Scripture to “fear not,” to trust Him, to be strong and of good courage. It’s not simply a reassurance; it’s an order.

“Jesus said, ‘Let not your heart be troubled,’” Oswald Chambers writes, referring to Christ’s words in John 14:1. But it’s up to you. “God will not keep your heart from being troubled. It is a command — ‘Let not …’ Haul yourself up a hundred and one times a day in order to do it, until you get into the habit of putting God first and calculating with Him in view.”

Fearing not is a crucial part of obeying God, which means loving Him. And love casts out fear.