“Be careful! Watch out for attacks from the Devil, your great enemy. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for some victim to devour. Take a firm stand against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your Christian brothers and sisters all over the world are going through the same kind of suffering you are.” (1 Peter 5: 8-9)
Fear and darkness often go hand-in-hand. Think about the things that you fear or worry about the most. In most cases, when we expose those fears to the light of God’s Word, we see that they are not nearly as big and scary as we first thought.
In their natural habitat, lions prefer to hunt at night. Their acute night vision and their speed make them very effective hunters. Their prey seldom has a chance. The darkness gives the lion a powerful advantage.
In our lives, if we are going to walk in faith instead of fear, we have to learn to walk in the light. Paul reminded the Christians in Thessalonica, “For you are all children of the light and of the day; we don’t belong to darkness and night.” We walk in the light by being filled with the Holy Spirit and filled with God’s Word. Fear shrinks and faith thrives in the atmosphere of Spirit and Word.
One of the other things that makes the lion such an effective hunter is the fact that they never attack an entire herd of animals. Instead, the lion stays close enough to grab the animal that strays too far from their companions. This can be a young animal or an old one. It does not matter to the lion. He knows that eventually his dinner is going to be the animal that leaves the safety of its mates.
How many times have you seen people wander away from their Christian family only to end up getting attacked and destroyed by our enemy? Too many times, I have had people come to me for counsel and the conversation often goes like this, “Pastor David, my marriage is a disaster, we are having problems with our kids, and we are about to lose our house. Can you pray for me?”
I’ll say, “I’m happy to pray for you but I haven’t seen you guys in church in months. What happened?”
The answer is usually something to the effect of, “Well, we just got busy doing other things. We like to go to the beach or go camping on the weekends or the kids are playing sports and we just got out of the habit of going to church.”
I will then ask, “So how was your life going when you guys were plugged into Church?”
Almost every time the answer is, “Well, to be honest, things were much better. The kids were involved with other kids from church. We were in a great connect group. Things were good.”
“Maybe it is time you guys got reconnected into the House of God, huh?”
Church will not solve every problem that people have, but there is a safety factor that is present when we are connected with our spiritual tribe. We have people around us who can love us, help us, pray for us, and encourage us before a crisis can destroy us. No one wants to get picked off by the enemy.
How do you overcome fear in your life?
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