To those who read my blog,
I have not talked to you for quite sometime and in fact, I have not been talking to a lot of people for a long time. Namely I have not been talking to one person who has been wanting to have a sit down with me for quite some time, but I have been avoiding Him like the plague for a while. Before I get into that, I want to share with you something I learned a while ago and had ingrained within me but for some reason have personally ignored it completely while proclaiming the truth of it for all to hear, because apparently I like being a lousy jerk of a hypocrite.
God hates fear. What God provides is love and that is the opposite of love. If you want to make any true impact for God in Jesus’ name, then get fear out of you and know His true love. Fear is only going to hold you back. If Jesus is calling you to more, then you must sacrifice anything that resembles fear because it does not belong in you and it’s going to make it hard for God to use you in what He wants you to do.
To illustrate, I want to quote something out of the book of Daniel found in the Old Testament. The story should be familiar to anyone who grew up going to Sunday School, but here it is. I stop at a certain place and if you don’t know the story, then please don’t read any more right now but wait until you’ve read the last of this blog entry before looking it up on biblegateway.com or your fancy non-electronic version of the Bible you might have (you lucky person, you). If you do know the story, pretend that you don’t when you go through this. It will help illustrate my point a bit better.
Daniel 3:8-18
“8 At this time some astrologers came forward and denounced the Jews. 9 They said to King Nebuchadnezzar, "O king, live forever! 10 You have issued a decree, O king, that everyone who hears the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes and all kinds of music must fall down and worship the image of gold, 11 and that whoever does not fall down and worship will be thrown into a blazing furnace. 12 But there are some Jews whom you have set over the affairs of the province of Babylon—Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—who pay no attention to you, O king. They neither serve your gods nor worship the image of gold you have set up."
13 Furious with rage, Nebuchadnezzar summoned Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. So these men were brought before the king, 14 and Nebuchadnezzar said to them, "Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the image of gold I have set up? 15 Now when you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes and all kinds of music, if you are ready to fall down and worship the image I made, very good. But if you do not worship it, you will be thrown immediately into a blazing furnace. Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?"
16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." ”
Did you notice how the story is not over yet? If you stop reading here, you don’t know if Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego make it out alive or not and I am not going to tell you whether or not they do.
That’s not the point. The point is their attitude towards the whole thing. They know that they are going to be walking into a furnace, but they do not know if they are going to be walking out again.
I mean, read verses 16-18 again. The three guys basically say, “Our God will probably save us from this mess, but even if He doesn’t, the furnace is a lot better than serving something false.
The king tried to put fear into the hearts of these guys by threatening them with a painful death. They responded in loving obedience to God by not even entertaining that fear for a second but trusting that their God loves them too much to want them to devote any attention to a god that is not the true God of Israel.
So now here it comes. “How is Joshua T. Aitkenhead a hypocrite?” you might be asking. Well I’ll tell you. Although I have been pretty harsh to some people (one person in particular) for entertaining fears instead of trusting God (when they may have been trusting God the whole time anyways and I’ve only been thinking that they were not) I have not been living a life without fear. My fears are different. I fear God, but not in a good and respectable ‘Old Testament, fear the LORD almighty” sort of way. No, I have been fearing that He will not provide (which is utter bull crap). I also have been fearing myself. I fear that even if He does provide, I will just end up messing up His provisions so much that they will be utterly useless. Because I think I have screwed up everything He has given me.
Here’s just one example of a billion illustrations from my life where I feel I have screwed everything up beyond redemption:
A few weeks ago, I treated a person like utter trash because of a rumor about his friends that wasn’t even true. I had no reason to treat this excellent human being like any less than what they are, but I did and not even because he did anything to me, but because of rumors of what his friends apparently did to me (but they really didn’t). Lucky for me, God is forgiving and so is this man, but I look at experiences like that and I feel as if I just messed things up beyond the point of redemption.
And so I have not been talking to Jesus. Because I fear He will not provide, and I fear that even if He does provide, I’ll just throw it out the window or mess it up in some way.
In the middle of writing this blog, I took a break to stop and talk with Him. Things are about to get a lot more intense for me if I listen to what He had to say to me tonight. I just hope I can ditch these useless fears in order to walk in what He wants from me.
Much love from a place of great pain and confusion,
Joshua
