When you are afraid...

Is there anything you are afraid of? Afraid of failure? Losing your job? Losing your properties, you family, your health, or your life?

Do not feel bad! We all are afraid of something. Being afraid is part of our fallen nature and God knows it.

The people of Israel (the new generation) was about to enter the Promised Land. Moses had just reminded them that nothing was due to their merits, but that God had chosen them, loved them, and that God is faithful to His promises.

God knew that they would be afraid, just like their parents had been 40 years earlier; but God tells them (and us!) what to do if they are afraid. Four things to do when you are afraid:

Do not fear!

“If you should should say in your heart, this nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them? You shall not be afraid of them… you shall not dread them.” v. 17-18, 21

When do we get afraid? We get afraid when we think or feel that the task given to us is too big, the enemy is too powerful, or when the consequences of failing could be disastrous.

Two different words are used on these verses: “yaré” translated as “fear”, and “aras” translated as “dread” (espanto).

What is fear? It is that feeling that makes you flee or refuse those things that are considered harmful, risky, or dangerous.

And, yes, the task given to them of conquering the land was all that. They faced the risk of being wounded or killed!

What is dread? Terror, intense fear, astonishment, and consternation.

No wonder they felt like that! Those nations, the Amorites, Caananites, Hitites, and Philistines were famous as bloody warriors; and among the Philistines, the giants were common.

But God encourages them by commanding them, “Do not be afraid, do not dread”.

Fear and terror come from negative thinking and a forgetful mind. Therefore, God tells them, “Remember!!!” What?

Remember what God has done!

“Remember what the Lord did to Pharaoh and all Egypt:” v. 18

None of those nations were so powerful as Egypt at that time. The Lord destroyed their army in only hours or minutes. All of them drown when the Lord closed the walls of water that He had opened to let Israel crossed the sea.

“and the signs and wonders and His mighty hand...” v. 19

They were children when those things happened and could remember them or they were told to them by their parents. They knew how the Lord converted the waters into blood, how the plagues had affected the Egyptians and how God had protected Israel.

We get afraid when we forget God’s power and the miracles He has done in our life or the life of others.

God has not lost His power! His hand is still mighty! If He has protected you before, why do you doubt that He will do it again?

God still does signs and wonders!

What is that illness to God? Nothing! The Lord healed paralytics, blinds, lepers, mute and deaf! Don’t you think He is powerful to heal you? To provide for you? To protect you from the enemies?

Remember what God has done!

Remember that God is working behind the scene!

“God will send the hornet against them..” v. 20

God works in ways we do not even imagine!

Fear traps us and does not let us to see behind the scene. We have no idea that God will use His creation to accomplish the plans He has for us.

God was working in the wasp nests all over the land. Preparing them to unleash them at the right moment to make to people flee or be killed by the poison of their stings.

No matter what you are facing, God is with you! He has promised “I’ll never leave your nor forsake you”. Maybe you feel that God is not answering your clamor, but He is working behind the scene. If you know Christ, you are on the winning side:

Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations 1998 They Were on Side of God

Napoleon said, “God is on the side of the heaviest artillery.” At Waterloo, he was proved wrong, for the 160 guns of the English overcame the 250 guns of the French. God and one make a majority.

How helpless seemed William of Orange and the Hollanders against Spain and the religious forces of Rome, but God was with William of Orange. How helpless seemed the preacher Parkhurst against the combined wickedness of the great city, but God and right were on his side. During the anti-slavery struggle, a preacher said, “Gentlemen, it looks dark, but God is on our side, and how much do you count him for?”

“One shall chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight.”

“the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God.” v. 21

“the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God.” v. 21

“the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God.” v. 21

He is also working in you character behind the scene, talking to your soul.

“If God is for us, who against us?”

We do not have a man-made god nor an wooden idol! We have a great and awesome God, the Almighty God.

Remember that God will do the work!

“The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you… the Lord your God will deliver them before you,” v. 22,23

They would not do it, He would do it for them!

Our job is to obey His marching orders with the full confidence that He will go ahead of us to prepare the terrain; with us to strengthen and sustain us, and behind us to protect you.

We are just the pieces of the chess game, but He is the one who moves them. It His mind that think the movements. The victory does not belong to the pieces, but to the player.

God moves toward His victory! And remember, God is a winner and does not lose a game!

It is in Christ that we are made winners, more than conquerors.

Romans 8:35–39 NASB95

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Rom 8:35

Like the old hymn declares it,

Like the old hymn declares it,

Like the old hymn declares it,

“Oh victory in Jesus, my Savior, forever. He sought be and bought me with His redeeming blood.

He loved me ere I knew Him, and all my love is due Him. He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood.”

No matter what you are fighting, no matter how dark the situation seems,

Do not fear! Remember what God has done before, that God is working behind the scene, and that He will do the work!