Several years ago I spent about six months working in an
assisted living facility. One of the
residents, who still had a house he had not sold yet, admitted to me that he had
nearly $100,000 dollars in cash in his house.
It was well hidden, he assured me, within every door jamb of the house! Having experienced the run on the banks that
began the Great Depression, this man had no trust for institutions and was
afraid to invest his money.
Investment is only as good as our level
of trust. When Jesus told his story
about three servants whom he gave a pile of money, he was saying something
about the servants’ level of trust (Matthew 25:14-30). Two of the servants saw
the master as gracious and generous and freely took their talents and
confidently used them to create even more money. They took risks, they invested, they worked,
and they acted all with the idea that they were secure in their relationship
with their master. However, the third
servant’s view of his master was different.
This servant saw his master as stern and serious and angry, and, so this
is why he did nothing with his money because he was afraid.
He was afraid because his view of the master was not
accurate. If we see God as primarily
being angry all the time, then we will not use the incredible gifts he has
given us for fear of messing up and bringing his wrath upon us. The truth is:
God is a gracious and generous God.
He has generously and graciously gifted each and every one of us, and he
expects us to use those gifts and not hide them away in a door jamb! He wants us to be like Him: generous and gracious. We must address this fear if we want to hear
the saying: “well done, good and
faithful servant.”
Fear is maybe the devil’s greatest
tool to prevent God’s people from being productive Christians in serving the church
and the world. Beneath that fear are
powerful feelings of inferiority, inadequacy, and a low view of self which is
really born of a low view of God. Fear paralyzes a person’s potential to serve God’s
kingdom. Being afraid wastes what impact a person could have for God, and waters-down life so that it is ineffective.
Fear destroys dreams and godly desires. Psalm 37:4 encourages us to delight ourselves
in the LORD, and he will give us the desires of our hearts. We are to enjoy the gracious and generous
God, and in our enjoyment of Him He will place within us godly dreams that He
will absolutely delight to fulfill. Our
enjoyment of God gives us the security and confidence to act upon those godly
desires and produce a wonderful harvest that we can turn right around and give
back to God.
But put fear in the mix, and it dilutes and destroys everything. It makes you do nothing. Not
only did the third servant do nothing, like his ancestor Adam he went into
hiding and didn’t put his life to work. One
of the things that church leaders need to understand is that Christian
discipleship is not primarily about getting parishioners to have the answers
right on some bible study workbook; it is about action and service and that
will only rightly happen as we have a solid robust view of God instead of a
wrong view of God that leads to us being immobilized by fear.
In the Old Testament book of Numbers, the Israelites were
immobilized by fear. God had a grand
vision and a big dream for his people to enter the Promised Land. But ten of the twelve spies who came back after
checking out the land were paralyzed by fear.
“The land has giants, and we are like grasshoppers” they said. Caleb and Joshua, however, had a different
view of taking the land because they had a different view of God. They didn’t see giants – they saw a gracious
and generous God who could easily take care of whoever might be in the land,
and they wanted to act on the faith they had in a mighty and merciful God. The God of the other spies wasn’t big enough
to handle the giants. Their low view of
themselves as grasshoppers betrayed their low view of God.
Pastor David Seamands has rightly observed that “we wrap a
lot of our fears in morbidly sanctified self-belittling. We piously cover this self-despising and call
it consecration and self-crucifixion.”
In other words, we feel good about feeling bad. We use those feelings to make spiritual
excuses for not exploring what God’s dreams and vision is for us. It is high time we have bold God-sized
dreams! It is time for us to get into
the world with our witness in a far greater way because we serve a God who sees
giants as gnats, and we will, too, if we have a high view of God.
What holds us back?
Fear of criticism; fear of taking a risk; fear of going outside of the
way we’ve always done it; and, the crippling fear of what others may think or
say. If you once dreamed something and
you think your dream is dead because you destroyed it by your sins and bad
habits, you are wrong. Dreams are
destroyed by fear, by being tricked into thinking that we are nothing but grasshoppers
and God doesn’t care, and so we do nothing.
Fear ruins relationships, with both God and others. Seeing God as angry and belittling is right
where Satan wants all of us. Fear ends
up isolating us from people. The most
common way of coping with feelings of fear, insecurity, and inferiority is by
withdrawing from other people. You cannot
give yourself fully to your spouse, your kids, your church, and to the world
without a healthy robust view of and relationship with God.
Fear sabotages Christian service. “I can’t!” is the cry of the person locked in
fear. Perhaps you have noticed that God
isn’t typically in the business of using superstars to do His work. Moses was tongue-tied, Abraham was really a
wimp, Matthew a lowly tax-collector, and the disciple Mark was a momma’s
boy. The less talented a person is the
more God gets to show off His power and His ability through him or her.
So, give God a chance. Give him a chance to work in and through your
life. Explore the dimensions of church
ministry because you have a God behind you that is gracious and generous. May your mustard seed of faith grow to produce
a harvest of righteousness.