Devotional: December 2009

Living Life Without Fear (Part 2)

Psalm 34: 1-4:  I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.  My soul shall make her boast in the Lord; the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad.  O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.  I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. 

Do you or anyone you know wear reading glasses?  I’ve worn glasses for years for distance, but not for reading.  They say that could change when I hit my forties!  My dad has great distance vision and night vision like an owl, but he wears reading glasses sometimes.  He goes to the dollar store and buys 3 or 4 pairs at a time.  He doesn’t buy prescription glasses, because essentially, he just needs magnification for small words on a page, so he’d rather save the money.  That’s really what reading glasses are, just 2 magnifying glasses connected to ear pieces!

Did you know that words are like a magnifying glass?  Have you ever noticed that the more you talk about something, the bigger it becomes, whether good or bad?  Have you ever talked about a problem so long that it actually seemed worse than it really was?  I have!  It’s what my mom used to call “making a mountain out of a molehill”.  I used to think that saying was so corny, but it’s really true. 

Most of the time, our fears have no basis, but we simply magnify things to be worse than they are.  Did you know that over 90% of the things we are afraid of never take place?  They are born out of “What if’s?”  You know, “What if I lose my job?”, “What if my kids don’t turn out right?”,  “What if my husband/wife always acts like that?”,  “What if I never get married?”,  “What if nobody likes me?”  And the list goes on.  And we keep talking about it.  And the problem gets worse.  And we get more scared.  Then we start taking matters in our own hands and messing everything up.

David said, “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.”  Magnify means “to be or make large”.  Exalt means “to raise, bring up, promote”.  In the midst of trouble, when the enemy had him and his army surrounded, David was calling people to talk about how great God is!  Instead of magnifying his problem to be greater than God, he wanted to magnify God bigger than his circumstance! 

Goliath, Philistine enemy of Israel, was over 9 feet tall (he needed no magnification)!  He intimidated God’s army with his size and trash talk.  But listen to what little teenage David said to him: “Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.  This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcasses of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.  And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord’s and he will give you into our hands.” –I Samuel 17:45-47

As long as you live, your life is going to be subject to change, trials, and uncertainties—things that can stir up fear.  You must attack this enemy in the name of the Lord with your mouth wide open, speaking His Word that is your only true defense!  Magnify Him and before you know it, that adversary you were afraid of, whether real or imagined, doesn’t seem so big and bad after all.