By This You Shall Be Tested

How can we use our fear to grow spiritually? What do your fears tell you about yourself? Have you ever gotten an out of the blue or late night call from someone who doesn’t normally call you like that? There is often a sense of fear at least wondering what might be wrong or what might suddenly be expected of you. The cryptic “We need to talk…” text is even worse! The three dots means you did something! The worst case scenario is when you know, or at least are pretty sure you know, what those three dots mean. You know what you did, and now you have been discovered.

 

Now, it is one thing to receive that communication from a friend or parent, but what if on the caller ID it read, “God”? What comes to your mind? “Did He see what happened the other night? What is He going to ask me to do? What topic do I need to make sure we stay FAAARR away from?” When we feel the twinge in our conscience, that is something like getting that phone call. Or when we feel our chest tighten up when thinking about a worry of ours, it is an invitation to consider what God might have to say about those emotions.

 

Today we are going to consider our main point: God prods our fears to shape our faith.

 

We are going to see these next few chapters develop our characters in some pretty profound ways. There will be many echos of what we have seen before in Genesis that will resolve in some interesting ways. I invite you over these next few weeks as new semesters start, as we approach the back half of the year, to consider along with these characters how God may be calling you to grow. This week, we will see how God lays His hand on them and in the coming weeks, we will see how God shapes them.