daily java

Daily Java:

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. (2 Timothy 1:7)

The number of scary commercials the past few days really struck me. I have heard several times one with the voices of little children warning us that leaving them alone in the car for even a minute can get them killed. Another with children’s voices tells that without a GPS you will get lost and you will all die. Another was that you need to put leftover food into a shallow dish and refrigerate it immediately and clean your individual cutting boards (God forbid our food should mix) or you will die. The headline read: “Apple slices recalled due to listeria danger.” Be careful of the apples or you will die. If you vote for a certain candidate, you will die. If you do not vote for a certain candidate, you will die.

It is fear that drives us. Fear dominates us every day. Fear is in most of the headlines. And we are afraid. After 9/11, it seemed that all of a sudden the world got to be a scary place, and we began looking around corners everywhere for things that will hurt us.

Of course, it was before that, too. Remember the Tylenol scare of the mid-1980’s? Or the arsenic that was found on 2 grapes and an apple somewhere? Even further back, AIDS? Pintos would explode if hit right (or wrong)? There were razor blades in the apples at Halloween? Don’t eat yellow snow (maybe not that one)? It’s ten o’clock, where are your children? The bomb could explode at any time so we had to learn how to hide under our desks? Communists were everywhere?

We can only be so afraid before sooner or later it becomes the dominating force in our lives, replacing all else. It gets rid of love, it gets rid of human relationships, it makes us afraid to even let our children out of our sight. Our young people are afraid to even enter into relationships and get married out of fear.

It is a scary world today, we say. But it always was one. Bad stuff has always been around. But of course, with the advent of 24 hour cable news and on the spot reporting, it has looked even worse. We see it immediately and we get scared that it might happen to us. And we are practically gibbering with fear.

In 1985, we were talking about the Tylenol bottle that was found with an injection mark in the top and it almost put Tylenol out of business. Someone said that nobody would dare now to take a Tylenol. I took the bottle they were waving about in fear, shook two into my hand and threw them down my throat. The others gasped at my audacity. My response: I refuse to be afraid.

I refuse to be scared. I have the power of God in my heart and in my life. And as the scripture says in 1 John 4:18:

Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear.

If God is with me, there is no need for gibbering fear. I mean, I am not going to be foolish, eat ground glass or food out of a dumpster, play solitaire on the freeway; but I will not be afraid. I will live my life as a child of God and one of those protected by his grace, not as some slobbering scaredy-cat. I have that Spirit of power, love and self-discipline in my life. I have no room for fear.