{"id":3274,"date":"2021-02-15T02:12:46","date_gmt":"2021-02-15T08:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/?p=3274"},"modified":"2021-02-20T01:17:37","modified_gmt":"2021-02-20T07:17:37","slug":"choosing-to-believe-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/choosing-to-believe-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Choosing to Believe…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\u201cAnd now abides faith, hope, love; these three\u201d (1 Cor. 13:13). The opposite of faith is fear; of hope, despair; and of love, indifference. Fear is the \u201cdefault mode\u201d of the soul that dwells in darkness. This is because the \u201cfallen\u201d soul regards the empirical world and its flux as ultimately real — and therefore \u201csees in order to believe.\u201d The life of faith, on the other hand, looks beyond the realm of appearances to behold an abiding glory — and therefore \u201cbelieves in order to see.\u201d How we choose to see is ultimately a spiritual decision for which we are each responsible….<\/p>\n

In the geo-political world there are more seemingly good reasons to be afraid today than in any time since the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Every day the media indoctrinates people about threats of various kinds: plagues (e.g., the bird flu, swine flu, coronavirus, etc.), natural disasters, economic uncertainties, terrorist plots, and so on. In short, by choosing to engage the \u201cculture of fear\u201d (with its ongoing propaganda campaigns from both the right and left wing perspectives) induces a sense of dread and anxiety (as someone once said, \u201cFEAR\u201d is “False Education Appearing Real”). Just as a lie-detector can physiologically sense when people are telling lies, so our souls can sense when we are believing them… There is no neutral ground here, no \u201ctranscendent\u201d place of the soul where we can rise above the realm of contrary truth claims: We will either be set free by the truth or else we will live in fear. As Yeshua said, the \u201cTruth shall set you free.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course this isn\u2019t easy, and the temptation to yield to fear is ongoing. The test of our faith is of more value to the Lord than our material or emotional comfort, however, and therefore we will all experience tribulation of various kinds. This is the way we obtain heart (i.e., courage). Several years ago I wrote a Hebrew meditation (\u201cFear Thou Not\u201d) that reminded us that the most frequently occurring commandment in Scripture is simply al tirah (\u05d0\u05b7\u05dc\u05be\u05ea\u05bc\u05b4\u05d9\u05e8\u05b8\u05d0), \u201cdon\u2019t be afraid.\u201d If living without fear were easy, it would be of little spiritual worth, but since it requires all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, it is therefore considered precious. Faith requires, in short, an infinite (and divinely given) passion. And it part of God\u2019s plan for us to be \u201cin but not of\u201d the world system, to be alienated, to be misunderstood, to be persecuted… We are called to \u201ctake up the cross\u201d and die daily. Following Yeshua means sacrificing ourselves along the way.<\/p>\n

Ultimately worldly fear distills to the fear of death, or rather, fear of \u201cthe one who has the power of death, namely the devil\u201d (Heb. 2:14-15). If we come to peace with our own finitude, our own mortality, and our eventual end in the Messiah, however, then death has no more power over us. Perhaps this is part of the reason why those who sincerely live the Christian faith are so hated in communist countries or in other places of absolutist secular ideologies. If you are delivered from the greatest threat that man can menace over you, you are free to be a voice crying in the wilderness. The life of truth is something the humanist and atheist can never comprehend.<\/p>\n

Fear is the antithesis of faith, though living without fear is certainly not easy. After all, how do we naturally choose to be unafraid of what we in fact fear? Is this power within our conscious control? Only by a miracle are we set free from fear… Indeed, true faith working within the heart is one of the greatest miracles of God. May it please God to impart to each us real courage that comes from Heaven itself… Amen.<\/p>\n

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Isa. 41:10 Hebrew lesson card<\/a> (pdf)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnd now abides faith, hope, love; these three\u201d (1 Cor. 13:13). The opposite of faith is fear; of hope, despair; and of love, indifference. Fear is the \u201cdefault mode\u201d of the soul that dwells in darkness. This is because the \u201cfallen\u201d soul regards the empirical world and its flux as ultimately real — and therefore […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-dvar","category-hebrew-reading-practice","category-torah"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3278,"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274\/revisions\/3278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}