FEAR NOT, FRET NOT, FAINT NOT

How do we avoid discouragment?

How do we see beyond fear?

How can we see beyond guilt?

It's so easy to lose focus.

Scripture is the rock on which we can take refuge. It's about HOW we read it, and look for things to help us and activate it's power.

Also, we have each other to help us find the answers.

So read brother Vit's 3 step process!! I found it really refreshing last Sunday :-)

1. Fear Not.

Psalm 27v 1 /3 my heart SHALL NOT fear.
The media plays on our fears for it's own gain. What is our response to the fear?
LUke 21v28 - we should raise our heads because our redemption is near.
2 Cor 4v8 - God hasn't given us the spirit of fear, but instead every reason to feel protected and motivated.
God has given us the reason to love, because He loved us first.

2. Fret Not.

Don't let anything eat away at your Peace & Joy.
Nebuchadnezzer didn't fear until he was turned into a beast! LOL
1 Peter 3v12-14 - God knows our situation & what we require.
We have to remember that He IS in control.

3. Faint Not.

Ps 61v1-2 When our heart is fainting we need to go to the rock and ask for strength.
Is 40v29 - our God increases strength.

We have God to rely on. He is willing and able and loves to support us.
God is preparing us into something wonderful.
The antidote for fainting is prayer. We'll reap if we faint not.
Seedtime and harvest don't immediately follow each other. They're not simultaneous.
Let's refocus and seize opportunities.

Never Give up - God is on your side.

Fear not,
Fret not,
Faint not.

Debts she couldn't pay

Really quickly, we just had our Adelaide ecclesia's get together this weekend and we looked at the woman who came to the Man of God because her creditors were going to take away her two sons as she couldn't pay up the money she owed her husbands creditors.
In faith she went to the man of God, knowing that he was the only salvation to be found.
When he asked her what she had inside the house, she only had a pot of oil in the house. She'd sold everything else to try and get rid of the debt, but she couldn't do it by herself. Made me wonder if the trial had been so great that she'd gotten rid of every other distraction in her life, and was clinging to the only thing she knew that could help her. Her pot of oil.
Faith requires action, and act she did. When we labour - God gives the increase.
She asked her neighbours for vessels to fill her house, until there were no vessels left. Her faithful neighbours helpe remove the burden of the debt. Are we helping to ease the burden of those struggling around us?

If vessels = people, then we need to fill those around us with the oil of the word. So that when the man of God comes, he will cancel our debt.

When she went and sold the oil given, she ended up with an abundance! She got more than she asked for. She was given life.

This little story really moved me the other weekend. I hope you can think about it a little after ready my version of it, read 1 or 2 Kings 4v1-7. It's a really beautiful story that we can learn so much from. We have no release from our debts until we come to Christ.

I'm glad that we can be quite certain Christ's return is near, so that the man of God can cancel our huge debt.
Then we can be together praising God perfectly together, preaching the word to ALL in full assurance that Christ IS in the earth, and wants all to submit to his just and righteous rule.

The conclusion

To pour out your heart, to give God your confidence, & to keep others trials in mind so you get the perspective right in your life.

Pour out your concern

Some good questions to consider:
1. How much time have I spent in this past week seeking God in every aspect of my life?
2. How much of my prayer has been outwardly focussed?

Praying for other people is a very important part in praryer.

Look at Job for a good example. Job's entire prayer hinges on the forgiveness of his friends. God only restored Job's losses AFTER he had prayed for his friends. If there was no prayer, there would have been no restoration.
Prayer is the only way to restore our relationships. Don't let grudges remain.
Job had to be set right with God & his friends, it also required humility on the part of his friends as well.

Setting our problems right through prayers heals grudges - when we pray for others we seem human ourselves. Pour out your heart for others, pray for the people that frustrate you. Pray for the things that affect your relationship with others.

Don't talk about other people's problems, pray about them and you're find that you're wanting to see the situation from a completely different perspective and try to help them.

John 17 - in the middle of Christ's hugest trial he focussed on the issues of those around him. He prayed not only for those present then, but also for those who were going to come to him in the future. We out to pray for each other as Christ prayed for us.

Pour out your confidence

How often do we recall to mind the amazing things that God has done for us?
If we stop and praise Him, it reassures our confidence towards Him. The psalms hold a power lesosn of balance.
Eg Ps 13. v1-4 his complaint, v5-6 confidence
State everything how it is, God wants to hear us, but don't complain for the sake of complaining, balance your complaints with confidence, even if you have to pour out your complaints first before confidence & praise in Him flows through your lips.

Most of the time I find that I'm not where I want to be at with my relationship with God. How can I get my mind back to where it wants to be?
Tim looked at Ps 61 for this, and encouraged us to force ourselves to think about what GOd has done, so that we don't lose perspective. Ps 77 v5-6/11-12 tells us to remember the past, call to remembrance what God has done for us, and make diligent search.

If we sit down and write a prayer including all the wonderful things that God has done for us it will pour out confidence, and lift our spirits.

Pour out your heart before Him

Bro Tim Badger led a series of talks to this title at the Mount Barker ecclesial camp a couple of months ago, and I greatly benefitted from them, and I wanted to share a few thoughts.

The first one was presented to the title above and was based in Ps 62 (which happens to be a favourite of mine:-) )
'Few of us make claims on God's help to the extent to which it is available, or lay our lives so completely on His strength as we might'. Often the power of prayer is untapped.
Tim explained that you need to think of a animals throat that has been slit to correctly understand the concept of 'pouring out your heart'. The animal has no control over it, and so we need to had our complaint to our Father, and ask Him to take it up for us.
Prayer clarifies our relationship with our Father. Don't rattle off meaningless words, or your prayer might seem aenemic to God.
Ps 42v4-6 - Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation & my God. This verse shows us that there are points that David can't praise, he's too caught up with his own burdens to focus on the blessings he's receiving and has received. He encourages us to keep hoping as we know where our salvation comes from.
1 Sam 1v15 - Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord.

I think so often we are told that our prayers should be structured like the Lord's prayer as we are growing up that we tend to believe that. But the Lord's prayer leaves no room to 'pour out your heart' in it's structure. Tim showed us so many examples of prayers of David, where it wasn't until David had poured out his heart, and left his complaint with God that he could focus on God's Greatness, Goodness & be able to praise Him again. Also we looked at Job a bit - see 10v1-2: I will give free utterance to my complaint and God never condemns him for that.

Do we turn our complaints to God when we feel overwhelmed, cause the minute we have, we do start believing that He can help us through the situation.

In Ps 89 v 36 there's a huge cange to the psalm. It was really important for this human to pour out his heart cause only then could he change his (assuming he!) attitude.
Put EVERYTHING before Him.

Pray Hard. God wants you to do it. Raise your mind to Him, even if you're doubting.

Ps 56 - God collects all your tears, every emotion that you have shed is in your bottle that He stores, He knows all about you. (The Jews used to put the bottles underneath their eyes during a period of mourning to catch the emotion to keep for later).

The pendulam jolts between the tow extremes of happy and sad in the psalms, of praise and complaint, but:
However great the burden,
However irreplaceable the loss,
However terrible the desolation which brings about our sorrow,
for the follower of Jesus, the moment must come when, having poured out all his tears into God's bottle, he lifts up the head and says 'Arise, and let us be going'.