As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I went down to the Dominican Republic for a week in January. Though I’ve been down twice before, none of those trips were quite like this last one. Before I tell you what happened to myself on the trip, I want to give you a brief overview of what we normally do down there.
The organization that we go down with is called Meeting God in Missions. They are a really great organization run by Jim McDonald, who has gone on over 100 trips to the DR in his lifetime. Everyone who goes down gets the same kind of t-shirts that say “MGM” on them so we can recognize each other easily. It helps to give us a team spirit.
MGM has their own large compound in the DR, and that’s where we all stay while we’re down there. From that place we go out into surrounding villages to minister to the local peoples’ needs, physical and spiritual. The compound is nice, with a second floor, open-air room that we like to call the “Upper Room”. In that room, we have our morning devotions, led by Jim McDonald. Before each of those lessons we would sing a few hymns, and I got the privilege to lead the singing for the week, which was a great experience.
Every day we would get up, and after having devotions, we would eat breakfast in the huge dining hall and leave for a village. For the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon, we would stay in the village and help out the Dominicans who lived there. We set up stations for the medical, dental, and optical people to work at, and whoever needed help would go to one of those stations and get taken care of. Whoever wasn’t at one of those stations was doing one of two things - witnessing or helping with the kids. I spent most of the time with the kids, though I went with one of the elders of my church on a witnessing expedition once, and that was an interesting experience for me. Working with the kids involved telling them Bible stories, giving them coloring pages, and basically playing with them for the day.
I have received a couple requests for a more practical treatment of the topic of fear. So I decided to go ahead and write this post in that vein.
I know from my experiences of two effective ways to fight fear: to nurture a higher view of God and to face your fears. The second way is more obvious, so I will deal this it last. The first way is a less direct, but no less effective, defense against fear.
At the root of almost every fear is pride, viewing ourselves as somehow higher than God. This, having a higher view of God will make us less susceptible to fear. In his book Trusting God, Jerry Bridges discusses the triangle of God’s attributes: sovereignty, wisdom, and love. When we fear, we doubt one of these things in God, and when we doubt one of these things in God, we arrogantly think that we can do better than Him.
For example, when, in our fear, we doubt God’s sovereignty, we might say to ourselves, “God isn’t big enough to handle my problems; so I should just take matters into my own hands.” This is an attack from Satan, undermining our belief in God’s power. Or we might say, “God doesn’t really know what He’s doing; I do.” This calls into question God’s wisdom. When we say this to ourselves, our flesh tries to get us to make our own plan of events instead of accepting God’s plan. However, the attack that most commonly plagues me is one against God’s love for me: “God doesn’t really care about what’s best for me.” Now, obviously more than one of these attacks can happen at the same time, so it can be quite difficult to distinguish, but the basic principle still stands.
I’m a very fearful person. I struggle with fear of a lot of things, not just one or two. For example, I fear just about every kind of bug that God has created; the only one I can truthfully say I don’t have some sort of aversion to is the black ant. This fear grips me particularly in summertime, making it very difficult for me to enjoy myself outside (that’s why fall and winter are my favorite months :-)). I’m also afraid of heights. This is common, but it contributes to my inability and unwillingness to use swings.
However, my fears are not limited to tangible reality. I live in almost constant fear of what others think about me, or any other possible discomfort. My fears have a wide range of consequences, often hindering my ability to glorify God. This should not be the case. Our fears ought to give us an even greater opportunity to glorify God, by doing the things we fear despite being afraid.
The famous John Piper of Desiring God Ministries wrote an excellent article about fear on November 21, 2001. In writing this post, I have drawn extensively from Piper’s article, and I would encourage you to read it and ponder it yourself. Piper presents thirteen reasons why true believers in Christ need not be afraid, but I saw two main themes that I am going to share with you. They deal with fear of men and fear of the abstract.
We live in a fallen world, and in this fallen world their is mistrust of one another. Along with that mistrust, we get fear. Today we are particularly aware of the fear of men, as a war is waged against terrorists. We fear what other can do to us, but as Christians we have no need to fear others.
Last week, I went down to the Dominican Republic on a missions trip. I went with an organization called Meeting God in Missions (www.meetinggodinmissions.com). I’ve gone down twice before (each trip is in January), and each time has been a real blessing. The “leader” of MGM is Jim McDonald - a retired basketball coach and an amazing preacher. Each day of the trip he teaches on something new and practical, and he helps all of the people on the trip to really understand what he talks about. He really gets into the lessons, and he is known for certain “quotes” that he says all the time.
One of his famous sayings is, “Don’t read your Bible…study it.” He pauses for a while in the middle of it, and everyone laughs. But it has such a true lesson - you and I shouldn’t be simply reading our Bibles, we should be studying them.
But what does it mean to study the Bible? How do you study the Bible? In this post, I hope to outline one of many popular ways that people study the Bible, and how you can do it too.
Sola Fide. Those words, said by the famous Reformation father Martin Luther, describe how we are saved as Christians: by faith alone. This faith is often erroneously viewed as something to be proud of. However, as seen in Ephesians 2:8, faith is purely a gift. We deserve no accolades for being saved. This gift was given for the main purpose of bringing God, the Giver of the Gift, glory.
So what exactly is faith? Fortunately, this is not a definition that is much debated over. In fact, Scripture provides us with a very clear answer in Hebrews 11:1. There it states that faith is “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” This is as good a definition as we can ask for.
Why are we saved by faith alone? Romans 3:10-12 tells us that “there is no one who does good, not even one.” Because none of us can do a good work on our own, we cannot save ourselves. This leaves us completely dependant on God for our salvation. The fact that our faith in His ability to save us is not misplaced shows that He is a truly great God. This brings Him glory. So, really, the purpose in God’s setting up the salvation process so that it happens by faith alone is so that God is glorified by saving us.