“Why shouldn’t I be afraid? There’s good reason to panic!”

All through Scripture, every time a heavenly entity shows up, the first thing he blurts out to puny humans is, “Don’t be afraid!” And with good reason, we might add. After all, if an angel suddenly appeared in this office or my living room — I’m talking about the kind of mighty angels we see in Scripture, not some chubby cherub from medieval paintings — my first impulse would probably be to have a heart attack on the spot.

We rarely have the response of the humans who receive this command not to be afraid, but doubtless some could have argued that there is plenty of reason to be afraid. In this day when “men’s hearts are failing them out of fear” (Luke 21:26), we have no trouble whatsoever finding causes for our torment and panic and worry.

However — and this is the heart of the Christian message — we have even better reason not to be afraid, to be courageous and bold even.

Here are three favorite variations on this theme found in God’s Word —

“Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” (II Kings 6:16) The prophet Elisha spoke to his servant who had just gone out for the morning paper and found himself face to face with the army of the Arameans who were encircling the city, there to arrest Elisha. A moment later, the prophet asked God to open the eyes of the servant. Suddenly, he saw the skies filled with the hosts of heaven. It was quite a reassuring moment.

“Be strong and courageous, do not fear or be dismayed because of the king of Assyria nor because of the multitude which is with him, for the one who is with us is greater than the one with him. With him is only an arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles.” (II Chronicles 32:7-8) King Hezekiah is addressing his citizens who have taken a look at the mighty Assyrian army just outside the gates and are ready to hand them the deed to the place. Sennacherib, the pagan king, cannot believe that Hezekiah is hesitant to surrender. After all, he has conquered everything in his path, including the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Now, tiny little Judah and its capital of Jerusalem are balking before him. The very idea! He sends messengers to Hezekiah with one of the greatest questions anywhere, a real testament to the faith of this leader. He asks, “What is this confidence you have?” (32:9) I love it! (Sure wish someone would ask me that.)

“You are from God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” (I John 4:4) This reads like John has been studying his Old Testament stories, doesn’t it. In 1960, as a sophomore at Birmingham-Southern College and a newly baptized member of West End Baptist Church, the youth named me as pastor for their annual Youth Week in the church. Consequently, I got to preach the Sunday night sermon. (Mind you, this was a full year and a half before the Lord showed mercy and called me into the ministry.) The text — I have no memory whether it was assigned or what — was this passage from I John 4:4. Struggling with building a sermon from it forever burned its assuring truth into my mind and heart.

In both the II Kings 6 and II Chronicles 32 passages, it’s helpful to note that no one had to ask the people to look around and see all the reasons for panic. They were obvious. The enemy was at the gate and he was roaring with threats. Hearts were failing. The most natural thing in the world was to shiver in one’s skin and shake in his boots.

God doesn’t like it when His people fear.

In fact, He’s offended by it. Fear before the enemy is a vote of no-confidence in God and gives courage to the wrong people.

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A young friend sat across the table from me at lunch today and somehow — I forgot how it started — got me talking about my cowboying period. Yes sir, I recall every detail of those three days.

I was a young minister on the staff of Jackson, Mississippi’s First Baptist Church. That summer the student minister had taken two busloads of college kids to our conference center at Glorieta, New Mexico. Afterwards, they planned to take a rustic excursion into the Santa Fe Wilderness for a few days of camping. Murph called me on Friday and said, “Can you fly out here and go with us? I need you.”

At the time, I’d never been to Glorieta and had never flown west at all, so I had no way of knowing you do not want to fly from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. A friend who owned a travel agency in Jackson worked up the tickets and I was on my way: Jackson to Dallas-Fort Worth to Albuquerque to Santa Fe. Everything was fine until I got to Albuquerque. The airport people had to direct me to the desk for the Santa Fe Airways. A fellow who could have been a pilot or the mechanic handed me his business card and said, “That will be your boarding pass.”

The airline had two little Cessnas and for this trip, two passengers, me and this other Indian. They put our luggage on one plane and us on the other and off we went. For the next 45 minutes the updrafts from those mountains bounced us up and down across the sky. Nothing about it was fun.

Murph and the buses filled with collegians were waiting at the airport, we ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and we headed out of town. We arrived at our destination around 4 o’clock that evening, only to find that the ranch people had forgotten us. The reluctant cowboys had to go looking for horses to take us and our luggage the several miles back into the wilderness. Half of our group started walking on and the rest of us waited for the horses. We were midnight arriving at the campsite, and then had to set up tents. Not a good beginning.

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The best line I’ve heard in a while comes from Brenda Crim, one of our SBC missionaries in Alaska. She said, “Everything I own got its start in the offering plate of a Baptist church!”

Pastors and staffers (and our families) say, “Amen” to that. That humbling thought makes us grateful for those faithful brothers and sisters who year after year give to the Lord out of their love to Him and thus keep His church strong.

“Preaching the parables is like playing the saxophone — it’s easy to do poorly.” Don’t know who said it. A pastor, no doubt.

“The woman in John 8 was just a stone’s throw from dying.”

A man asked his friend, “When you stand before the Lord, what do you think will be the first question He will ask you?”

The friend said, “He won’t ask me a thing. He’ll look at me and say, ‘That one’s mine.'”

When seminary president Jeff Iorg went from the pastorate into denominational work, his predecessor said, “The things you will do in this job that mean the most to you, no one else will ever know about.” He soon discovered the truth in that. My guess is it’s true in 90 percent of our lives.

If I ever write my memoirs, Lord help me please not to do what a pastor friend of mine did. He’s been gone for a while now, but I located a copy of his autobiography on the internet and purchased it recently. Yesterday I read interesting and inspiring things from his life, then began to encounter a series of putdowns of those of us who believe the Bible and take it at face value.

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This is what started it.

On February 18, the country’s new Attorney General, Eric Holder, the first African-American to hold that distinguished post, said, “In things racial we have always been and continue to be in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”

With that one sentence, he provided fodder for a hundred talk shows around the country.

He was right, of course. And I think I know why. Okay, one reason why.

A couple of days after he uttered those words, police in a Northeastern city shot to death a rampaging chimpanzee that had mauled a woman. That sad story made all the news programs.

Now, one thing editorial cartoonists love to do — it’s sort of a trick of the trade — is take some news item that deals with one thing and connect it to another, something entirely unrelated but which when juxtaposed makes an interesting point. So the cartoonist for the New York Post did that with the death of the chimp.

The cartoon — you’ve seen this, so I’m making no attempt to research the name of the cartoonist and the exact date it ran in the paper or even the precise quote — showed police shooting the chimp. One cop asks the other, “Now who are they going to get to write the next stimulus bill?”

This was clearly a reference to the slipshod bill which Congress was just dealing with and since passed. It was a slap at congressional leaders. Anyone who was up on his current events could see that.

Enter Al Sharpton.

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You hear it, see it, read it, or experience it. All your senses come alive. “This is one I’ll remember a long time,” you think, and sure enough you do. For a long time afterward, your mind reels with the possibilities. What can I do with this great story? What sermon will it fit? How can I work it in?

I’ve sometimes facetiously said that a great story will fit my sermon next Sunday. The sermon may have to be reworked, but that story will fit.

Like the time my wife and I were dining in Baby Doe’s restaurant on the mountainside in Birmingham, Alabama. At the time, we were living in Columbus, Mississippi, and were visiting relatives back in our hometown. As the waitress came and went, I noticed her name was Auburn.

That’s when I decided to get cute.

“Your name is Auburn,” I said. “I’ll bet you have a sister named Alabama.”

The smile I had hoped to generate did not appear. She said, “I have two sisters, Tulane and Cornell.”

I said, “Yeah, right.”

She said, “I have four brothers — Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and Duquesne.”

I said, “Lady, I don’t believe a word of this.”

She said, “My father’s name is Stanford and my mother is Loyola. They were engaged before it occurred to them they both had colleges as names, and they decided to do this to their children.”

I was speechless. But she wasn’t through.

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Every chapter in Acts is a keeper, but none are more fascinating than chapter 19 for a variety of reasons.

CAUTION: The first lesson we encounter right off the bat is not to construct a doctrine or our theology on an isolated event, no matter how intriguing we find it.

In Ephesus, Paul encounters some disciples of John the Baptist who have had no teachings since the death of that wonderful servant. They’ve not heard of Jesus and know nothing of the Holy Spirit and Pentecost. So, Paul teaches them, then baptizes them “in the name of Jesus.”

I’ve known for religious groups to build an entire interpretation of how the Holy Spirit comes and works just on this story. Not a safe thing to do. In fact, most commentators on Acts will point out that, just as Jesus said in John 3 the Holy Spirit moves like the wind — you do not know where it came from or where it will go from here, but you simply see the effects at the moment — the Lord works in various ways and uses various methodologies throughout Acts.

A little later (19:11-12), we see people healed by handkerchiefs taken from Paul’s body. Take that verse out of the Bible and half the evangelists on television would go out of business.

FUNNY: The little story in Acts 19:11-16 may be the funniest thing in the New Testament. Granted, the Bible was not given as a comedy routine and anyone reading it seeking humorous material are pursuing a fool’s quest, but it does have its moments.

Paul has been mightily used of the Lord in Ephesus for miracles of exorcism and healings. Seven sons of a Jewish priest named Sceva watched him and decided they could do that. They found a demon-possessed person — apparently they were plentiful — and gathered around him. One said, “I know how to do this. I’ve seen that Paul fellow work.” As they all laid hands on the poor fellow, the leader of the seven sons intoned, “We command you in the name of Jesus whom Paul preaches to come out of this man.”

The demon inside the man said, “Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you?”

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As I drive to work in the mornings over the same route I’ve used for five years, sometimes I arrive and cannot recall a single thing I saw. Familiarity does that to us.

The same process occurs when we turn to the Scripture. Those who have read the Bible for years — particularly who have read it cover to cover several times — tend to see what they have always seen, to hear the words they’ve read again and again, and to rush through without seeing anything fresh.

It’s a hazard we should watch out for in all of life, but especially in reading the living Word of God. The dangers are numerous and serious, from missing out on some truth God planted for us on this particular day to eventually laying aside the Bible with a bored “been-there-done-that.”

“I’ve never noticed that before!”

Ever say that about something in the Bible? Most of us have, even after multiple readings of the Word. The reason for this “aha moment” is simple and enlightening and even encouraging: we’ve changed, we’ve grown, and we’ve moved. God’s eternal truth stands where it always has, but now we are in a position to see some portion that has eluded us until now.

Stand outside and watch the evening sunset. Now, press the ‘pause’ button and let’s freeze that image. (You with me here?)

Now, move a couple of miles toward the sun. The way you view that sunset has radically changed–the colors, the images, everything is different. Move to the north a few miles or to the south, and the scene is different again.

Or, even if you don’t move, just wait a few minutes and everything about the sunset changes.

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In recent years, the City of New Orleans has been blessed by church groups traveling here to walk the streets and pray for our people. In most cases, they will divide into teams and accompanied by a pastor of one of our churches, walk the neighborhood around his place of worship and intercede for the residents.

It’s a faith venture from start to finish. The prayer-walkers do not know the people inside the homes and may never know what effect their intercessions had. Yet they come, they walk, and they pray.

We’re so grateful for these spiritual warriors.

Prayer-walking is not a new phenomenon. It may go back to the time of Moses when God’s people were tramping around the wilderness marking time until the older generation died off and the youngsters could inherit the Promised Land. Since the Lord was with them, it only makes sense that many of the people talked with Him as they walked.

As they crossed the Jordan River under Joshua, this younger generation of believers found themselves facing the “city of palms,” Jericho. Its massive walls sent a clear signal that taking this fortress would be no piece of manna. Clearly, some kind of divine intervention would be required. So, God stepped in with the strangest command.

The people of God were to walk around the city — that is, on the outside of its walls, of course — once a day for six days in complete silence. Then, on the seventh day, they were to repeat the process seven times, for a total of 13 laps. At the completion of the last lap, the people were to shout and the priests were to blow the trumpets.

At no point did the Lord tell the people what to expect at that last moment. The only thing Joshua said was, “Shout, for the Lord has given you the city!” They shouted, the horns blasted, and to everyone’s amazement, the walls of the city crumbled before them.

Is that the precedent for prayer-walking, circling a city in order that walls might crumble before the Lord?

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As I write, today’s “Morning Joe” program on MSNBC, reported an AP/Gfk poll which found that a majority of Americans are worrying themselves sick. They worry about retirement, they worry about paying their bills, keeping their jobs, and sending the kids to college. They are worried to death about the shape the economy is in, frightened that Congress and the President will not be able to fix it anytime soon, and scared for the future of their kids.

I googled “men’s hearts failing them for fear” just to see if people are picking up on that prophecy from Luke 21:25-26. Sure enough, it’s being quoted everywhere. Some preachers are saying it’s the sign of the end.

As with almost everything, calling this a sign of the end reminds me of a funny story. (Sorry. Hope that doesn’t offend anyone.) The fellow hanging over the rail aboard a storm-tossed ship had lost everything in his stomach and was now turning a ghastly shade of green. A crew-member came over, put his hand on the fellow’s shoulder, and said, “Cheer up, buddy. No one ever died yet of seasickness.” The passenger said, “Oh, don’t tell me that. The hope of dying is the only thing that keeps me going.”

We have learned — to our distress — that the bubbling and bobbling of the stock market in this country has less to do with actual economic indicators and rather is more closely tied to the ebbing and waning of the hopes and fears of the American people.

That’s how we are to understand the Dow Jones Average dropping on the day Congress passed the greatest economic stimulus bill in history. We would have thought an infusion of nearly a trillion dollars into today’s economy would have spurred enthusiasm and provoked a new round of investing. Nothing about this makes sense any more.

People are losing hope. Their hearts are failing.

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If a pastor wanted to take a good look at himself and assess his ministry and do so thoroughly and effectively, he might need some outside help. It’s hard to be objective about ourselves and see our own areas of need and weakness. We adjust so easily to our problem areas and handicaps that, in time, they’re just a part of us and we work around them so easily it feels like they aren’t even there.

There is a hole in the linoleum in our kitchen floor we never notice, but which would give a visitor pause. The day we returned from Hurricane Katrina evacuation in late September, 2005, we were moving our ruined refrigerator out of the house and the tiny little dolly — too little for such a mammoth load — ground its wheels into the floor. We borrowed a stronger one from a neighbor and completed the job, and with so many other things to do to make the house livable again, just never got around to repairing or replacing the linoleum.

In the same way, flaws in ourselves which we overlook and even accept as part of our makeup, an outsider might find horrendous and insist be dealt with.

We did something last week that was a first for my ministry, either in a church or association. At our request, the North American Mission Board brought in a team of six interviewers who spent two full days and evenings in one hour sessions with some sixty of our pastors. The arriving pastor would complete a written confidential questionnaire dealing with how he sees the association, the state convention, and the national denomination. Then, he and an interviewer would spend the next hour in a closed-door session.

After the session ended, the interviewer required another 10 or 15 minutes to jot down his personal conclusions. Then he came out into our auditorium, met the next pastor and repeated the process. My job — a really hard one — was to stand around and drink coffee and eat snacks and greet the pastors when they arrived. I am uniquely qualified for this assignment.

In a few weeks, NAMB’s Hugh Townsend, the leader of last week’s team, will return to New Orleans and assemble with our association’s leaders for a “prescription meeting” during which he will present the findings of his team. Not having done this before, I have little idea what to expect, but we are confident the next Director of Missions will find this to be a tremendous asset. It should give him a head-start in beginning his work with our churches.

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