On the other side of fear . . .

Here's a good quote: "Everything you want is on the other side of fear."

“When you look at something and you’re afraid you’re going to lose it—how many people get afraid of losing their possessions, their health, the respect of others?" asks Jordan.

“Why do you fear losing those things? Did you know that every one of those things you’re going to lose anyway? Naked you came in and naked you’re going to go out.

“All the things you try and accumulate, you’re going to leave them. The only thing that’s going to last forever are the spiritual things you have; your identity in Christ, your riches in Christ.

“Why do we fear then? Because we have this idea that our identity, our worth, our meaning, our justification for existence, resides in how much we can accomplish and attain, how many people we can get to be happy with us, how well our children are doing so people will give accolades.

“Your identity has to be founded in something that can’t be changed. It’s unbelief--it’s a lack of dependence on who God has made you in Jesus Christ, and who God has made Christ to you--for you to get your identity out of anything but Him.

“It’s not what you do, it’s what He did that makes you valuable. God has given you everything your heart could ever desire or long for--all the things you seek and chase and look for behind every tree and under every rock, you have in Christ.

“At the most basic level, sin is a refusal to trust God to give you what you’re looking for in Christ. Anger becomes fear in disguise, striking out, and fear really is unbelief.

“If you can get that monkey off your back that you got to be right to measure up and to belong and have value, then you’re free to let His life produce His rightness in and through you. As soon as you do that, there’s that humbling of your mind, that lowliness of mind.

*****

“In Acts 20, when Paul’s talking to these elders and bishops at Ephesus, when he called them together and met with them at Miletus, he says in verse 19 about his own manner with them, ‘Serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears, and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews.’

“Notice, he says ‘serving the Lord with all humility of mind.’ That’s the inside attitude he had. It’s not about me, it’s not about me being right, I don’t have to defend myself, I don’t have to make it look like I’m okay and I’m right, but ‘with many tears, and temptations.’ He was willing to appear weak so that the power of Christ might be the real issue.

“The knowledge of what we have as our inheritance is the motivator to endure the pressures of this present time. The sufferings in this world simply aren’t worthy of even being considered with the glories that are ours in Christ.

“If you understand your sonship position in Christ, and the fact that you’ve been made an heir of God--but not just that, a joint-heir with Christ—you know everything that belongs to Him belongs to you.

“Everything that Jesus Christ inherited from God the Father, we inherit. Whee, doggy! Occupy your mind with that! Be stabilized by that.

*****

“Paul says, ‘Here’s the way I look at it. When you keep that eternal glory out there in front of yourself, and that privilege of sonship position and joint-heirship with Christ, here’s what it does. It lets you look at this over here and you say, ‘This light affliction is but for a moment. And it works for me a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.’

“How do you do it? Well, here’s an example. Hebrews 12: ‘Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.’

“You know something, fellows, in your ministry, you don’t have to fear poverty, you don’t have to fear war, you don’t have to fear the government, you don’t have to fear the congregation, you don’t have to fear relatives and in-laws. You don’t have to fear but one thing and that’s sin.

“The only thing you need to fear is sin. I hope that will sink into your head. ‘The sin which doth so easily beset us.’ That’s the one that comes along so innocently looking like it might be so easy.

“You can’t run with patience with that sin out there. You see, it messes you up. What you’re doing is you’re messing yourself up.

“If you want to endure the sufferings you do what Christ did. He kept some information in His mind at all times that allowed Him, and helped Him, and motivated Him and empowered Him to endure.

“Romans 8:19 says, ‘For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.’ The idea there is it’s like a kid with his head stuck out the window looking for his daddy to come home. He’s eagerly anticipating.”