Fearless & Free
How do I move fearlessly into an unknown future given my
experience with the known pain, effort, and, failures of the past?
Donald A. McGavran, who served as a missionary to India
and then held a Chair on Evangelism at Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote, “We
have Jesus Christ our Lord. We have no one else. We have the Bible. We have
nothing else. In the light of revelation we can go fearlessly forward.”
Could it really be that simple? Great truths usually are
stated simply when the underlying basis is known and the underlying basis for
Dr. McGavran’s thesis is found in our commitment to the authority of God’s
Word. The greater our acceptance of the Bible as God’s inspired collection of
faith and practice, the greater our sense of peace in the actions we plan for
tomorrow. Since God is our ultimate source of authority. He is he self-existent
One not dependent on anything or anyone outside himself. He is the one we can
rely on for our standard of belief and practice. Since we cannot know Him who
is eternal we rely on His revelation.
His general revelation in creation (Psalm 19:1-6) and His
special revelation in His Word (Psalm 19:7-14). Through general revelation all
people everywhere can know Him through His creation. However, since our
knowledge is overlaid with our assumptions of creation fed to us in our culture
He has given His special revelation to tell us about himself and His Truth that
we could not discover on our own. It is in special revelation we find the truth
from Jesus, “if you have seen me you have seen the father” (John 1:14. Now we
see God in human existence showing us a way to live we can reach for and
finally touch even though we can never truly know Him in all His glory. We can
know Him and be able to glorify Him in our daily lives.
We can live a fearless life as we rely on God’s special
revelation to make clear His general revelation as a set of principles by which
we conduct ourselves day to day. When our practices come out of our principles
derived from God’s revelation – we are assured those actions will contribute to
God’s peace and rest in the world around us. No longer fearing the outcome of
actions which is God’s job we make decisions to His glory and our peace.
Then when we choose to enter any arena of life our passion
for His principles keeps us focused on speaking of His behaviors rather than
ours. We focus on proposing His truths rather than ours. We no longer need to
control outcomes, God’s domain, but only speaking the truth in love, our
domain.
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