All we have to fear

Every other day or so I will get in a conversation with another believer in the area in the course of daily life. For example, the other day I was getting lunch during a normal work day, so I headed to Subway to get me a sammich. I saw a guy probably a couple years younger than me with a Bible and a book on Paul on his table, so I engaged him and we spoke for a bit. As soon as I told him I went to the Village, his first question was "How's Matt Chandler?"

It's a little weird to have a celebrity of sorts for a pastor, and all the more amusing to me to think of where the church came from and how it has arrived where it is. It's one of those situations where only a fool would dare try to claim it was anything other than God that created this situation. And so we have a situation where a church of about 150 or so hired a brash young man who was on fire for Christ to preach the Word, now swollen to nearly 8,000 and still growing across 3 campuses. When faced with one of the most unthinkable situations--the discovery of a small tumor in Matt's frontal lobe--the church dug in and prayed hard, and all the more amazing to me, around the world people joined in. Through Twitter I was able to keep track of people in Africa, Europe and Asia who were praying for Matt, for his healing, and moreso that God's will would be seen in our words and deeds, no matter the outcome.

Before going in for surgery, Matt recorded this video, which was played in all the services the Sunday after his surgery. My campus' pastor, Beau Hughes, spoke right to the heart of the matter in addressing the struggle with anxiety that so many face, and that has in fact colored my own life in the years since leaving home. Even the music that night collaborated in the effort to speak the truth of God's sovereignty in the face of my own lack of control. Yet it was the Holy Spirit moving and revealing the truth of all of it in relation to my own heart that moved me most. The foolishness of our post-Enlightenment rejection of the supernatural does not discourage me from saying that in that fully spiritual moment God spoke to my heart and baptized me again in His Spirit, and the joy felt there was moving beyond speech's power to describe.

You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.--Psalm 4:7

There is not a conclusion to this story, not yet. Nor am I its author; I'm just a character, going where the Author wills it so. But I won't worry about whether He will have writer's block, or run out of ink, or get bored with me and decide to just destroy me for grins. In joy and in pain He has been forging me and in both I will take Him.

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

"Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."--Matthew 6:25-34

I will worry again. There will be days and circumstances that send me reeling, but all I can do is live my life a day at a time. I'm writing this more for my own benefit than anyone else's, so that on the days when I'm feeling pressured by life I can look back and be reminded. I have nothing to fear from life's pain, for all it will serve to do is lift me closer to Him and remind me that this is only temporary.