Fear God

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Mark McMillion

“The Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo

Fear is a fascinating subject. In modern times, almost everyone, if asked, will say that fear is bad. But then if you look in the Bible, it says we should “fear God”. So then some people think we should have this paralyzing, morbid, terrifying, debilitating fear of this awesome monster of a God who’s just licking His lips at the potential of sending us all to hell.

A real favorite verse of mine from the Bible is “the fear of the Lord is clean” (Psalm 19:9). But then an opposite thought to that is “The fear of man is a snare (or a trap)” (Proverbs 29:25). I’ve certainly had my share of horrible, soul-sapping fear in my lifetime. But also I’ve had experiences where that verse, “the fear of the Lord is clean” has really proven true.

One time when I was a young Christian, I was at a training camp for missionaries. I’d recently come out of a life of spiritual darkness and I was really new and raw to the things of the Lord. One morning I woke up before dawn and felt a strong urge to go out into the nature to pray. I’d read verses about “seeking the Lord with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13) so I was down on my knees in prayer at dawn, crying out vehemently to God. Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up and saw the elder of the camp sternly looking down at me. He’d tapped me with his cane on my shoulder.

He said, “Son, you don’t have to yell at God. God can hear you. God’s not deaf. You’re waking up the whole camp.”

“Oh my God! That Christian elder hit you with his cane! What a monster! It must have just scared you to death and scarred you for eternity!”

No, actually it didn’t. Before I became a Christian I’d experienced dominating, bullying, brutish people and I knew what fear that can generate. But this was totally different. What this elder said was totally right. He wasn’t yelling at me or belittling me or threatening me; he was sternly but loving me telling me the truth. I’ve always marked that experience with the verse, “the fear of the Lord is clean”. That experience changed my life and I needed it. It changed my relationship with God and certainly it changed my prayer life.

And it showed me that there is a good fear. The fear of God is a good fear. Because He means to do well for you. Solomon said “Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you” (Proverbs 9:8).

Certainly one of Satan’s greatest tools is fear. That’s the kind of fear that’s talked about when it says, “Fear has torment” (I John 4:18). But that’s totally different from the fear we should have for God. The fear of God involves respect and a recognition that He knows what’s right and best for us, better than we do. So we fear Him because we want to stay close to Him, not only for His sake but, frankly, for ours as well.

I guess it’s almost a selfish thing. When you realize you are what Jesus called His people, sheep, then you realize you need a shepherd. You’re not as smart or tough or invincible as you’d like to think. You are a little bit dumb at times and weaker than you’d like to be and you just need the help, wisdom, power and blessing of God. So you fear getting out of His will or out of close communications with Him. And if He has to take sometimes a bit of a drastic action to get you in line, that’s just what’s needed. Maybe that’s why King David said to the Lord, “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me” in that most famous of Psalms, Psalms 23.

I surely don’t recommend you go around taping folks on their shoulder with your cane. That was certainly an exception. But it was an amazing experience for me that taught me a lot and helped me to get to know my heavenly Father a lot better and to know His loving ways. The fear of man is a trap and brings torment. But the fear of the Lord is clean.

Spiritual habits (Part 4) Memorizing God’s Word

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I’d been a Christian for about a year when I was at a meeting of young people on a Saturday night. A friend of mine called me up in front of these 100 people, put his hand on my shoulder and looking out at everyone, said, “I just want you to see the results of memorizing Scripture.” And I guess he was right.

One of the habits I developed at the beginning of my Christian life was memorizing God’s Word. What happened was this. I’d been a Christian for around 3 days when a brother who was instrumental in my becoming a Christian said something to me that changed my life. He told me, “You know, if you’ll just memorize 3 verses every day, God will really bless you.” Somehow that really stood out to me and I said in my heart right then, “I’m going to do that.” Basically I did that for a long time and it’s probably been the most significant spiritual habit that I’ve had as a Christian.

Now I know this is probably not what you are hearing from the pulpit in your church on Sunday morning. But if you look at the people of the New Testament, you can certainly see that they memorized Scripture. It is written flat In the famous story of when Jesus was tempted by the Devil in the wilderness, when the Devil came and spoke to Jesus, the Lord didn’t begin flaying his arms wildly and start screaming at the Devil. No, He just quoted Scriptures at him, Three times the Lord began His sentence with “It is written…” and went on to quote Scripture in answer to the Devil’s temptations. (Luke 4:1-13) The Lord knew the Scriptures of His day and could quote them verbatim when He needed to. And He often did.

Then when Jesus had gone to Heaven and the early church was beginning, the Apostles certainly knew their Scriptures by heart. On the day of Pentecost, when Peter needed to explain things to the huge crowd that gathered, he didn’t start spewing out his own ideas. He told them, “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel” and he went on to quote from that Old Testament prophet, as well as other places in the Hebrew scriptures, to explain to the crowd from the Word what was happening. (Acts 2:14-36)

Even all the way back in Job, what is considered to be the oldest book in the Bible, Job said to “lay up His words in your heart.” (Job 22:22) King David said, “The law of his God is in his heart, none of his steps shall slide” (Psalms 37:31). Actually there’s a lot in the writings of David about this, like Psalm 119:11 where David prayed, “Your word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against You.”

But maybe this may all make you just groan and you think, “Oh, no! I can’t memorize anything!” Let me make this a little personal because it is. Before I came to the Lord, I didn’t have any special ability to memorize things. But with the Word of God, it was like certain verses were just so clear and simple, they stood out to me so much that it was almost like the Lord just placed them in my mind and there wasn’t really a lot of effort on my part. In other words, the truths in the Words of the Lord were so strong and important that memorizing it wasn’t a lot of hard work. It was like grabbing something that was really good for me or tasted good or was worth a lot.

we should memorze flat You may have already found that some Bible verses are almost already there in your memory. Or when you read them, they just jump out as strikingly significant. It’s those ones that mean so much to you, or that you know are timeless pillars within the Word of God, those are the ones you could make an effort to commit to memory.

For me, as soon as I found or recognized that a verse was of special significance, I’d make an effort to immediately write the reference somewhere. After a while, I built up a lot of verses like that and I ended up writing them on 3X5 cards, according to the books in the Bible they were from. I did that for around 3 years and it got to be a lot of verses. Believe it or not, I still have those cards with those verses and they’re still a part of my daily devotions.

In many ways I think of the verses I’ve memorized as my best friends. These are verses I’ve quoted to the Lord in times of desperate need, verses that have been boundaries for me to keep me from going astray, they’ve been wisdom for me in my dealings with others, they’ve been the comfort of God’s love speaking to my heart in some of my darkest hours.

Memorizing Scripture can be work and it can seem like something you can’t do. But the Word I’ve hidden in my heart through memorizing Scriptures has probably been more of a marking of my character than any other single thing in my Christian walk. Yes, it does take effort. But the people of the Bible did this and the returns on your investment of effort are immeasurable.

Spiritual Habits (Part 3) Prayer

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I’ll never forget when my youngest son was 2 months old. I was holding him in my arms when he looked me straight in the eyes, reached out his arms to me and gave me this tremendous hug. It was breathtaking, such love. Nothing mental, no technique, just something from the deepest place of the heart, the child reaching out in love to his father. That’s how prayer should be. Prayer is really what it’s all about. The reason Jesus came, died on the cross and rose from the dead was to restore our access to the Father, through Himself.

But just like my tiny son, you don’t really have to understand it. It’s ok to try to understand it and as we get older, our minds often come to the fore much more. But prayer is a thing of the heart. So if you don’t understand it all, don’t worry, you don’t have to.

Prayer is what God wants. He loves us and wants us to love Him. And the same way we love our parents or our wife or husband or children, and want to spend time with them and talk to them and hear from them, God in the same way wants that with us. That’s prayer. King David said we should “pour out our hearts before Him” (Psalm 62:8). What a great word picture, to pour out our hearts. And that’s how it should be. Just talking to God, telling Him what’s on your heart, your joys, your fears, your thanks, your needs, your observations, God can take it all and wants to.

And the same way it’s not work or a burden or labor to communicate with your children or your dearest friend, prayer should not be some laborious work. It should be the high point of your day, something you just wouldn’t want to miss for anything.

But maybe this is pretty new to you and you’re not too sure about the whole thing. Well, just remember, “God is love” (I John 4:8). He loves you. Jesus said that “God is a spirit” (John 4:23) and then the apostle John said that “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5). So the invisible, loving God of the Universe longs to have contact and a relationship with you.

Speaking of “contact”, there’s a movie by that name and there’s a scene in it where Jody Foster is trying to see if she can get some signal back from some alien civilization by means of radio telescopes. Here’s the clip from the movie where she first gets signals back that she knows are from a distant civilization.

That’s always reminded me of the first time I really knew and understood that there is a real God, a supreme power of the spiritual world who is signaling us and wants to be in contact with us. The same utter, unimaginable wonder, amazement and joy unspeakable that Jody Foster had when hearing those signals for the first time, that was how I was when I first knew for sure that there is a real God that the Bible has told us about.

So what follows next in the movie is that she and her team, and then the whole world, begin building on that initial contact and ultimately have “close encounters of the third kind” with the aliens. But for us who know that God is real, this doesn’t have to be a movie that we walk out of. This is the reality we can live in when we have contact with the God of Eternity.

So I hope you are trying to have daily “contact” with God, pouring out your heart before Him, and even receiving His “signals” back. Because prayer isn’t a one way street. God longs to communicate back to us.

It may not be in an immediate audible voice. But I can more than guarantee you that if you are talking to Him, He’s going to be communicating with you. He said one time, “Call unto me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things which you know not” (Jeremiah 33:3). And there are just oodles of promises in the Bible like that. In fact the Bible is just full of communication and interaction between God and His people.

And he wants to have the same relationship with you. He wants you to love Him and be helped by him and instructed and protected and strengthened and enlightened and blessed beyond your wildest dreams. That’s what God wants to do for you through your prayers and your time with Him.

It’s impossible to cover every aspect of prayer in such a short post here. Maybe I can write some more later or tell you about some special answers I’ve had to my prayers. But when it comes to spiritual habits, making prayer a habit and a primary part of your life is right at the top of the list.

Spiritual habits (Part 2) The Word of God

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Mark McMillion

Perhaps the second spiritual habit to talk about, which is so utterly essential, is just our relationship and interaction with God’s Word, the Bible. If you are a child of God, then just like a child of this world when you are newborn, there’s nothing more important than your nourishment. A baby doesn’t have to be taught to suck the milk from its mother; it does it instinctively and desperately. That’s why the apostle Peter admonished, “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that you may grow thereby.” (I Peter 2:2)

It’s actually not really an option. If you’ve come to have faith in God and in Jesus, it’s a matter of spiritual life and death that your faith is fed the nourishment it needs. And this doesn’t just mean going to church on Sunday or listening to Christian radio in your car. The same way a baby eats several times each day, the newborn soul into the Kingdom of God needs spiritual nourishment to grow and become what God wants it to be.

Of course some folks think the Bible is just some book, written 2000 years ago, that’s full of strange stories and perhaps good morals. Hopefully you are not someone who thinks that. The Bible is unlike any other book ever written. The truths in the Bible have the power to give life and light, healing and understanding in a way no normal book can ever do.

Here’s what Jesus told some of the people who were just coming to realize that He was the Son of God. From John 8:31 and 32, “If you continue in my Word, then are you my disciples in deed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” The truth shall make you free. He wasn’t talking about some secular knowledge you might get in university. He was talking about the very truth of God that He spoke and that the prophets and men of God had spoken and recorded in what we call the Old Testament, as well as the truth that was being recorded at His time and became the New Testament.

It’s almost difficult for me to talk about this because it would be difficult to overstate how important the Bible became for me after I came to faith in God and in Jesus. As I’ve written in other places, I was always looking for the truth. But I never expected to find such a pure and perfect essence of truth that I found the Bible to be. Really soaking yourself in the Bible, just reading it for pleasure and for edification is one of the very most important things you can do. And what you’ll find, as I have, is that it somehow reaches down and into your deepest depths, exposing and clarifying some dark area of your life that needs attention, or that it speaks to you on some issue that you desperately needed to have strengthened. In short, the Bible really is what they say it is, God’s Word. It clarifies our minds, purifies our hearts, brings us joy and truth, gives us courage and wisdom and works as the presence and companionship of God and Jesus in our lives. Here’s something the prophet Jeremiah said in prayer to God about His Word. “Your words were found, and I did eat them. And your word to me was the joy and rejoicing of my heart.” (Jeremiah 15:16.)

So I could say to you what Paul said to some of his dearest friends the last night he was going to be able to see them, “I commend you to God and the word of his grace which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance.” (Acts 20:36) Among spiritual habits, the habit of continually going to the Bible for study, for comfort, for knowledge, for a place to find God’s presence, and much more, that habit is perhaps one of the very most important habits you can nurture in order to grow in the Lord and to stay rooted and built up in Him through the years.

In practical terms, it can mean that you cultivate and maintain the habit of reading the Bible and even really studying it. And don’t do like I did, don’t start at the beginning like you do with most books. If you are new to faith, the best book in the Bible to read is the Gospel of John, in the New Testament. In fact, the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the best place to get your grounding in what Jesus said and did. Jesus told His disciples, “The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life.” (John 6:63)

If you have time for nothing else, just really studying the life and words of Jesus in those four books will lead you to truth and love and depth that are unmatched by any other use of your time. Make it a habit.

Spiritual habits (Part 1) The heavenly vision

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I’d just finished my time of personal devotions this morning when I got one of those nudges from the Lord that I should write a blog post on spiritual habits. What a huge subject. Here in America so many people are very aware of maintaining healthy physical habits. But I wonder how many are equally diligent with their spiritual habits?

And it’s incredibly important. Here in the US there’s a term, “morbidly obese”. In my travels abroad I almost never saw anyone like this, but here it’s not unusual to see people who weigh between 300 and 600 pounds (136 to 272 kilos). Not to be critical or judgmental, but their physical habits are killing them. You can’t see as easily the results of spiritual habits but they do affect you, for good or for evil.

When I was 23, recently “delivered from the power of darkness.”

It was my bad spiritual habits that very nearly killed me when I was in university. How I was “delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the Kingdom of His dear son” (Colossians 1:13) is a story in itself that I can share another time. But, early on in my spiritual walk, the Lord helped me establish spiritual habits that have stuck with me and have been a major factor in my staying alive for Him for the last 43 years in countries all over the world as I’ve lived to bring His love to the people of many nations.

There are so many aspects to having healthy spiritual habits. But I wanted to put one first that’s not so often even mentioned or realized. That’s what could be called “the heavenly vision”. And it’s not just the devil that fights this because, like Paul said in the Bible, we have two natures, “the old man” and “the new man” (Ephesians 4:22-24). Perhaps more often it’s your own carnal fleshly nature constantly battling to get you distracted, discouraged, disillusioned, disenchanted and just plane dissed.

Condemnation-flattened If you are a believer, if you are a Christian and trying to hold on to your crown and your faith, the devil will fight you. But this is where the Spirit of God will help us to overcome that and the way He does it is through the majesty of choice. You can choose to fight and resist those negative fleshly impulses and that nature. And one of the easiest and strongest ways He can help us do that is simply through our mind’s eye.

There are many verses in the Bible where God’s greats told of the importance of this. David said, “I have set the Lord always before me, because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” (Psalm 16:8) King David had, in his mind’s eye, in his vision, the Lord ever before Him. In Hebrews, in that stirring 12^th chapter, it tells us to “run with patience the race before us”. And then it goes on the in the next verse to tell us how to do that: “Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith”. (Hebrews 12:2)

Looking unto Jesus. Setting Him before our face. It’s that heavenly vision, that setting our mind on the things above, above the daily distractions and death of this world, keeping the heavenly vision. Paul said, “I have not been disobedient to the heavenly vision.” (Acts 26:19) He’d kept the faith by keeping the vision. Solomon said, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18)

miley And here’s one more that has always spoken to me, again from King David. “I will set no wicked thing before my eyes, I hate the work of them that turn aside, it shall not cleave to me.” (Psalms 101:3). That is a significant verse from God’s Word. If your mind’s eye is filled with doubts, discouragement, worldly distractions, earthly values and prejudices, those things are “wicked things before your eyes”. Some of the filth and foolishness that’s so visible nowadays is like some loathsome, viral disease for which there’s almost no antidote, except for God. And if you don’t watch out, it will “cleave to you”, like some kind of dirty chewing gum that you can’t get off.

The solution is to keep the heavenly vision. Fill your mind and heart with positive, encouraging, faith building thoughts from God’s Word, or the refreshing uplift you get from being in God’s nature, or the strengthen you receive from deep Christian fellowship with others, or the renewing that comes from sharing His love and truth with those in need.

the vision flat So one of the simplest but most important habits you can have to keep yourself alive spiritually is something that happens within you, when your mind and heart are stayed on Him and Him alone. As Isaiah said in a prayer to God, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because they trust in You.” (Isaiah 26:3)

7 Ways to Know the Will of God

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Mark McMillion

Someone wrote me, “How do I hear from God? How do I know His will?” Interesting question and one almost all of us have. I was thinking about that again this morning when I read that the first thing, the prerequisite for finding the will of God, is to have no will of your own.

Sometimes that’s called “yieldedness” or “surrender”, not very popular terms or ideas in our modern world. That’s why, when Paul talked about this, he said “be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, in order to prove what is that good and pleasing and perfect will of God.” (Romans 12:2) Because God’s ways are so utterly opposite from the ways of the world.

In the world, we are to never surrender to anything or anyone. But in God’s sphere, we are to surrender and yield to Him. And that means to let go of our own will. Even Jesus Himself did that. Just before He was captured, tried and crucified, He cried out to His Father, saying “…not My will but Your will be done.” (Matthew 26:41) So even before you begin to find God’s Will, the attitude of your heart needs to be one of yeildedness and surrender to Him.

But let’s say you’ve come to that place. You’re desperate, really seeking God’s Will for your life. Then what? The first way to know God’s Will is through His Word. The Bible is the first place to find the Will of God. When you read it in His Word, then you know it’s right. Psalm 119:105 says, “Your Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”

The second way to know God’s Will is called “the voice of the Word”. This is when the Lord brings to mind a certain verse or passage from the Scriptures. Or you’re reading your Bible and all of a sudden a verse seems to jump right off the page at you. The Lord brings it alive and applies it to you personally, even if it was written for someone else 3000 years ago.

The third way to know God’s Will is by a direct revelation. Sometimes God uses a dream or vision, a voice or prophetic message to show you what to do. You know it’s from God if it agrees with and doesn’t contradict His written Word. The apostle Paul was on a missionary journey and at one point he seemed to somewhat not know where he should go next. Then in the night he saw a vision of a man, saying, “come over to Macedonia and help us”. (Acts 16:9) Paul took that as a message from God, went to Macedonia and things really took off again.

The fourth way to know God’s will is through Godly council. When finding God’s Will, it’s often wise to ask others for their opinion. However, it is important to weigh the counsel you receive and to prayerfully consider the source that it comes from. How reliable are their leadings from the Lord? Do they bear good fruit themselves and produce good results from their own actions and decisions? Solomon said, “He who listens to council is wise.” (Proverbs 12:15)

The fifth way to know God’s Will is through “open and closed doors.” If something is God’s Will, He’ll usually “open the door” and make it possible. Which direction is God providing or opening the way and the means to do it? Sometimes God has certain set-ups and situations which suddenly become golden opportunities. Circumstances and conditions are not always the final criteria for finding the Will of God, but they can sometimes be an indication.

The sixth way to know God’s Will is what’s called “burdens”. Strong impressions or feelings can sometimes be an indication of God’s leading. It’s not always wise to go by feelings. But if something is really of God you’ll have an inner conviction, what many Christians call the “witness of the Spirit”. You just know that’s the Will of God and that’s what you’re supposed to do, or not do. Paul said, “It is God that works in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13)

The seventh way to find God’s will is called “a fleece”. This is taken from Judges 6 where Gideon laid a fleece (sheepskin) on the ground and said, “Lord, if the fleece is wet with dew in the morning, but the ground is dry, then I’ll know it is You talking to me!” Then he wanted to be doubly sure, so the next day he said, “If the fleece is dry and the ground is wet, I’ll believe it!”, and that’s just what the Lord did each time. So it’s a little like asking God for a specific physical sign from Him.

Although they seem like an easy and supernatural way, fleeces are the least reliable of the 7 ways to discover God’s Will, only to be used in conjunction with the other more dependable points shared above. In fact, the more ways you employ in making decisions, the greater the assurance will be that your decision is right.

Once you know God, it becomes clear that we really need to do all we can to stay close to Him and His Will. Otherwise we can make some foolish mistakes and sometimes really endanger ourselves and others when we are “leaning to our own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5), running around outside the protection of His Will. I hope, in these troubling times, that you’re seeking first His kingdom and following closely His personal will for your life.

Mark McMillion

Creeds and Deeds, Facts and Acts

Category Archives: Basic Christianity