(Urgent prayer requests. My phone is broken and can’t retrieve my stateside number NOR wassap. Both mission critical. Also pray for the guaymi indians I worked with in Panama. Severe persecution for them right now.)
Psalm 2:11 Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
This verse shows that when you fear God, you are actually holding Him in Holy reverence. And as far as the trembling, is trembling with pure joy. You realize that you are permitted to serve The Creator of the universe and are allowed to come into His presence. You tremble with happiness as you rejoice in this. You are trembling because you are awe struck by Him. You love Him so much. You fear Him because you believe in Him and know what He’s capable of. Here’s another spot in the Bible where fear and trembling is mentioned.
Philipians 2:11 Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
Here I believe that the trembling part is out of fear. You do not want to take your faith and salvation for granted. There are some people that know that they know that they are going to heaven but aren’t. They’re going to hell unless they believe in Jesus and truly repent (stop) of their sins.
Demons tremble with fear. Demons fear the Lord and tremble before Him. When was the last time we did that? I used to, a lot, but not as much as before. Now it looks like the demons believe more than I do! And that’s not much. I don’t want demon faith! I want a lot more faith than mere demon’s faith. I want to check and double check that I am saved, not just trusting someone else’s opinion.
James 2:19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
Being a caregiver for my wife, loaded down with ministry responsibilities and now the ever changing and stressful demands from the gov’t have sidetracked my feelings and the surety of my salvation (which should have nothing to do with my walk, because who I am in Christ doesn’t change, nor does His great, reckless love for me). But the Bible says (in the happiest book of the Bible, Philippians) that I should continuously work out my salvation, with fear and trembling. Being unsure is doubting. Feelings can kill the certainty of being saved. Ignore feeling, walk by faith, not by site. Paul did. He wrote the happy book of Phillipians in jail for his faith under Nero.
1 Cor 9:27 But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.
So how do I get back to working out my salvation with fear and trembling?? I don’t believe that you can lose your salvation, but I think we often take being saved for granted. When we buy a car we check and double check the paperwork. How much more should we check and double check our salvation?
Rev 2:4-5 Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.
How do we do that? How do we really repent for losing our first love with Jesus? Simply by loving Jesus more, by doing what you did when we first believed. How do we know we really love Jesus? It’s not just by getting a gold star on our Bibles for perfect Sunday School attendance or our name on a pew because of a large cash donation. If we are saved we will LOVE Jesus more and more instead of less and less.
1 Cor 16:22 If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema (cursed) Maranatha (come quickly Lord)
If we love Jesus we prove it by keeping His commandments, not to become saved (works) but because we are saved. We keep our commandments out of love.
John 14:15 If you love Me, keep My commandments
If you love Jesus you will really love other people
John 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
Pray for Winnie and I. Tough times in literally every aspect of our lives and ministries. And now my iPhone just crashed and all my data including iCloud with it.