Beholding God: Choosing Presence Over Fear

``The cross does not remove us from danger, it does something deeper. It faces the deepest threat that we live under, the power of sin and its curse, death. And it, on the cross, Jesus absorbs all of it without letting any of it have the final word. It's under that shadow, under the shelter of those wings, that we are not made invulnerable, but we are made completely secure. [00:59:00] (33 seconds)  #CrossShelter

I couldn't answer any of those cries. All I could do was just hold him, and pray, and sing. After what felt like hours, that tight bundle anxiety in his little body finally just loosened. His breath breathing slowed, and he fell asleep. Still held, still surrounded by everything that still was frightening him, but he was no longer alone in it. [00:57:35] (29 seconds)  #HeldNotAlone

So people often fight fear with positive thought or distraction. We scroll past it, we change the channel on our TVs, we tell ourselves, it'll be fine, it's just cycles. We just get through the next couple of years. But the way of Jesus does something different, something far more robust than optimism or escape. It meets reality where it actually is. Because fear doesn't change how we feel only, it often reshapes what we see. See, fear often narrows our field of vision. It shrinks the world, and it trains us to fixate on the threat. [00:36:00] (44 seconds)  #FaithMeetsFear

See, nearness to God does not mean the absence of threat. It means shelter within the threat. To be lifted high does not mean to be lifted out. It means to be held somewhere where fear cannot define who you are and what's going to happen. This is the difference between stopping the danger and being held within it. [00:55:40] (27 seconds)  #ShelterWithinThreat

See, choosing where to look is not pretending that danger isn't real. It's deciding what will have the ultimate authority over our imagination of what could be. Fear says, watch the threat, be ready, get your hand on your pistol or weapon or whatever it is, but faith says, let God decide what is most real. Let God decide what is most real. [00:45:24] (32 seconds)  #LetGodDefineReality

Surprising turn. This is the hinge of the Psalm. In the face of real threats, David does not first ask for victory, he does not ask for safety, he asks for presence, nearness to God. [00:45:08] (17 seconds)  #PresenceOverVictory

Not escaping the danger, not pretending that it isn't there, but by asking a completely different question. It's not a question of control or domination, it's not a question of escape, it's a question about attention. Where do we look to? [00:44:08] (19 seconds)  #AttentionNotControl

Psalm 27 doesn't teach us to stop being afraid. It teaches us how to see when we are, and it trains us to look to what or actually who is more secure in the midst of fear. [00:59:50] (16 seconds)  #LookToTheLord