Places Of Fear

Last week I had the awesome opportunity to have coffee with a brother that God has put on my heart for a while. We had a chance to talk and get to know each other better. While encouraging this brother God gave me a revelation that that has encouraged and challenged me.

Steve Masterson with Promise Keepers has been a major influence in my life, he has an incredible way of speaking truths about men and our roles by paralleling the physical and the spiritual. He tends to be quite blunt and does not get embarrassed easily and so in one of his analogies he compared the role of Christian men in society to the miracle of the creation of life but more particularly, sperm. As Christian men we are called to bring life just as the sperm brings life to the egg. Those sperm were created for one purpose, and that is to reach the egg. The sperm never tire in their pursuit as this is why they were given life. We were similarly created to reach God, to never tire as we reach toward the father bringing life to our places of work, our church and our families. We do this by allowing the Holy Spirit to speak through us and love those in our sphere of influence.

I would like to take this one step further and challenge us that God has also called us as men to have the courage to walk into the unknown and the places of hurt and fear in our lives and encourage those around us to do the same. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but all of us have some area or areas in our lives that we label as "untouchable" because it is just to hurtful to go there. These hurts can hold us back from the life of abundance that Jesus has given us.
In Matthew 5 Jesus speaks of the beatitudes and verse 9 states "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God". Wow!! Notice how Jesus says blessed are the peacemakers, not the peacekeepers. Semantics? I think not. The difference between a peacekeeper and a peacemaker is that the peacekeepers will smooth things over, do whatever it takes to keep the peace, even if the peace is false. Something I have been doing for far too long. You see the peacemaker boldly walks into a situation and brings the truth of the word and repentance and only then can we have the true peace of Christ (Col 3:15). Once we have walked our own roads of fear, we are then able to walk along side another and help them make those first steps.

So my area of fear has been in my finances. In my self-employment phase I created a debt that has for a long time looked far too overwhelming to tackle, so I ignored it hoping that if I pretended it wasn't there I would forget about it or it would go away. So for the last two years it has weighed down on my shoulders like a millstone around my neck, and has for the most part prevented me from looking at my family’s future with any kind of optimism.
The thought of owning a house has not been possible until the debt has been dealt with. I just couldn't go there. But little by little our finances have been looking better and better and so I sat down and made up a budget for my family, but still ignoring the debt. But the budget gave me the courage to go farther and as I looked at our expenses versus our income our financial picture didn't look so hopeless. So in a bold move I made an appointment for us to meet with a financial advisor, and we worked out a financial plan that is going help us start tackling this debt.

This has had a ripple effect and allowed me to confront some other issues in future that includes long term career plans. You cannot imagine how freeing this has been, and the new hope and confidence this has had on both Carebear and I. Things are definitely looking up and God is bringing more and more opportunity my way.

Very exciting times! Bless you!