Fearing people is a dangerous trap, but trusting the LORD means safety.
Proverbs 29:25 (Life Application Study Bible)
Jesus Tells Us: Being around other people can be scary. What if you say the wrong thing? What if you wear the wrong clothes? What if you don’t fin in with the in-crowd? What if you trip and fall- right in the middle of the lunchroom? Some days are like walking through a minefield. One false step and -Boom! So, you spend your whole day trying to do and say just the right things, hoping to please everyone. You even do and say things you know are wrong, just to fit in. by the end of the day, you’re exhausted. And the only thing you’ve earned is the privilege of getting up and doing it all again tomorrow. Being afraid of what people think is dangerous. And living to please others can get you into big trouble.
Jesus Concludes: Live to please Me instead. I will help you make good choices. And I will help you get through the minefield of your day.
Proverbs 29:25; Psalm 23:4; Matthew 7:1-2;
Footnotes Proverbs 29:25 Fear of people can hamper everything we try to do. In extreme forms, it can make us afraid to leave home. By contrast, fear of God-respect, reverence, and trust in him-is liberating. Why fear people who can do no eternal harm? Instead, fear and trust God, who can turn the harm intended by others into good.
Passage Psalm 23:4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Footnotes Psalm 23:4 Death casts a frightening shadow over us, because we are entirely helpless in its presence. We can struggle with other enemies-pain, depression, disease, and injury-but our strength and courage cannot overcome death. In terms of this life, death has the final word. Only one person can walk with us through death’s dark valley and bring us safely to the other side-the God of life, our Shepherd. Because life is uncertain, we should follow this Shepherd, who offers us eternal comfort and light in the darkness.
Passage Matthew 7:1-2 1Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Footnotes Matthew 7:1-2 Jesus tells us to examine our own motives and conduct instead of judging others. We often feel a perverse pleasure when we bring someone down. But often the faults that bother us in others are the very traits we dislike about ourselves. Our bad habits and behaviors are the very ones that we most want to point out in others. Do you find it easy to catalogue others faults while excusing your own? Criticism of others will lead to disdain for them, and eventually will make you feel contempt for another person also created in God’s image. If you are ready to criticize someone, check to see if you deserve the same criticism. Judge yourself first, and then kindly forgive the other person.
Jesus Tells us is from the Jesus Calling 365 Devotions for kids.
THE WORLD…we see history
Providence Springs
National Prisoner of War Museum
Providence Spring Stone Shelter,
Andersonville, Georgia.
The inscription reads:
God Smote the Hillside and gave them drink-
August 16th 1864.
When the Civil War erupted, a Michigan teenager named John L. Maile, enlisted with the Union, served bravely, and rose to the rank of lieutenant. During the Battle in the Wilderness, he was captured and shipped in a cattle car to the infamous POW camp at Andersonville, deep in the heart of Georgia, arriving on May 23, 1864.
Soon hundreds were dying of disease. One evening Maile heard a group of prisoners singing the doxology, and he joined them around a pine stump. An emaciated cavalry sergeant named Shepherd from Columbus, Ohio, who had been an honored preacher of the gospel before the War, was sitting on the stump. The others recognized Shepherd as a spiritual leader among them, despite his physical weakness. He frequently led prayers when POWs died and did what he could to encourage the living. On this occasions, Sergeant Shepherd had led those nearby in signing the doxology in order to gather a crowd. About twenty-five “unkempt, starving men” gathered and joined the song, and its strains reminded them of home and family and the worship services they had enjoyed before the War. As the singing died down, Sergeant Shepherd said something to this effect: “I have today read in the book of Numbers of Moses striking the rock from which water gushed out for the ample supply of man and beast. I tell you God must strike a rock in Andersonville or we shall all die of thirst. And if there is no rock here, he can smite the ground and bring forth water to supply our desperate needs. Of this, I am sure; let us ask Him to do this.”
The story from Numbers was an apt text for this thirsty group of men, dying for lack of fresh water at Andersonville. When the Israelites needed water in the desert, Moses struck the rock and the water gushed forth. Sergeant Shepherd was desperate enough to ask God for a similar miracle inside the walls of the stockade. Pointing to an uncombed, unwashed, ragged comrade close by, he said, “will the brother from Chicago pray?” One man after another prayed for water, asking God, as it were, to strike the rock again and provide needed water for the people. The impromptu prayer meeting lasted for about an hour, and the men concluded by again singing the doxology. As they dismissed, Shepherd admonished them, “Boys, when you awake during the night offer to God a little prayer for water. Do the same many times tomorrow, and let us meet here in the evening to pray again for water.”
The WORD…we see Jesus, His Story!
Prayers went up among the prisoners for several days. Then one morning as they awoke, “an ominous stillness pervaded nature.” By mid-morning, black clouds began rolling in, and the camp was deluged by a long-lasting cloudburst. As Maile vividly recalled,
Crashes of thunder broke over our heads and flashes of lightning swished around us as if the air was filled with short circuits. As the mighty deluge swept through the clearing west of the prison, we bowed our heads in preparation of submersion. When It came upon us the sensation was as if a million buckets of water were being poured upon us at once. When the storm finally ended, a prisoner near the north gate began shouting, “A spring! A spring!” Maile later wrote in his memoirs, Prison Life in Andersonville, he saw “the vent of a spring of purest crystal water, which shot up into the air in a column, and falling in a fanlike spray, went babbling down the grade. Some nearby prisoners described how, during the storm, a lightning bolt had struck inside the deadline, releasing the underground spring. It was as dramatic as Moses striking the rock. A trough was built, bringing the endless supply of water to the prisoners, and the spring still gurgles to this day. If you visit Andersonville, you can tour the National Prisoner of War Museum, then walk over to a stone shelter and see Providence Spring, and its inscription: “God smote the hillside and gave them drink, August 16th, 1864.
Source, 100 Bible verses that made America https://www.robertjmorgan.com/shop/100-bible-verses-that-made-america-paperback/