The LORD has given me a strong warning not to think like everyone else does. He said, “Don’t call everything a conspiracy, like they do, and don’t live in dread of what frightens them. Make the LORD of Heaven’s Armies holy in your life. He is the one you should fear. He is the one who should make you tremble. Isaiah 8:11-13 NLT
We live in times of dread. On every hand it seems new causes for anxiety sprout up around us—the economy, the world situation, earthquakes, leadership crisis in our nation, and the collapse of character. How should we as Christians respond to times like these?
First of all, we need to remember that we aren’t the first people to live in troubled times. This passage of Scripture is addressed to people in that kind of situation. The question is how to respond to a frightening situation. Unfortunately, too often we think it is “them,” some backroom conspiracy that we have no control over, and we live in nameless dread. God says, “Stop that. You don’t know, and can’t know, what’s really going on. Let it go. Stop worrying about it.”
What should we do? We should practice what we preach. We say God is sovereign; we say he is all-powerful; we say he is altogether loving. So, let’s live that way. To fear God is to order your life as if He were the ultimate destiny of our souls –which he is! If we say God is holy – the only transcendent Lord – and then live as if He does not control the world, we lie. To sanctify Him is to let him be God. Don’t dread conspiracies, dread displeasing the Holy one
We are called to be those in whom the light of the holy, self-revealing, self-giving God shines forth with power, shines because we daily surrender ourselves to that holiness, saturate ourselves in that revelation, and open ourselves to that light which will one day banish night forevermore. God, the holy, the revealing, the light. He shall be our sanctuary and we have nothing to dread.
Called To Be Transformed 