1 When you march out to battle your enemies and you see horses, chariots, and a fighting force larger than yours, don’t be afraid of them, because the LORD your God, the one who brought you up from Egypt, is with you. 2 As you advance toward the war, the priest will come forward and will address the troops. 3 He will say to them: “Listen, Israel: Right now you are advancing to wage war against your enemies. Don’t be discouraged! Don’t be afraid! Don’t panic! Don’t shake in fear on account of them, 4 because the LORD your God is going with you to fight your enemies for you and to save you.”
Reflection
Note: This week’s devotions are a series called “Faith Forward” written by Brian Harriett. If you’d like to write for us, please contact Pastor Joe.
We should routinely thank the LORD for keeping us safe and protected by instructing us in the “ways” that we should go. In Deuteronomy 20, Moses continues to battle the Habiru Tribe’s doubts and fears, even after God sustained them 40 years in the wilderness.
I was away from my wife and young daughters for 14 months serving a “remote assignment” at Ankara Air Station. The new million-dollar base chapel had been fenced off to us, so only the American School was left to us for worship. I was surrounded there by a group of believers who supported me through those tough times of doubts and fears. I ended up sponsoring a country-wide gospel fest and took the youth group deep into the Anatolian Desert to meet youths from other U.S. Bases. As Joyce Meyer states in the Battlefield of the Mind Bible (2017), “Often the fear of something is worse than the thing itself. If we will be courageous and determined enough to do whatever it is we fear, we will often discover it is not nearly as bad as we thought it would be.” Remember our New Declaration from Monday, based on the precious promises of God: “Don’t Look Back to Our Normal…Look Forward to God’s Normal.”
By Brian Harriett
For Pondering & Prayer
While we are in times of wandering through the COVID desert, we may wonder what we could possibly learn from the trials and challenges that force both isolation, and closer contact with our nuclear family than we might normally choose. What situations have you dreaded that turned out better than expected? What tasks or challenges have you not yet begun out of fear?
Prayer: Thank you, God, for not giving us a spirit of fear but of power and love and of a sound mind. Amen. (2 Timothy 1:7)
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