Summitt Christian Church Sparks Nevada

Lesson for June 5, 2011: God Keeps His ... - Christian Standard

In the summer of 1988, three friends and I climbed Mount Lyell, the highest peak in Yosemite National Park. Two of us were experienced mountaineers; two of us were not. I was not one of the experienced two. . . . The climb to the top and back was to take the better part of a day due, in large part, to the difficulty of the glacier that one must cross to get to the top.

As the hours passed and we trudged up the glacier, the two mountaineers opened up a wide gap between me and my less-experienced companion. Being competitive by nature, I began to look for short cuts to beat them to the top. I thought I saw one to the right of an outcropping of rock, so I went up, deaf to the protests of my companion.

Thirty minutes later I was trapped in a cul-de-sac of rock atop the glacier, looking down several hundred feet of sheer slope of ice, pitched at a 45 degree angle. . . . I was only ten feet from the safety of a rock. But one little slip and I wouldn’t stop sliding until I landed in the valley floor about 50 miles away! I was stuck and I was scared.1

That’s an apt description for some seasons in our lives. We get stuck and become afraid. Fear can immobilize us. It prevents us from moving forward. Fear squeezes the joy out of life. It reduces our faith to a Shetland pony-size version of what God intended to be a Clydesdale-sized confidence in Jesus Christ.

 

Facing Fear

The Old Testament hero Joshua also faced fear head-on. His example can teach us how faith in the living God can help us to overcome fear.

In Joshua 1, the Israelites were camped on the eastern bank of the Jordan River. The promised land stretched out in front of them to the west. The Israelites had heard about the land of milk and honey for 800 years. Four hundred years passed from Abraham to Joseph and another 400 were spent in Egypt. Living in Canaan had been a dream that gripped Israel for 15 generations.

Now the people were on the verge of fulfilling that dream. But the greatest obstacle to moving into the promised land was neither the Jordan nor the well-fortified cities throughout Canaan. No, the greatest obstacle before Israel was fear. This is why in Joshua 1 God repeatedly says, “Be strong and courageous!

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