The Call of God and the Fear of Man

You're walking down the street one day, and suddenly you hear your name called. You look around, nobody there. So you walk on a little further, you hear your name called again.

So you look up in a tree, seems to be coming from there, nobody there. A third time your name is called, and before the sound of the voice dies away, an elderly man tumbles out of a doorway and collapses on the sidewalk in front of you. So you holler for somebody to call the EMS.

You roll up your coat and put it under his head and open his collar so he can breathe. And pretty soon, the medics have him off to the hospital. In the weeks that follow, you go to visit this elderly man from time to time, and finally you share with him a strange thing that occurred that day.

You say to him, you know, that day that you collapsed on the sidewalk, just before it happened, I heard my name called three times. Why, that's simple, he explains. That was God.

He was preparing you to take care of me. The call of God is on your life, and it will become more clear as time goes on if you follow it. And it turns out to be just the way he described it.

As the weeks pass, you discover that that inner voice begins to become more clear and prepares you, for many, a service to people. Finally, you begin to distinguish that this is indeed the call of Jesus himself. It's not as if you hear an audible voice or that you can distinguish actual words being spoken, but there is a clear, growing awareness of the presence of God guiding you.

It's like having your ear open to another world, to heaven itself. Then, one day, there's a bad scene at work. Some unpopular, unattractive woman who recently lost her husband through death and is half mad with grief is the object of everybody's wrath.

She's making too many mistakes and causing problems for all of us. And inwardly, you know exactly what you have to do. This woman needs somebody to stand with her.

And yet, you can't bring yourself to do it. The voice within you becomes more faint. After a few weeks, a long-distance call from an old friend out of state.

He wants to borrow some money. Again, inwardly, you know what you have to do. Give him the money.

Ah, but there may be a long recession, and I'll need that money myself. And so you write him a letter, explain that you just are not in a position to be of help. The voice becomes still more faint.

And so finally, it just is swallowed up in all the noises of your inner life. One day, you go to see your old friend and complain. I can't understand it, but I'm no longer hearing that call.

The old man looks out the window at the setting sun and sighs and says, once you've heard the call of God, there are only two possibilities. Either that call dominates your life, or you revert right back into a life of fear. If the voice of fear takes precedence, then the voice of the call of God simply recedes into nothing.

I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet. Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning, I saw seven golden lampstands. And in the midst of the lampstands, one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden girdle around his breast.

His head and his hair were white as wool, white as snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace.

And his voice was like the sound of many waters. I heard a voice like a trumpet behind me. I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and his voice was like the sound of many waters.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. Once we have heard the call of God on our hearts, there are only two possibilities. Either that call becomes clearer and clearer and stronger, like the sound of a trumpet, like the sound of mighty waters, until it fills our whole life, or it begins to fade and grows dimmer and dimmer until we don't even hear it anymore.

Can you imagine Moses, 30 years after the burning bush, sitting on a rock in the wilderness, complaining, I just don't know why God doesn't speak to me like he used to speak to me at the burning bush? Or can you picture the Apostle Paul, 20 years after Damascus, shaking his fist at heaven, why don't you guide me like you used to? Because in truth, in both cases, the voice of God grew and increased in these men's lives, became more clear, dominated them, until every other voice within them was just swallowed up in its majesty. They lived for that call. They pursued that call right up to the day of their death and on through death into the life beyond.

Listen to Paul, many, many years after Damascus, saying, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Then why is it that for many of us, the call which was once very, very clear in us has begun to diminish? The most persistent cause of the waning, excuse me, of the call of God in our lives can be pinned down to what our Lord calls the leaven of the Pharisees. In the meantime, when so many thousands of the multitude had gathered together that they trod upon one another, he began to say to his disciples first, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known. Whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed upon housetops. I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do, but I will warn you whom to fear.

Fear him whom after he has killed has the power to cast into hell. Yea, I tell you, fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies and not one of them is forgotten before God? Why, even the hairs of your head are numbered.

Fear not, you are of more value than many sparrows. And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but he who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God. The leaven of the Pharisees is hypocrisy, and the root of hypocrisy is the fear of men, which forever causes us to keep putting our light under the bushel, holds us back from sticking our necks out and taking risks to live the life of mercy, or proclaiming the name of Jesus before men.

And if we allow the fear of men to keep driving us back, the time finally will come when the voice of the call of God that we have heard becomes so faint that we will find ourselves in a life dominated by fear seven times worse than the one we knew before we ever heard the call. Now, this root of fear which feeds our hypocrisy is usually very innocent looking. We don't call it fear, we call it dependence.

For instance, we're dependent on certain people to achieve personal goals. We wanna get that promotion. We wanna stay on the good side of Uncle Ted because we wanna borrow 10 grand from him next spring to buy a house.

We wanna keep all our friends. We want people to like us. And so we compromise the truth of God in our living and in our speaking.

God is clearly calling us to go a certain way, but we're scared if we go this way, we're gonna mess up our relationship with these people we're depending on. And so we deviate and we deviate because of fear. Or maybe we're dependent on people for our own sense of our own worth.

We don't wanna lose any friends. We compromise what we know we have to be and do in order to keep people close to us. If I don't compromise, they're gonna turn around and walk away.

And here I'll be sitting in the middle of the room of nowhere, not knowing who I am. Well, I'll have an identity crisis if I'm not surrounded by all these friends. If I tell Mary the truth that I ought to tell her, she'll not be my friend anymore.

And if I don't cooperate with John's little scheme, he's gonna forsake me. And if I act decently toward this person at work who's the scapegoat for everybody, and they catch me treating that person like a human being, then I'll be a scapegoat. And so we allow the fear of man to displace the call of God in our lives.

What has to happen is that we have to come to the place, and most of us are at that place right now, one way or another, where we start to deal with what fear is doing to us. The fear of man, how it's circumscribing our thinking and our acting, and we're getting ourselves back in a corner. We have to face that fear and do something with this.

Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more they can do. Fear not, you're of more value than many sparrows. The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? God is our refuge and strength of very present help in trouble.

Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed and the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flyeth by day, nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. There's no need for us to be driven the way we let ourselves get driven, by fear.

At that very hour, some Pharisees came and said to him, get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you. And he said to them, go tell that fox. Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.

He won't let himself get intimidated by this threat of death, why? Because Jesus has already offered His life up to death in response to the call of His Father. And if you and I are in fact answering the call of Jesus Christ on our lives, we also have offered ourselves up to death already. Where do you think we're going? We're on our way to a cross.

If we're obeying the call of the Lord, this means we're headed for a destination where we're gonna in fact lay down our lives. And every day of our lives, we're getting practice at learning how to lay down our lives, how to pour ourselves out, to spend ourselves. So what are we afraid of? We may have that all clear in our minds intellectually.

You know, we know that, that's the way it is, that's the way it should be, and yet we're scared still. Still afraid, so what do we do? Do we sit around and wait for the fear to go away? Or if only the fear would leave me so I could begin to act like a disciple. No, we don't con ourselves, we don't try to talk ourselves out of it, we don't sit around and wait, we defy this fear.

We admit that it's there, we're shaking in our boots, our knees are knocking, but we're gonna still do what we know we have to do. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation? Who isn't scared of tribulation if they're honest? Distress, who wants distress? Persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sore? As it is written, for thy sake we are being killed all the day long, we are regarded as sheep for the slaughter. Every one of those things, if we're honest with ourselves, scares us.

But in all these things, we are more than conquerors to him who loved us. So they're gonna keep us from achieving that personal goal we've been shooting for for the last 30 years. Let them! They will never prevent us from arriving at the goal which is our real goal, our cross.

And so they're gonna turn their backs and walk away from us, let them. If every friend we have forsakes us, as long as we have the call of God on our lives, we will have our sanity still. They're gonna kill us.

That's the worst that they can do to us, they can kill us. Let them. Because when they do, that will be our Calvary and that will be our doorway to glory.

May God show us in terms of where we are right now, how we've been allowing fear of every kind to blot out and dull and compromise his voice in our lives. And may he help us beginning this day to start doing something about it, to get rid of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, to begin to defy the fear that has caused our hearts to shrivel and to start living as sons and daughters of God. The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? God helped me to live in that. Even if with my mind and my body, I'm scared to death to still do what I know I have to do and keep doing it.

Then I'll have his voice. And if I have his voice, I have everything I need. Why don't we just stand up and work together? Let's worship.

Thank you, Father, for your presence. Thank you. We thank you.

We just worship and praise you, Heavenly Father, for your goodness. And we ask that you would cause the barrier between earth and heaven to be removed by the blood of the lamb, that the spirit would descend upon us and give us liberty as we draw near to you and praise your name and call upon that name for specific things in our lives. And not only for ourselves, but for the church universal, for our brothers and sisters in the body, here and everywhere else.

Thank you, Lord.