I recently published an article, entitled “There is STILL Hope For 2020”. You can find it here:
http://www.scottduck.com/there-is-still-hope-for-2020/
In that article, I looked at several verses of Scripture that pertain to our current situation with the Coronavirus and I offered some commentary on all that Scripture as a whole. However, I did not go into much detail on any of those individual passages. In the next articles, I began to take a deeper look at the Scripture which I had shared in that initial article.
First, I focused on learning and living The Word. You can find that article here:
http://www.scottduck.com/learning-and-living-the-word/
Second, I looked at a Christian’s duty to government. You can find that article here:
http://www.scottduck.com/god-and-government-a-christians-duty-to-respect-authority/
Now, I would like to continue my deeper dive into my look at the Scripture in that initial article.
2 Timothy 1
7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
The Coronavirus isn’t the only thing spreading right now. There’s also a great deal of fear going around. There is fear that we aren’t doing enough to stop the spread of the virus. There is fear that we are doing too much and will end up completely destroying the economy. There is fear at all points along the spectrum between these two extremes. This fear may be understandable, from a human prospective, but we have to try to keep things in a Heavenly prospective, to look at things through God’s eyes. God says that fear is not from Him. The bottom line is that there is an inverse relationship between level of fear and level of true trust in God.
I do understand both the health concerns and the financial concerns. I have loved ones who are at extreme risk if they do get the virus. Our ministry is being impacted financially because I am not able to speak in person and much of the ministry’s income is connected to my doing that. I totally understand being fearful but we have to remember who is in control here.
Really, that’s a lot of what both fear and comfort really come down to, isn’t it? We fear a lack of ability to control a situation or at least at least attempt to control it. When we don’t have control, then our fear or comfort is mostly based on who we believe does have control and how much we do or don’t trust them.
A lot of this relates to whether we have choices or not and what choices we have. Let’s think about this from a financial prospective.
Let’s say I have a job making $3,000 per month and I have $2,000 worth of expenses every month. I have a lot of control. I can choose to pay my expenses as they come due and I can even choose to save some money. In the next month, I will be able to pay my expenses and put $1,000 in savings. The more I put in savings, the more secure I will feel because my savings account gives me some control even if I lose my job. At this point, I probably have no financial worries at all.
Now, let’s say that I still have $2,000 of expenses every month and I just lost my job and I have $6,000 in savings. I still have some control. I can go for three months before I run out of money so I have time to look for a job. I can choose to look for a job and, with three months, I may even have time to choose what kind of job I want to try to get. I may even be able to choose to cut my budget a little and stretch it out to four months and that extra time gives me even more choices. I don’t have a job so my situation isn’t ideal but I still have a great deal of control and that control is comforting. At this point, I may be a bit concerned but probably not really all that fearful.
Now, let’s say that I am two months into this situation and I have gone through $4,000 of my savings, leaving only $2,000. That’s one month worth of expenses, maybe a little more if I can trim the budget a little or if I can pay some of my creditors late. Now, I have less money and less time, which means fewer choices. I no longer have the luxury of looking for the jobs I want. I probably need to just take what I can get and, if I don’t get something soon, I am going to have to start cutting the budget, one way or another, just to survive. My control is decreasing and so my fear is increasing. At this point, I may not be panicked but I am probably getting a bit anxious.
OK, now, I am out of time and money. I have $100 left in the bank. I have a few groceries in my pantry but only enough for a day or two. my family eats about $150 per week in groceries and my car is almost out of gas. I need gas to get to job interviews but my family needs to eat. Do I get gas and just a few groceries? Do I just get groceries and hope that I can just do phone interviews? Even if I don’t buy any gas, I can only buy enough food for 4 or 5 days. And what if I don’t get the jobs that I’m interviewing for? Do I know someone who can help me out? Even if they can help, will they be willing to? I do still have a few choices but very few and the ones that I have are not appealing. Once those choices run out, I am at the mercy of someone else’s choices, someone else’s control. This situation does not feel good. At this point, I am probably becoming very fearful, because of my lack of control.
This was a made up hypothetical scenario but, that last part, when time and money and choices had run out. I have been in that position and it was not fun and I was quite fearful. I entirely get it. But you know what? I need not have feared because God did take care of me. If you are a child of His, He will take care of you too.
I have also been in another situation, one that was much more dangerous and one where I had absolutely no control at all, and yet, I had very little fear because I had faith in the one who did have control. Let me tell you about that.
My dad is a private pilot and he used to fly airplanes. He had a few over the years. One day, we were flying in a Piper Arrow that he had. Sometimes we traveled in it but, on this day, we were just playing around. We got ready to land. We were on approach and he said “we have a problem”. I asked what it was. He said “We have only two green”. He was referring to the green indicator lights which indicated that the landing gear were down and locked. There was one for each of the three landing gear. Saying that there were “three green” indicated that all gear were down and locked, in preparation for landing. Having only “two green” was definitely a problem.
The main gear under the wing on my side of the plane had no green light, indicating that it was not down or, if it was down, it was not locked in place. If we had landed in that situation, the plane would have cartwheeled. My dad performed an emergency gear extension. On this particular airplane, that involved a procedure to release the hydraulic pressure which normally held the landing gear in the up position and then doing a little aerobatic maneuvering to get them to come down and lock. When he had finished all this, he announced “We now have three green”. He assured me that everything was now fine. Guess what? I believed him. Guess what else? He was right. We were fine. We had a normal and uneventful landing, after which the plane went to the maintenance hanger to get checked out.
Now then, I’m not going to lie, when my dad said “we have only two green”, I was very nervous. If he hadn’t been able to handle the situation and there had remained only two green, things would have ended very differently and the plane wouldn’t have been the only thing needing maintenance. However, when my dad told me that he had handled the situation and that everything would be fine, I believed him and wasn’t afraid any more. I believed him because, although he was just an ordinary man, he had proven to me throughout my life that I could trust him, not just in the cockpit but in life in general. I had absolutely no control over the situation and, even if I had some control, I wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. Even though I had no clue what to do in that situation, I knew that my dad did and I trusted him to do it.
This story is about my earthly father and how I trusted him when he told me that it would be OK. I have a Heavenly Father who is far more capable than my earthly father and my Heavenly Father, too, has told me that it will be OK.
Matthew 6
25 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
28 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;
29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Romans 8
28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
You see, God has told us, those of us who are His children, that He will take care of us. I believed my dad when he said that it would be OK but do I believe God when He tells me that? I still don’t always trust Him quite as much as I should but I’m getting better about it. You see, God, even more than my earthly dad, has proven Himself to me. The longer I walk with Him, the more storms of life He walks through with me, the more He proves Himself to me and the more I trust Him.
How about you? Your dad may not be a pilot but you’ve probably ridden in a plane or in a bus or certainly in a car when someone else was doing the driving. Did you trust them? You probably did, even though you sometimes may not have even known them. How much more then should you trust God?
In the world right now, we have two green. I have no idea what to do about that. I don’t think anyone else really does either. We’re just figuring it out as we go. We are in a situation where we have little control and that is a bit scary. But I know someone who does know what to do about it and who does have control. If you are His child, then you know Him too, though maybe not as well as you should. Spend time in His Word and praying to Him, getting to really know Him. Just talking to Him will help to ease your fear.
If you don’t know Him, now is the time to start a relationship with Him. You can find out how to do that here:
http://www.scottduck.com/the-most-important-thing/
Don’t misunderstand what I am saying. I am not saying that we should be reckless and just expect God to protect us. In 2 Timothy 1:7, God did say that He had not given us a spirit of fear but, in the same verse, He also said that He has given us a sound mind. He gave us that sound mind in order that we might use it, to make prudent decisions. When my dad saw that we had two green, he didn’t say “Oh well, we will just go ahead and land and it will be fine”. If he had done that, it would not have ended well. He took the action that prudence and his training told him should be taken in that situation.
Similarly, let your decisions in the current Corona crisis not be driven by fear and also not by reckless apathy but by trust in God and by prudence. Don’t go buy all the toilet paper you can find, because you are afraid that you won’t ever be able to get any. Also don’t wait until you have half a roll left before trying to get more, assuming that God will provide. If you are having financial difficulty because of the current situation, don’t wring your hands, wondering what you are going to do about money. God has provided the stimulus money as all good things come from Him (James 1:17) and He will provide other help as well if you need it. Also don’t spend your stimulus money on a new TV and just assume that God will provide a way to make next month’s rent payment. Don’t be fretful but don’t be reckless. All wisdom comes from God (Proverbs 2:6). Let Him guide your decisions (Proverbs 3:5-6) and everything will work out fine (Romans 8:28).
As you go through this crisis, remember that God has also given us a spirit of love.. We will focus on that more next time. For now, just rest in the fact that God has promised that He will take care of you. Take it from me, even though that may not always look like you might expect, He will in fact take care of you and it is a glorious thing to experience, to experience His love through His provision. Trust Him to provide. Truly relinquish control to Him. It isn’t an easy thing to do but you will be very glad you did.
