Do Not Be Afraid

The phrase "Fear not" 
or it's variants
"be not afraid"
"do not be afraid'
appears well over five hundred times in the Bible.

"Be of good courage" appears 56 times.

"Be strong and courageous" appears 49 times.

We are probably most familiar with these passages that appear around Christmas:

"Fear not Mary, for you have found favour with God."

"Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings this day which shall be for all people,
for born to you this day
in the city of David, a Saviour
which is Christ the Lord."

Our first reading this week
comes at the end of a long word of judgement against the nations.
Things are going to get very bad.
There will be a time of waste.
There will be confusion
and there will be chaos in the earth.
There will be a time 
when kingdoms and kings will fall
and wild animals will take over great cities.

And this did happen to Babylon,
Assyria,
and Israel in the period before
the rise of Greece and Rome.

And Isaiah says
"Strengthen the weak hands
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are afraid,
fear not,
be strong,
Because God is coming to save.
He will come and save you."

And as we see in the Gospel
God did come and save.
God took on flesh
and Jesus Christ fulfilled this prophecy.
And the sign was the opening of the eyes 
that were blind
and the unstopping of the ears that are deaf.
There is another kingdom
and this kingdom 
is one of creative miracles
where the physical and spiritual senses are restored.
Creativity is central to the Kingdom.
God is going to create a new thing.
God is going to make streams in the desert.
God is going to make the desert burst forth in bloom.

God is coming to save,
and with salvation comes a new thing.

Every time someone has an encounter with God
or an angel
the first words are always
Fear not.
That’s because whenever the heavenly realm
reveals itself in our realm 
it scares us.
We are not in control,
and angels are scary.
Fear not.
And whenever heaven breaks into our reality,
it’s usually because heaven’s order is needed on earth.
Yes,
things are scary.
Yes, 
it looks like chaos is reigning.
Yes,
it looks like there is no hope,
and things are going to rack and ruin.
Yes.
That is real.
Only those who are in serious denial realize
what is happening all around.
We really are living in scary times,
and those who are not Christians 
but who are thinkers and culture watchers
are trying to figure it out.
And when you don’t have Jesus 
the future looks pretty grim.

When the Lord called me to this work,
to raise up an army of artists who will build Jesus a throne in the earth,
it came with a lot of prophetic words.
And it really has been stunning
to watch over the past nearly two decades 
how these words have come to pass.
God knew what was coming,
and he told a lot of people.

And the first word
he spoke to me was "Be not afraid."
With that came a call to leave the ministry system.
God called me to abandon commercial Christianity 
and the conference circuit.
God said I needed to prepare for what was coming,
and disengage from the system.
No credit,
no fundraising,
no marketing and self-promotion.
And no teaching people how to do it the old way.
And it was scary,
and God said,
"Do you trust me?"

And for a lot of years,
my answer to that question was very honest.
"No!  This whole thing is crazy.
I don't trust you."
But, my life depended on listening to God
and doing what he told me.
And so I kept obeying.
It was life or death.

About two years ago,
I was sitting with the Lord.
And I was reviewing the past decade and a half,
and I said "Lord, you asked me to get ready
and to prepare people.
I don't feel like I have done it.
I'm not ready for what is happening."
I haven’t created my prepper pantry,
I haven’t gotten a house for people,
and it seems this thing just never gets going.

And the Lord said,
"You are ready.
You learned to trust me."
And earlier this year
I was in Assisi and the Lord said,
"You have become my friend.
Now it's time to teach others how to be my friend."

This is not a religious calling.
This is a calling to make disciples in the arts.
This is a calling to introduce people to friendship with Jesus.
And that is the only way you can overcome in the season we are in.
You have to be close to the one
who is coming to save.
And when you are close to the one who saves,
you have no reason to fear.
You have no reason to fear.
He is your courage.

In 1738
church attendance in Britain was nearly zero.
It was lower than it is today.
Gin was a new invention,
and it was the strongest drug on the market at the time
and drunkenness was rampant in society.
The industrial revolution was just beginning
and people were leaving the country to live 
where the jobs were.
And the jobs were hard,
and the pay was low.
And for the first time in history,
people were working
but they were getting poorer.
And so booze filled the gap.

John and Charles Wesley,
along with George Whitefield
began preaching on the streets,
and in the open fields,
and many people heard the Gospel for the first time.
And millions of people came to Christ.

Methodism was not a religious or a church movement.
For the first fifty years of it's history
most Methodists attended their local church or chapel,
often a Church of England parish.
It was a renewal movement.
If you were a Methodist,
you attended a class meeting.
And the class meeting
was the way all these new converts were transformed
from the dregs of society to what we now call the middle class.
They were discipled,
and taught how to have a relationship with God
and that transformed every area of their lives.
And it continued for close to one hundred years
on both sides of the Atlantic.
And the proof is in history:
child labor laws,
public hospitals,
Sunday schools and eventually universal education,
women's sufferage,
the end of the global slave trade,
and a global missionary movement
all have their roots in the Methodist class meetings.
The Salvation Army,
Holiness,
Pentecostal,
and Charismatic movements
all point to the Wesleyan movement
as their genetic root.
Although Methodism became a dead sect as Wesley himself predicted,
the dynamic of his theology continues to jump fences and start new things.

And although I look Catholic to you all,
my education
was in Wesleyan institutions.
It is my foundation.

Once upon a time I used to paint at prophetic art
and prayer events.
I had a rule in those days that I would not give my paintings away.
This really offended a few people.
Folks wanted me to give my paintings away,
and I was selling them, right after church.
I was trying to teach people that art had value.
Paint is expensive.

Years ago I painted a picture of little fires all over the earth.
They were interconnected
and in the middle of each fire was the outline of a menorah:
the seven spirits of God.
It was the only picture I painted in that season that I gave away.
God said to give it away.
And that painting went all over the world.
It traveled to a yeshiva in Jerusalem
and there are a group of ultra-orthodox rabbis who have copies of it.
And then,
one day,
in the house of prayer in Boston,
a friend walked in and handed me a tube.
That picture came back.

Those little fires were bands of artists.
Artists who were disciples.
And they were underground.
They could go into art schools and universities 
where Christians and Jews are being harassed and silenced.
Disciples who can go into industries where the prevailing worldview
is the worldview of Anti-Christ.
Artists who can have influence in governments trying to remove Christianity.
Artists who can overcome in places suffering under sharia law.
Artists who can make a way for the coming of the Lord.
Those old wine skins do not work in a culture that is anti-Christian.
You will not make it in the next season the old way.

It's time to get prepared.
And God says,
do not be afraid.
We have been given the opportunity to live in a time of chaos.
Be not afraid.
We have been given the opportunity to live at a time of great darkness.
And this is the coolest thing.
When  you have a little fire,
it burns brighter the darker it gets.
We are going to light candles
and we are going to bring light.
There is nothing to fear.
God is coming to save.
Be not afraid.
All that is happening around us
is part of the big picture,
and the big plan.
Be not afraid.

A few weeks ago my mom told me I needed a registry for people 
so that they knew what I needed.
I’m sitting in an empty office in London.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the next steps.
In a few weeks the audio book of Artists at a Shift in Time will be released.
I am praying about how to launch this book,
and also launch a vision for millions of little fires all over the earth.
We need a new website,
and a lot of other things.
And of course,
I still do not have stable housing.
Honestly,
I’m not afraid.
God is coming.
God is on the move,
and he is ready to save.
Be not afraid.