Lean how fearing God rightly keeps us on the right track. In this episode Gina and Rheanna Downey talk about the enticement of New Age and how dabbling in this counterfeit can lead to spiritual bondage.
To reach out to Rheanna and check out her music, visit rheannadowney.com
Click below to listen starting at 19:30 to follow along.
Fearing God
Rheanna:
I am a very full of questions person. I don’t take things at face value. I’m not going to believe it just because somebody from a pulpit is telling me so. I am a person who wants to understand the Hebrew letter. I want to know it. I’m not going to follow it just because you told me that’s what I should do. We’d all do well to have that kind of fire within us. I also fear God. I also understand that He’s righteous, and I’m not. Do I trust Him or not?
Gina:
I’m glad that you said that. Because I think that there is that huge lack of Holy fear. I’m not talking of distorted fear, which is “God is angry and wants to punish me.” I’m talking about, “God is the Lover of my soul, and He knows the number of hairs on my head, but He’s also a Holy God.”
John, in Revelation, says, “I saw one like the Son of man with hair that is white and flames coming out of His eyes and a sword coming out of His mouth. When I saw Him, I fell as if I were dead, because the presence of God, was Jesus, was too much for me to handle.” But then Jesus touched him on his back and said, “Don’t be afraid.” Because He is also kind.
There’s this crazy juxtaposition of this Holy, heavy, intimidating revelation that He is God, and He is also kind. And we are just living in this day and age that nobody knows that.
Rheanna:
Do we want a God that doesn’t have the power of the universe at His grasp? Do we just want to serve an idea? Do we just want to serve something that serves us? At times that feels like that’s the age we’re in, where it’s all about us.
My husband and I just went to go see a movie. I’m going to plug something right now that has nothing to do with me, but I loved it so much. It just touched me down to my core. There’s a movie about this man and his family, his name’s Davie Bank. I feel terrible because I’m forgetting the name of the movie, but you can just look up Davie Bank and you’ll see his movie just came out about his life within his family. They felt called to just go and give their lives to people in war-torn areas and teach them how to fight, or just sit with them when their families had gotten slaughtered.
But the one thing I love about this man is he understands the fear of God. He knows it’s not about him. It’s such a humble place that he serves from. I think we’d all be better off in that place. I know I would. I hungered for it. I watched that movie and I went, I just want to give my life away. This is not about me. We will be so much more filled up because what we really want is connection. That’s really what we were designed for, and we’re not going to connect if we’re just going after our own thing.
Gina:
I’ve had some people say, “The occult is bad, but New Age is a separate thing over here that is fine.” What a powerful example of you in that bookstore. You walk in, it smells good, and then there’s the soft music playing, and then there are books that are just very simple. And then there’s astrology and then the further you go suddenly there’s a pagan section. The further you go suddenly there is an occult section. And then there’s a back room.
I think that’s kind of a demonstration of the journey. That there is this “disguised as an angel of light”. But then the further you go it gets all distorted. I’m not trying to be a fear-monger or trying to be religious and say, “No, how dare you.” But we need to be wise. We need to trust and believe and get to know who our God is. He’s calling us deeper into holiness.
Jesus didn’t save us just so that our sins are forgiven, and so that we are going to heaven someday; He saved us for relationship. He saved us to invite us into His kingdom. He saved us to be sons and daughters. He saved us to be seated with Him in heavenly places. He saved us for so much more than just going to a church on Sunday morning, volunteering, and then going on with the rest of my life. He saved us for more.
When we choose to either disregard all that He made accessible to us, or we choose to sit with one foot in and one foot out, we’d be the fence sitter. We have an enemy who’s trying to rip us off. He’s not trying to bless us with something. He’s trying to steal something, and distract us so we don’t see. And that’s what breaks my heart. Feeling a determination to be able to do my own thing, or a determination to create my own faith or a spiritual experience that fits my needs is all just a deception to steal from us, and from all of the abundance and the lavish love of the presence of God made available to us.He made it available at a very high cost.
This isn’t a statement of condemnation. This is a statement of Holy Fear. What would it look like if we would just stop for a moment and go to Him? God can take our questions. God can take our anger. God can take our frustration. God can take all of it. He can take our offense. We should be taking it to Him, and allowing Him to answer us.
Understanding Our Kind and Holy God
Rheanna:
He may be the only one who can bear the weight of our pain. I don’t know that anybody else can. We go looking everywhere else and yet He’s the only one who can really heal it.
Gina:
He’s safe. One of the biggest lies the enemy is propagated is that God is not safe. It astonishes me when you look at the Old Testament, when you look at David, a man after God’s own heart. Because he got it, but under the law, pre-cross, he understood that God was good.
Rheanna:
He also understood that when he went into the sanctuary on a day that he was hungry and running for his life, he ate the showbread in the Temple of God because he was starving. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes you’re not going to follow the rules perfectly. Sometimes God is going to go outside of that box, and David understood that. That we serve a God who is so much bigger than what we have chalked Him up to be, or where He’s supposed to fit. But David trusted Him.
Gina:
I love Habakuk because he spends a whole chapter complaining about these people. He complains saying, “How could you?!” He’s yelling at God, basically asking “How dare You?” And then the second chapter he says, “Now I’m going to sit myself on the rampart and wait to see what God says when He corrects me.” He knows that he’s just spouting.
Rheanna:
Isn’t that relationship? I’m going to air my grievances, and I may be wrong about it, but you are going to hear about it.
Gina:
Again, this is pre-cross, he is under the law, but understands that God is good, he understands that God is the best place to go with his grievances.
Rheanna:
He also understands that the correction will bring life. We always think correction means condemnation, but Christ’s correction always lifts us up. His correction is always life-giving. He’s always speaking into us and giving to us and making us more through it.
I love the example we see in the book of Job. He is the ultimate example of someone who just had it handed to him. You would think he had every right in the world to go to God and air the grievances that he did. But what’s so fantastic is when God replies to him and shows him creation as a response, and says, “Where were you Job when all of this happened? And when I told the water to come this far and no more, where were you?”
That put Job in his place, but I’m sure that gave Job a foundation, boundaries, and a safe place to know that this God is the God who can wipe out the universe with a blink of His eye. We just forget that, but we need to remember it because it’s our safe place. Kind of like when you hear good parenting advice, people always say, when your children are going nuts, they’re just looking for a boundary. They’re looking for a boundary, so you need to give it to them so that they can feel safe. That is what it’s about, because we need to feel safe, and God is all about that.
Gina:
Boundaries give freedom. I don’t remember what the name of it is, but there was a study where they had kids on a playground and they took away the fence and the kids all stayed closer to the building. But once they put the fence up, they ran all the way to the edge and they played through the whole field.
Thank you for being here. I appreciate your honesty and your wisdom and your willingness to share your journey. I’m excited for the things that God has for you because He has a lot.
Closing Prayer
Gina:
So before we rush off, I want to take a moment and allow you this space to do business with the Lord if you need to. Did this conversation stir up anything in you? Maybe you could relate to Rheanna’s story? Maybe you found yourself getting offended and trying to defend something? Or maybe you just feel convicted? First of all, I want to remind you that conviction is not condemnation, but it’s an invitation.
Just like at the end of Psalm 139, conviction is an invitation to say, “Search me God, and know my heart. Try me. Know my thoughts, and see if there’s any wicked way in me.” That word “wicked” is a strange word that feels harsh, but that word translated another way is “Idol”. Lord, see if there are any idols, anything that I’ve allowed to be placed on an altar in my heart, where You rightfully belong.
So I want to invite you to come into His presence and to surrender the things that you need to let go of, to turn away from the things that He’s showing you right now. That’s His still small voice. Father God, we come before you Lord, in Jesus’ name, we repent, and we say, we are sorry. Lord, would You forgive us? Do You forgive me for allowing things other than You to be on the throne of my life? Lord, we repent and renounce them.
Lord, would You cleanse us fresh with Your Spirit? Would You fill us with Your presence? Lord, would You replace the lies and the things that were not in view with the truth? Lord, would You be honored and glorified in our life? Lord Jesus, I just bless every person that has prayed that prayer. God, would You meet them? Would You answer that prayer in Jesus’ name?
I pray for the power of the Holy Spirit to come on Your sons and daughters, from the tip of their heads to the bottom of their feet. Lord, would You bring revival in the hearts of Your kids? Would they experience Your tangible presence. Lord, would You give them a hunger for Your Word and a love for Your people? We love you Jesus. We pray all of this in Your name. Amen.
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