As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
Read the series.
Believe it or not, one year I played football. American football. I was an offensive lineman.
Pop Warner League. Seventh grade. Weight limit was 110 pounds at the top, 75 at the bottom. I was 2 pounds too light, but they let me play anyway.
We called ourselves the Patriots. (We were in a Boston suburb.) We lost every game but one.
Written in 2018; read the series.
When Adam sinned, God confronted him. And in a really remarkable display of chutzpah (was the first language Yiddish?), Adam blamed his wife. And then, in the same breath, he blamed God himself: “the woman, whom YOU gave to me … “ (Gen 3.12).
“Almost 7 in 10 pastors (69%) believe there is a growing sense of fear within their churches about the future of the nation and world.” - Lifeway
Learning from History, not Reacting to It - Dave Doran
It’s often said that “fear not” is the most repeated command in the Bible. The claim is also made that there are 360 instances of the command, nearly one for each day of the year.
I don’t know how they arrived at that number. KJV has the phrase “fear not” more than any other English translation, and Logos finds it only 63 times. Expanding the search string to “fear not” OR “do not fear,” ESV has the largest count at only 70 occurrences.
“In their indispensable book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Haidt and… Greg Lukianoff have documented how a spirit of ‘safetyism’ (which is rooted in adult anxieties) has deeply influenced how we raise our kids.” - The Dispatch
“…the foremost fear in the U.S. (for the sixth year in a row) is fear of ‘corrupt government officials.’ It’s a fear shared by Republicans (84.6 percent) and Democrats (77.8 percent) alike… the next highest-ranking fear (‘people I love dying’) is a full 20 points lower.” - TGC
“Some people feel like we’re accelerating headlong toward a precipice, uncontrolled and uncontrollably. And on the heels of such thoughts inevitably come fear, despair, desperation, rage. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.” - Olinger
“When, like Timothy, you’re facing a challenge that seems too big for you, it’s helpful to know that … our Father has not given us a panicking kind of spirit. But it’s also helpful to know what he has given us. Paul specifies three gifts from an omnipotent, gracious, knowledgeable, and sympathetic Father.” - Olinger
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