GEM of the day: BE CLAD BY “FEAR NOT…” ANGEL MESSAGES!
Applications ideas to follow to make MODERN-DAY DEMONSTRATIONS of God’s protecting power!
Let God Expressed Meekly/Mightily in you sparkle brightly with insights from Cobbey Crisler & others as found in The Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“Man”
for March 6, 2022
[Click & scroll to hear a sample Sunday AUDIO offering in advance of this Bible Lesson.)
(Cobbey’s insights are shared with the blessing of Janet Crisler janetcrisler7@gmail.com)
by Warren Huff, CedarS Executive Director Emeritus, warren@cedarscamps.org
ADVANCE GEM: BE CLAD BY “FEAR NOT…” ANGEL MESSAGES (Isa. 43:5/R. Reading & Daniel 10:19/Go. Text) An example of a Cobbey Crisler Sunday School student who proved God is “… the one who saves me from violence.” (II Samuel 22:3 plus Isa. 43:5, 1 John 4:18, Job 3:25)
[Cobbey Crisler on handling thoughts of fear:] “Fear… resting in the thought of everyone, especially today, with so many things that seem to be happening unexpectedly. Is that all accumulating in the form of suppressed fear? Look at what Job says happens.
“…the thing that I have greatly feared is come upon me…” (Job 3:25)
What is the relationship between the fear and the thing? … It’s magnetic.
If we understand that to be true about the quality of fear in thought, would anyone be afraid again? Would anyone in his right mind want to be afraid again? If we knew all that fear was doing— was attracting the thing that we were afraid of— right to us? Just think of the disservice so many Hollywood movies do, if this is correct. Also, ask yourself, if it is a coincidence, that right after we see certain movies, that we suddenly find the same disasters are occurring? The focus is human thought!
This is one of the most beautiful exposures of the nature of this to-and-fro evil to attack humanity. Our effort must be to break that magnetism so that the thing feared cannot come to man individually or collectively, because there’s nothing in thought to attract it.
The textbook gives us the solution to fear, the textbook of the Bible. Because 1st John (4:18) gives us the solution to fear. What is it? “Perfect Love castest out fear:” What kind of love? It’s got to be perfect, not a chink in it, in the armor. Is that stating to us that only in thought is a complete defense, or panoply (a complete suit of armor), with the threat of something that otherwise would be fearsome indeed?
[Powerful application example shared by Cobbey:] One of my Sunday School students once had the rest of the class on the edges of their chairs as a result of an experience she had just that week. It illustrates this. She was walking home very late at night after an extension course at a local college in a very poor area of town, not lit very well. As she was walking through suddenly she heard a car behind her. It squealed its brakes, stopped at the curb, and out jumped four leather-jacketed “gentlemen.” They ran right towards her, grabbed her, and started dragging her into the nearby woods.
Here comes the big question, like it came from Noah, like it came for Daniel, like it came for Job. Here it is still a question mark in her thought. That girl had been used to studying the Bible. She was pretty good with it theoretically. Here came an opportunity to see if it had any practical value. Of course, you don’t think too intellectually at times like that. She said to the class that all that came to her was something she hadn’t even recognized was from the Bible. She never even remembered reading it. It was (from Isaiah 43:5) “Fear not for I am with you.” She kept shouting that at the top of her lungs, “Fear not for I am with you.”
Here was a mob scene. Something in the human nature of one of those boys was touched by that higher sense because it broke up the mob slightly. He said, “Hey, wait a minute, let’s let her alone. She’s not that kind of a girl.” That brief stopping of what looked like the inevitable was sufficient for a car, just coming around to catch the scene in its headlights. It was a police car. The boys dropped her fast, got into their car and took off. The policemen, sizing it up quickly, stopped, went over to this gal and picked her up and said, “Would you like a ride home? Are you alright?” She said, “Yes, thank you very much.” She rode in the car with the policemen back to her house and the driver said, “You know, little lady, how lucky you are. This isn’t our regular beat. Our beat’s one block up from here. But my buddy said, ‘Hey, tonight, why don’t we just go down and check that area?’ So, I agreed and we went.”
That gal, in really reaching out for the only possible help—there was no human help — had apparently touched the solution for her experience that could be the solution for all of us. What needed to be counteracted in thought was fear, because look what came to her, “Fear not!” Why? The textbook answer, “For I am with thee.” Just that mustard seed was able to counteract what would have been the magnetic attraction to the thing she greatly feared. It was also apparently enough to, not only reach the thought of one boy, but perhaps even to alert the policemen to an idea that they had not contemplated on the previous night.
And everything arrived at once. You can imagine what that meant to the kids when they heard that in Sunday School and to me as well. I’ve always kind of taken it as a beautiful example of what Job is saying here in revealing the nature of fear. (Job 3:25)
There’s a movie ad I read not too recently showing that we’re almost gluttons for punishment as far as human nature is concerned. That movie ad—maybe you’ve seen it—it promises audiences in big, bold headlines, “AT LAST—TOTAL TERROR!” (Laughter) Who wants total terror? But people are paying money for it! When they leave that theater, what’s dancing on their eyelids and their mental memory as far as these things are concerned? What does a knock on the door, or a scream in the night, or anything else now mean in terms of the helplessness of man and man shoved back into no-dominion-at-all, but fatalistically waiting for what comes?”
[W: We have an answer in selecting entertainment that doesn’t incuce fear and whenever we are tempted to fear to remember the angel message: “FEAR NOT! FOR i AM WITH YOU!” (Isa. 43:5)
“The Case of Job,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
