Fear and Spring Break

I was reading in Esther earlier today and part of it stuck out to me. In chapter four after Haman made the decree for all the Jews to be killed, Mordecai told Esther to go to the king's chamber to plead for the Jews. The problem was, the law said that anyone who went to the king's chamber without first being summoned by him would be killed unless he extended the golden scepter allowing that person to live. Esther was left with the choice to risk her life to try to save her people or stay safe (for the time being) and let her people die. She tells Mordecai to gather the other Jews and fast and pray as she also fasts and prays. Then she makes this statement. "And so I will go to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish!"

We all face fears every day. Some are rational, some are irrational. Someone with a fear of public speaking might imagine that they will get up in front of everyone and stumble over their words causing everyone to laugh and ridicule them and throw rotten tomatoes their direction. This would be an irrational fear in most situations. Most audiences are nicer than this and don't carry rotten tomatoes with them. Some fear can be very helpful though. Fear keeps me from petting a bear in the wild, or jumping out of an airplane with no parachute, or swimming out in the middle of the ocean. Esther's fear is a very rational fear. There is a very real chance that she will be killed. This fear would keep her from going to the king's chamber just because she feels like it. But in this case, the call of God on her life bids her to act against her fear and go anyway. I really like her response. She doesn't say "I know God will protect me." She says "If I perish, I perish." To me, that is such a real, down to earth response I can relate to. She doesn't know what will happen to her. But she's going to follow God anyway. How often does God call us to follow Him in spite of fear. Maybe you need to tell a friend what he's doing is wrong at the risk of losing his friendship. Maybe you need to drop your career and go be a missionary at the risk of not being able to provide for yourself. Or for some of the church that is still being persecuted, they risk being tortured or killed just by being a Christian. It's not wrong to be afraid in these situations. But let our response be like Esther. I'll do whatever God would have me do regardless of the outcome.

So things have been going well here in Australia. God is still doing an amazing work in me and pushing me to continually grow in Him. I'm learning some great things in my classes. New Testament intro is changing the way I look at my reading of the Bible. Personal Evangelism challenged the way I viewed witnessing and challenged me to do more of it. In worship band, I'm being stretched towards excellence in the music and worship I offer to God. A lot of what God is doing is taking concepts that I already know in my head and putting them in my heart. For example, I've read that story of Esther many times, but this time as I was thinking on it, Esther's response really jumped out at me like it hasn't before. What I wrote is nothing ground-breaking. It's probably something we all know, but the question is do we let it change us. I believe God's Word is powerful and we can change every time we have an encounter with it if we allow God to speak to us. But often times I think it never makes the jump from our head to our heart.

The last week has been spring break for us. Yes the seasons are opposite for us here. We start classes again tomorrow morning. I made it to the Blue Mountains yesterday and it was amazing. I went on a hike down into the forest area. Total, I probably hiked about six miles. I passed the Three Sisters, which is three rock formations right next to each other. Down at the bottom was an old coal mine and there were some pretty interesting sites to see around there. Then on the way up is Katoomba Falls, which is a really cool waterfall. When I first came to it, I could only see the bottom portion of it, which was still pretty. But then as I hiked further, I saw that there was so much more. The waterfall is about 800 feet altogether. It's an amazing waterfall. I have pictures on facebook if you want to look on them. Then we went to the Blue Mountain Chocolate Factory. They are famous for their hot chocolate. You are given a plastic cup with a metallic cup inside with hot milk in it. There's a gap on the bottom part of the plastic cup where a candle sits inside to keep the milk hot. You then put chocolate chips inside the milk and stir it for the best hot chocolate you've ever had in your life. Well, that's about it. Hope things are going well for everybody else. God bless!