"To boldly go where no man has gone before." (William Shatner (James Tiberius Kirk), Start Trek, 1965)

To do something boldly is certainly not akin to doing it with fear.  Mary, the mother of Jesus, ‘went where no woman had been before’, and she did it without fear.  She did it because God asked her to (through an angel), and because she was a humble servant of God.  

Today, a lot of people have the talent to start their own business, but don’t because of fear of what could happen.  People also have abilities to boldly proclaim the Word of God to strangers, but shrink back from that mission because of both a lack of faith, and an abundance of fear.  Our (The Fayetteville Church members) mission is to, as described briefly yesterday, to contemplate on some already-created devotional quiet times to aid during the hustle and bustle of the holiday period.  Today’s discussion is on fear; so I thought I’d correlate some of our lives with an imaginary person (Cpt Kirk) of the future.

Captain Kirk once uttered, "You either believe in yourself or you don’t."  And the reason people DON’T, is because of something (or someone) they fear.  If evangelists and entrepreneurs both replaced their fears with belief of success, we’d have a lot more jobs in this country, as well as a whole lot more disciples of Jesus.  We all know the Bible is clear on this subject as well...you can do anything with God.  Believe it?  Or do you fear even trying?

"In every revolution, there’s one man with a vision." Again, a quote by the Starship Enterprise Captain.  Men with vision don’t exhibit fear...they demonstrate faith.  Imagine where our church would be today if more men were like David, the man with a vision for the entire Israelite nation.  Or, on the flip side, imagine where our church WOULDN’T be if Jesus, THE man with a vision, didn’t act on his worldly revolution.  No fear. Absolutely none, not even when confronted by the most prominent religious leaders of His day. We, men and women in His church today, need to throw off fear of failure, fear of persecution, fear of public speaking, and boldly go forward with our OWN revolution and reveal to others the glory of our God.

Kirk also stated in one episode of Star Trek, "Above all else, a god needs compassion."  We HAVE that God.  We have an alpha-to-omega being who loves each of us dearly.  He demonstrates the nth degree of compassion, time and time again, letting us mess up, and each time, lovingly takes us back.  We have that God of compassion.  And because we do, we need not fear ANYTHING..not even death!!!!

Like Mary, like James T., we each need to put aside our fears, point our own starships out into the vast unknown and put our evangelism into warp drive, but do so with faith that God will be with us every step of the way.