Linen & Purple.

Fearlessness. What does that look like? What kind of woman is she? I know what Fear looks like. Fear empties the power of God out of our lives. It has us looking inward, looking at our circumstances. It reckons us silent. It causes us to fall into snares, lies, deceit, cheating. It causes great men and woman to fail in moral character. It paralyses and it all begins with such a small question: What if? I know the 'what if' voice well. The other night, I was looking online at the Cotton on Kids Sale. Kids winter clothing down, long sleeve t's down to $7 and womans down to $5, and then add another %30, and then, you can purchase a super duper cool tent for $20 for your kids and I spent over an hour building up a cart of clothes for next winter.. and all for $180 au! Bargain! I justified to myself that Id only have need of buying the boys a few pair of pants each, and maybe a jersey, and we would be comfortable for the cold season ahead. Yet when I went to go to checkout, I didnt have peace. I reasoned against it. Pffft, thats just the adrenalin rush coming down, and hey, I will have nothing to fear for winter 2014 and keeping warm. But God spoke to me "Fleur, would you trust me for my provision?". I internally wrestled with an answer for that. I wanted to reason "well, maybe if you give me a glimpse of how that provision might look, I might?".. I mean afterall, Id chosen all the muted natural colours I like and what if Gods provision involved gharish colours which just irk me. Or what if His provision were cheap tacky items that fell apart? I reflected back to a conversation Sam had with me earlier that night; "Fleur, did you know God not only provided food and water for the Israelites wandering, but it says right here in Deuteronomy 8:4 that their clothing did not wear out.. for 40 years!!". I shut down my cart. Id been there before. I was about 22yrs at the time and eager to get married, with no known male on the horizon. But the one thing I feared in getting married, was being without the things needed to set up home. I had this fear that I would be living in a cold and damp house, struggling just to get by. So I began buying stuff. Lots of it! I spent hundreds on kitchen items. Pots, utensils, tupperware. I stored them all up in my Glory Box and frequently pulled them out to look them all over and remind myself how secure I was. Oneday a while later, God asked me to sell it. He showed me it was purchases built on fear. So I obeyed. I set up a garage sale, and sold the lot. I think I made $200 on the entire lot! I was poorer and without my stash, but I was also emptied of fear. My Treasure Chest became a place where I purposed to store treasures that reflected Gods faithfulness and provision. For the next few years, it sat almost empty, with a nothing else bar some photos and a special album full of prayers I prayed for the man I would marry, whoever he was. A few years later, God brought Sam onto the scene of my life. During our courtship and engagement, God provided a piece of land for Sam to buy. Sam quietly began purchasing items for our new home, pots, utensils, appliances. He had no idea of my own story of building up and selling my stuff. Oneday he asked me if I minded him buying all these bits, and I nearly burst at the seams with joy to tell him what it meant to me. In the first year of our marriage, we moved into our new built home, with new and gorgeous appliances and a kitchen full of lovely things to make home. What is more, it required nothing of my fretting or planning. He honoured my obedience with His abundant faithfulness, and what is more, fear was not attached to it. The items did not own me, I was free from the burden of them. Our land nearly trebled in value in the first year and our kettle still goes all these years on.. which blows me away as its used relentlessly each day. What a huge lesson in the vast contrast between fear in action and Gods love in action. Proverbs 31: 21 When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet. She makes coverings for her bed; she is clothed in fine linen and purple. Fearlessness is a robe fit for royalty! And if God cared enough to mention that the wife of noble character is clothed in fine linen and the colour purple.. He sure cares about the details. Fearlessness is not the absence of loss or things that can harm. Note "when it snows". Its still going to snow! Its still going to get hard. As the Word of God says John 16:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” I know first hand, its still going to get cold, its still going to feel desperate sometimes. My adrenalin will still surge, sometimes the wind will feel knocked out of me. Im still going to react to spiders and turbulance. Fearlessness is not allowing those things to control my decisions. I cant defeat it by setting myself up for a series of perilous situations and hoping for the best,.. its not wrought from me, its wrought from saying to God "YES I WILL OBEY" Yes, God, I will obey You, because I trust Your character. Its a yielding of our will unto His and a decision that comes from repentance and surrender. Its realising that our way has never worked, that the outcome of our self preservation has been torment and paralysis. That what we are in need of, is Jesus Christ. I will never forget a woman who lived that out so real for me. She had suffered with an illness that left paralyzed her and left unable to swallow. It attacked her breathing. She was put into an induced coma and eventually recovered and learnt to eat, walk and talk again. It took years. When I was suffering with anxiety at my worst, she came and sat and talked to me. She told me; "when you feel like you cant breathe, sing". It worked! In January this year, she died suddenly. At her funeral, people spoke of how much a gift her life at been. In baking, in living, in serving, even when she herself had so little. But one thing her son spoke, left tears streaming down my cheeks. He said "my mum gave me the greatest gift ever, she wasnt afraid of dying". If ever there was a woman that could have feared it, it was her. She stared into its depths. She had literally known what it is to be paralysed by something out of her control. Yet she had tasted of Gods grace. She knew that Gods love is bigger still, that His purposes are greater, His ways higher. She knew what Corrie Ten Boom meant when she said "There is no pit so deep, that Gods love is not deeper still". What is God speaking to you today? What are the things that God is convicting you of? That He is saying "sweet child, that in you is of fear, not of me." Obey Him. Lift your eyes on Him and say yes. May God give you courage to stand on His promises!