Living Fearless: Exchanging the Lies of the World for the Liberating Truth of God

by Jamie Winship

Peter, at least in this moment, understands that being with Jesus is not a contractual, transactional, quid pro quo that is worthwhile as long as it’s working to his advantage. In fact, Peter explains his relationship with Jesus as quite the opposite. It’s a divinely initiated, covenantal relationship, the benefits of which are quite one-sided. Jesus alone has the words of eternal life and Jesus is the only hope because Jesus is the absolute Holy One of God, the Christ, the Son of the living God. Peter’s part is to receive.

Abiding, according to Dr. John Piper,5 is the act of receiving and trusting all that God has and is for us in Christ.

I walked onstage in Salt Lake City and said “Good morning” to a crowd of three hundred or so. I received a somewhat tepid “Good morning” in return. I followed my initial greeting by asking, “How are you doing?” and received an even weaker response with a few people mumbling “good” and one person shouting out “great.” The entire interchange, based on a superficial cultural formula, was largely meaningless for most, if not all, in the room. This often-used pattern of communication is called formulaic language formation, where I begin in a predictable manner and the audience responds in an appropriate yet predictable manner. There are two theories of language formation: formulaic language formation and generative language formation. The first means that you use language formulas. Once you learn the language formulas, you don’t have to think and create anymore. We laugh at this observation because that’s what most of us do. We learn language formulas. In the checkout line at a store, we’ve been taught to speak to the cashier and say, “Hey, how are you doing?” The cashier replies, “Fine, and you?” Sound familiar? This response is according to the cultural linguistic formula. It doesn’t matter what they say back because I’m just going to say, “Good,” pay the money, and leave. Neither of us actually cares what is really being communicated. If you have been married a long time (I’ve been married thirty-six years), you can get into a formula where you know what each other is going ...

“If that’s true,” I said to my friend, “how dangerous is it to live a life with no sense of your identity? How dangerous?” “You mean I would have an identity that leads to running a restaurant?” he asked. “Yes, yes, that’s it.” “And the restaurant would just be an extension of my identity?” “Yes. That’s right.” “I need to find my identity. Maybe I need to go to God and find my identity,” he said. No formulaic language in this conversation. No prefabricated gospel presentation. Just simple, generative conversation focused on this amazing young man and who he truly is to God. This is how Jesus talks to people. In the entire conversation, I never said one thing about being a Christian. The conversation was about personal identity, not empty ideology. When the guy dropped me off, he asked for my card. We’re going to meet so he can hear God tell him his identity. I didn’t suggest that, he did. That’s called sharing your faith.

“What do you want me to know and what do you want me to do in relation to the men there? Is there any part of me that is not in line with hearing your voice and acting from my true identity found in you?”

this person. That’s how I feel.” That’s confession. Notice I’m not saying, “Lord, I’m so sorry for feeling afraid; please take the fear away.” God doesn’t want to remove the fear; he wants to transform it.

Acknowledging the truth about your fear opens the way for repentance and for your truth (fear) to be transformed by God’s truth. Then you have authority over the fear rather than the fear controlling you. That is called freedom. Several years ago, a woman friend

The word used for sin in this verse in some of the older Greek texts is paraptōma, meaning “a deviation from what is true.” Confession is not telling all your moral failures to somebody. That’s not particularly helpful. When we confess, we are telling the truth about where we have deviated or moved away from what is true about God,

They were trying to figure out how to make themselves good. God ceased to become their source of truth. Instead, they became their own source of truth, separate from their Creator. The

Here’s God’s accountability group: “How do you have time to look at pornography if you’re living out your true identity? You know why you’re looking at pornography? Because you feel unworthy. You don’t know your true identity, so you’ve lost track of what is meaningful in life. You know what your identity has become? Shame. Fear. Guilt. But these are false identities that only feel true.”

Then your mind will begin focusing on your true identity and who it is you were always meant to be, which will then inform what you are supposed to do. Then even the mundane daily tasks will fill you with joy, and you won’t have the time or desire for distracting and destructive coping mechanisms—they are just not worth it anymore. You won’t have to cry out, “Help me not to do it!”

God loves leaders because every person God creates is made to be part of an eternal transformation process. As leaders are being transformed by the constant renewing of their hearts and minds, they are bringing transformation to the world around them.

When we take our eyes off Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith,6 we stop abiding and we become separate from truth. This separation results in a descent into falsehood. This descent, unchecked, whether gradual or rapid, is inevitable and often destructive.

Confession (Greek, homologeō—“to agree with, assent, not to deny”) results in God’s forgiveness (Greek, aphiēmi—“to send away”) of our sins (Greek, hamartia—“missing the mark, wandering from the path of uprightness”).

Deficient in wisdom? I feel as if I’m regularly lacking in wisdom. What’s the solution? Ask. And please note that the one you are asking is no distant, petulant, capricious god of our own invention that cannot help and leads us astray.1 Instead, we are calling on the One who spoke creation—that includes us—into existence and calls us by name. This is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gives wisdom (Greek, sophia—“broad and full of intelligence; used of the knowledge of very diverse matters”) liberally without reproach or faultfinding.

Jesus knew our tendency to turn things into a formula and make them a ritual. That’s what we do to avoid relationship.

Speaking again on the topic of prayer, Jesus said that the Father knows what we need before we ask him.8 What does that tell us about how we should pray? How does it inform our prayer life? What should we be asking God? Perhaps when we pray, we should ask, “Lord, what do I need?”

There is no Hebrew word meaning “obey”; neither is there an English word for שמע.

In what ways is your false view of yourself, however real the mistakes you’ve made in the past, diminishing your capacity to hear and respond appropriately to the God who calls you by name and whose Word is ready to slice through all the lies you’ve come to believe about yourself?

As David Benner writes, “We do not find our true self by seeking it. Rather, we find it by seeking God.”

Do we separate people into categories? The word category is from the Greek word kategoros that means “to accuse.” Revelation 12:10 names Satan as “the accuser of our brethren.” Do we categorize people rather than affirm the beauty and uniqueness of God’s creation?

Take a moment and visualize Jesus standing before you, offering to serve you. Would you let him? Or would you be like Peter who, when Jesus offered to wash his feet, refused: “You shall never wash my feet” (John 13:8 NIV). Jesus’s response to Peter’s refusal was strong: “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me” (v. 8 NIV). In what ways are you refusing to let the Lord serve you? We must be willing recipients of all that God has for

The negative emotion is an invitation from God to seek him and his truth about the situation.

We’re learning to remember that in every situation we have a choice about how we’ll respond. We can say, “Wait a second. Why am I so mad about this?” Instead of fuming and raging, we can ask God, “Where is this hostility coming from? What’s the source of it? Where did this first begin in my life? Search me, Lord. How does this situation make me feel? What do you want me to know about this, Lord?”

These small battles are significant. Don’t minimize them; they are important. The enemy knows you don’t see them that way. Pay attention to what he’s doing. Ask God, “What do you want me to know? What do you want me to do?” Especially when negative emotions come up, indicating that what you believe in the situation is wrong, ask God, “What is this? What is the source of this negative emotion? Where does it come from? Why do I feel unworthy and fearful in this situation? Help me to know myself.”

Do you know the distance between your mind and God’s mind? Zero. There is no distance. Jesus said it would be better for us if he left so that he could send the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts.6 God never stops communicating with us—never.

Here’s an exercise to practice: when you’re stuck in traffic or somewhere else, just say, “Lord, remind me of a time when I was a child and you were communicating your love to me, and I didn’t even realize it. Remind me of a time in my past when you were speaking to me, and I didn’t know it was you.”

“Wow, this is me! This is what God created me for.”