Lessons from America’s Past

Zane Grey was a noted author of western lore in the early 20th century. His book “Heritage of the Desert” published in 1910 tells the story of a robbed and beaten man who is rescued by a rancher, taken into his home and family, and while having his health restored is taught all about ranching.  Then to finish his healing he is given provisions, companions and a rifle and sent for the season to the high country to care for the rancher’s sheep.

He is accompanied by a Navajo woman, and two men.  Having learned to shoot during his recovery, he easily and quickly dispatches the coyotes and wolves that come to kill sheep.

One day a bear roars into the middle of the sheep, bent on destruction and the man gets off a quick shot, wounding it barely but scaring it off.   Days later the bear returns, partially lame but hell bent to kill.  This time it bypasses the sheep and rushes toward the woman who becomes catatonic in fear, unable to move. The man shoots the bear from a distance, but the bear seems completely unaffected by the numerous bullets he fires. If anything his bullets only seem to anger the bear more.

Seeing his shots as worthless, the man suddenly recalls the wise training of the rancher who told him that in case of a bear, ‘you need to wait until you see the bear rise up before shooting or your shots will be pointless.’  Just as the bear had nearly reached the woman it rose up on back legs to attack and the fatal shot to the heart then fired brings him down.  Then and only then does the woman recover from her fear.

I see in this story, key elements of our walk with God.

FEAR

Fear is an ever-present danger to our spiritual, mental and even our physical life.  Each and every one of us has some degree of fear that is resident in our mind because of the things we’ve been taught, things caught and learned from the experiences in our lives that have become deeply embedded in who we have become.   We also cannot escape Satan’s attacks which normally target our weakest places and like the woman in the story we ignore or give into to them at our deepest peril.  Ignoring the danger, a catatonic response or trying to deal with things on our own often proves to be catastrophic.

The Armor of God available to us in the Bible from John 15:5 for example, reminds us “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”  John also tells us that as we abide in God’s perfect love for us, it is the remedy for all fear.

TRUST

Trust is the only thing that can overcome the fear that Satan continues to throw at us.  Trust is built over time by gaining insights provided in Scriptures, and from seeking wise counsel from godly men and women. It is also built as we see the working wisdom played out day by day.  The man in the story had been beaten by robbers only adding to the deep distrust of men that he’d developed over time from earlier abuses. Being restored by the rancher and healed under his care grew a previously unknown trust in his heart and mind.    The care he received from the rancher not only restored his health, it built a relationship of intimacy with him built on a growing love and trust.

WISDOM

The third element of our walk with God is Wisdom in taking in all the instruction we can get, to gain the knowledge needed to successfully negotiate life in His care.  For us today we have the complete Scriptures that those in the 1st century did not have.  The disciples who had walked with Jesus for three years, like us and the woman in the story, gave into their fears and their life-learned dysfunctions over and over, and it wasn’t until they received the Holy Spirit that they grew strong in their abiding trust.

Some of us are paralyzed by our learned fears, some say we have no fears, but the wise among us recognize they exist in us and quickly take those fears and fire back Scripture, even as Jesus did in the wilderness with Satan.  God’s Word never returns void – and arguments, self-sufficiency, and giving into to our fears always has bad outcomes.   If we don’t know the Scriptures well, we are vulnerable to the thoughts from Satan that he has rooted deep in our minds over time through what we think we know. Too often what we think we know is wrong and misleading to healthy living.  Equally bad is knowing Scriptures but relying on ourselves instead of calling on Hm for our response to the fear.

Life then is recognizing fear for what it is – Satan’s attempt to dislodge our faith and destroy the trust we have in Him. It is acknowledging that fear and laying it at the feet of Jesus and taking up our cross in trust to see the battle given over to God’s defeat of the enemy.   It is taking up the full armor of God and rebuking Satan’s attempt to marshal the lies that will ultimately derail us.

I think Dallas Willard’s approach to our day is to take time to mull and meditate on Scriptures we do know wherever we are, whenever we can so that when a situation occurs that Satan does throw fear at us, we have an instant recall (think Google with God) of pertinent verses to take us through the issue.

We need to remember that God has not promised us an easy path but will be there with us through it. And Hebrews 11 is always there to remind us that even if we don’t see the promises of God revealed in our lives today, the saints of old did not either, but they all had their focus on eternity.

So I ask again as I have for more than a decade – “What’s my/your EPQ?” (Eternity Perspective Quotient– on a scale of 1-10, it indicates the level of our focus about Eternity in our purpose or whether it is on the here and now.)  I believe the only way to raise our EPQ is to follow Dallas Willard’s wisdom and Jesus’s model of interaction with Satan in the wilderness and do battle with the lies only using God’s Word.