Back Row Faith

Fearing GodMatthew 10:26-31

Jesus tells a group of frightened people to fear, and then tells them what to fear, and finishes with two sparrows and a headcount. This message reads Matthew 10, why the relocation of fear ends in tenderness rather than in threat, and what happens to the wrong fear when the right one arrives.

He Told Them to Be Afraid of the Right Thing

Messages

Watching the Strongest One in the Family Get Small

Twenty Years in the Room and He Has Never Used Any of It

They Checked an Apostle and Luke Wrote Down That It Made Them Noble

He Said the True Thing in the Temple and Then Went Home and Was Subject to Them

He Could Say Every Word of It and Feel Nothing While He Said It

He Asks Them What Size They Think a Man Is

Waiting to Be Handed a Faith You Can Feel

He Told Them to Be Afraid of the Right Thing

They Never Actually Said It and He Wept Anyway

They Started on Somebody Else's Report and Did Not Stay There

They Asked for More Faith and He Answered With a Seed

He Brought Back More Than He Was Asked For and It Counted for Nothing

Seventy Times Seven and the Sum He Put Next to It

Everything the Fear of God Is Described as Producing

Luke Stopped and Wrote Down Three Names Nobody Would Have Missed

The Timing Word in Romans 5 Is the Whole Argument

He Set the Commandment and the Tradition Side by Side and Named Which Was Which

Two Men Went Up to Pray and Only One Went Home Right

He Named the Place Where Nobody Was Watching

The Instruction Is Given to Whoever Remembers

Two Believers, Opposite Practices, and One Instruction to Both

He Could Not Argue and He Had One Thing He Was Sure Of

She Did Not Explain Herself and He Explained Her

The First Thing He Said to Her Was a Request

It Started as Joy and Somewhere It Turned Into Effort

Not Fully at Home in Either of Your Two Countries

He Had Inherited a God He Had Never Wrestled With

Alone in the Middle of Forty Relatives

Every Decision Being Made by People Who Are Not in the Room

The Word He Used Is About Limping, Not About Standing Still

The Story Has Been Told So Often It Became Who She Is

She Was in Everybody's Plan and Nobody's Family

From the Cross He Arranged Who Would Take Care of His Mother

Rules That Look Like Wisdom and Never Once Touch the Thing

He Fed the Brothers Who Sold Him and Nobody Made Him Do It

He Loses His Words the Moment Anybody Looks at Him

He Had the Better Upbringing and He Counted It Loss

He Had the Chance and He Cut a Piece of Cloth Instead

He Could No Longer Tell Whether He Was Serving God or Managing People

Somebody Has to Walk You In and Usually Nobody Does

He Did Not Tell Them to Stop Counting the Mint

God Is Greater Than Your Heart and Knoweth All Things

Vengeance Is Mine, Which Means Somebody Else Is Holding It

He Took the Handwriting Out of the Way and Nailed It to His Cross

She Chose the Older Woman's God and Not Only Her Country

The Nightly Audit and the Verse That Cancels It

They Walked In Backwards So They Would Not Have to See

The Accusation Was Accurate and It Was Overruled Anyway

Two Versions of Himself and the Cost of Running Both

He Climbed a Tree to Watch and Got Called Down by Name

It Has Started Reaching People Who Were Not Even There

The One Commandment That Came With a Promise Attached to It

He Made Them Choose Something They Were Already Doing

He Named His Son After the Thing He Could Not Do

The Second Half of That Verse Is Almost Never Read Out

Three Words at the Front of Romans 8 and One of Them Is Now

He Said It While It Was Still Being Done to Him

Created for the Works and Never Once Saved by Them

They Searched the Scriptures and Would Not Come to the One They Were About

In Church His Whole Life and Could Not Say Who the Holy Spirit Is

Peter Changed Where He Sat When the Visitors Came

The Older Brother Was Not Wrong About Anything He Said

They Believed and Said Nothing, and John Tells You Exactly Why

The First Council the Church Ever Held Met About Exactly This

Called by Your Function Since You Were Nine

Moses Told a Generation Who Were Not There That the Covenant Was With Them

Paul Told a Young Man How to Raise a Hard Thing With an Older One

Told About Him for Thirty Years and Never Once Tried Him

The Law Itself Plans for the Day a Child Asks Why

The Last Sentence of the Old Testament Is About Two Generations

The Thoughts You Have Never Said to Anybody

It Came Through His Grandmother and Then It Was His

The One Small Right Thing Nobody Is Going to Approve Of

He Stopped a Whole Crowd to Find the One Person Nobody Had Noticed

He Said Two Things That Cannot Both Be True and Was Not Corrected

He Was Certain He Was the Only One and He Was Wrong by Seven Thousand

If It Had Worked They Would Have Stopped Offering

He Cannot Pray Past One Name