CVC is partnering with our school body’s pastors — and we asked our pastors to give us some encouraging words and a meditation on a scripture that lined up with our theme: Living God’s Story. This week, we invited Hanford CRC pastor Lambert Sikkema.
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In God, whose word I praise, in the LORD, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? I must perform my vows to you, O God; I will render thank offerings to you. For you have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of life. Psalm 56:10-13⁠
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In 1991 there was a rock concert outside of Moscow. The Soviet Union had, at long last, collapsed. Westerners were welcomed, as was their popular music. More than a million people attended the concert, and 57 didn’t live to see the end of it. The Red Army provided security. There’s been nothing like it before or since.⁠

One of the bands was Metallica, playing “Enter Sandman”–a song about our universal fear of monsters in general and the ones under the bed in particular. Ironically, the song includes a child’s bedtime prayer with the phrase “if I die before I wake”–a strange thing for kids to be wondering about.⁠

Suddenly, after 70 years of the “monster”, without a shot being fired, the monster had collapsed and people could freely go to a concert and listen to musicians mock the monster. The crowd roared with elation and incredulity. They were fearlessly free…if only for the duration of the concert.⁠⁠

Jesus set us free from fear. The secret to living into that freedom is to hold fast to the Creator.

That was 30 years ago. Today in the West the monsters we face, like those throughout the ages, are of our own making. The monsters we face seem insurmountable, indomitable, life-threatening even, but only if we allow them that power. The Bible reminds us that Jesus set us free from fear. The secret to living into that freedom is to hold fast to the Creator, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Therefore “I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me…for you have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet⁠ from falling, so that I may walk before God in the light of life.”⁠

We arrived at the place where we fear the “monsters” more than we believe in the sovereignty of God and his capacity to keep our “feet from falling”. Fear not, says Jesus, I will never leave you or forsake you. Let’s live into that truth every day.

Want to send your children to a school where the word of God is used as a reference to live life to the fullest? Choose CVC: cvc.org/apply