Teach the older men [and women] to be… self-controlled.
Titus 2:2 NIV

Dale Evans (wife of singer and cowboy actor Roy Rogers) loved Jesus with all her heart and made sure everyone in Hollywood knew it. Here's one of her prayers:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight [or direct your paths]."1

A Daily Encounter reader asks, "Will you please write a daily on trust?"

Lack of trust is caused by fear. And fear comes in many shapes and sizes. Some fears are healthy. Others are crippling. We rightly fear driving through a red traffic light or driving down the freeway—the wrong way. Major fears and seemingly unfounded ones almost always have their roots in a past fearful experience.

I used to be terrified of public speaking and this, according to what I have read, is a common fear. I was scared to death that when I got up to speak, I'd run out of things to say and make a fool of myself. This was heightened because of my insecurity. In younger days it took me several years to get up enough courage to ask for a date because I was afraid of rejection—another common fear.

An even bigger fear for me was being afraid to love. "How could this be?" you ask. "How could anyone be afraid of the very thing we all need the most?"

The love I was afraid of was not that of friends, but the love between a man and a woman. I was usually attracted to gals who weren't interested in me (romantically that is). This kept me safe. And as long as I was just a good friend with the woman who is now my wife, I was fine and felt safe. But once Joy started loving me, I freaked out—big time! I panicked a blue streak and wanted to run for my life.

Fortunately I knew it was my problem. But had I not thought so highly of Joy, I would have run from love—again. I also knew that if I didn't get help to overcome my fear, I could spend the rest of my life running from love. It took me a long time to see this.

My fear of love and inability to trust had deep roots in early childhood. I grew up in a very dysfunctional home. I had an absentee father (emotionally speaking) and never felt that he loved me. My mother set me up to be the "little husband" in the family and I felt over-leaned on and smothered. And I also had an aunt that killed her own baby and apparently attempted to kill, or at least hurt, me when I was a baby. (She committed suicide.) I also lost a little sister to whom I was very much attached. She died when I was only five. So in my childish mind I had come to believe that if you love me, you will leave me, reject me, smother me, or you may even try to kill me.

This deeply buried fear I brought unconsciously into my adult life and spent most of my life running from love. It was this fear that got triggered when Joy started loving me. (By way of interest, some years ago a psychological test showed that I had a buried terror. At the time, I had no idea what it was.)

Many adults who were abused, abandoned, neglected, or felt rejected in childhood also struggle with similar or related debilitating fears.

So you ask, "How did I overcome? How did I learn to trust?"

To be continued...

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, 'I will praise you; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made,' and I thank you that no one understands me like you do. Please help me to understand myself and the causes behind some of the irrational things I sometimes do. Help me to admit and face all of my fears and bring them to you for your healing, and guide me to the help I need to overcome them. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."

Go out into the country lanes and behind the hedges and urge anyone you find to come, so that the house will be full. (Luke 14:23)

This is one of my favorite stories Jesus told about the Kingdom of God (Luke 14:16-24). After preparing a great feast, a wealthy man sent his servants out to bring in the invited guests. But none of them could come. They all had pretty lame excuses, too: "I have just bought a field and must inspect it… I have just bought five pairs of oxen, and I want to try them out… I now have a wife so I can't come…" So he sent his servants out to round up anyone they could find.

Now I'm pretty sure this parable was told mainly for the benefit of the religious leaders who were following Jesus around, testing Him and trying to prove He was not the promised Messiah. They would have been the invited guests who had better things to do when it came time for the big feast. They were the ones with a sense of entitlement. They had received their embossed invitations generations earlier through the Law and the Prophets, and they would certainly have assumed they had reservations in heaven. They would have received this story as a grave insult.

But the other side of the story is all about the people who do get in at the end. They are the ones who never expected it. They don't have a clue how they got there. They are not sure how to behave — they're not even sure what this is. What a beautiful picture of the grace of God, to invite a bunch of clueless people into heaven! No one woke up that morning expecting to be at a feast. What good fortune! How could this be happening to me? It's my presumption that this will be the prevailing attitude of heaven. I just can't imagine anyone looking around and saying, "Yep, this is about what I expected," or "Look at that group over there. How did they ever get in?"

No, everyone's going to be flabbergasted that they got in, and pretty wide-eyed about the whole thing, and this merely captures a refreshing sense of fellowship that has been going on here on earth as long as we've known about our salvation. When it comes to fellowship, no one's any better than anybody else. Everyone is surprised and full of gratitude for receiving what we don't deserve, and that puts us all in the same boat. This is what we have here on earth; I don't think heaven will be any different.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about "That Voice."

Our word for today from the Word of God is John 10:3. It says, "The watchman opens the gate for the shepherd and the sheep listen to His voice. He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out." Here's a fundamental that you need to remember every day. "You sheep ... Him Shepherd." And Jesus describes this incredibly personal relationship that you as a sheep have with Him as your Shepherd.

Oh yeah, there's a big Christian flock. Sure, sometimes you feel like just another church attender or just an anonymous blur in the huge family of God. But Jesus doesn't see a flock. Just like my father-in-law as a boy. He didn't see a bunch of sheep. He saw Woolly and Fluffy and Blackie, and Hoofer. Whatever you call sheep. He had an individual relationship with each sheep in that flock. That's how Jesus sees you. Others may see a flock of a hundred Christians or a thousand Christians, but Jesus sees a thousand ones. He knows you by name. He loves you as you.

The sheep know there is only one voice they can trust; the voice of the One who really loves them. My father-in-law's sheep had decided which voice they would follow and who would decide which way they went. That's what it's supposed to be like between you and Jesus right now. Is it? The only one voice that you will follow - Jesus. Only one person deciding which direction you'll go - Jesus.

But maybe there's another voice that's been drowning out your shepherd's voice lately. Maybe you're hearing the voice of your family or your friends; maybe someone you're dating, maybe the voice of your company, or even of a religious leader. But the voice you've been tending to follow lately may be taking you a direction that your Shepherd would never take you.

See, there is only one voice you can trust - the Shepherd who laid down His life for you. Jesus said in John 10, "I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep." It's time to decide again that the voice of Jesus is the only voice you'll follow. All those other voices will lead you where you'll only end up lost. Your Good Shepherd will never lead you wrong. He's the One who loves you most. And He says He puts His sheep out and He goes ahead of them. Everywhere He'll send you, He'll get there first. You'll be safe. You can un-complicate your life from the confusion of following so many different voices.

That voice of Jesus may be speaking inside your heart right now. It may feel just like a strange spiritual tug. But the fact is, the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for you, his wandering sheep, is trying to bring you into a relationship with Him. That is the tug you feel; that is the voice of the Shepherd calling you to belong to Him. You may have believed in Him, but never really belonged to Him. You've never really given Him your whole life. You can do that this very day. I'd love to be a part of helping you with that, if you'll just go to our website. It's yoursforlife.net. We'll help you in how to get started with Him, and be sure you have Him.