As countries go into lock-down throughout the world because of COVID-19, Pastor and author, Max Lucado, is offering special advice to all of us.
Lucado is the Pastor of the Oak Hill Church, in San Antonio, Texas, and also is a New York Times bestselling author, and today he is asking Christians to respond in faith over fear with the present Coronavirus situation. “We’ve never lived in a time like this. This is unprecedented.”
“I think this a time where we need to be feeding our faith,” he said. “If you feed our faith, your fears will starve. If you feed your fears, your faith will starve. Our tendency is to feed our fears. We have to do intentional things to feed our faith.”
He also said for every believer to choose faith and guard themselves against thoughts which stir fear because of all the negativity.
“When I turn on the news this evening, I’ll hear somebody say things are getting worse. If I don’t guard myself, I’ll let that create a sense of anxiety that will fill my heart, and then I will purvey that to the world,” he explained.
“We think that just because we have a thought, we have to think it,” he added. “We don’t have to receive it. There are lots of lies out there and falsehoods distributed right now, in the form of exaggeration, like, ‘We’ll never get through this’ and other overstatements. We need to guard against those things because they can suck us down.”
He pointed out to what Paul the Apostle said to the church of Corinth in his letter found in 2nd Corinthians to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
“This means, we hear that thought, and then we pray: ‘I know it seems things are getting worse, but Lord, you are in control, and I’m not going to surrender to that. I give my fear to you,’” described Max. “Instead of allowing anxiety into my heart, faith goes into my heart so that later, what I say is, ‘Things are tough, but I believe in a good God and He’s on the throne.’ I become one who purveys hope instead of fear.”
Max said that instead of being fearful and worried, every believer should look unto God and ask God, “Lord, what are You saying to me during this crisis?”
“I believe His message is both personal and global,” emphasized Pastor Max. “Some of us need to hear something individually. For example, I sensed the Lord was telling me, ‘Max, don’t depend on the economy.’ It could be that God is telling people, ‘Don’t trust entertainment for your fulfillment.’”
He said, “Who would’ve foreseen empty sports stadiums? This feels like a science fiction novel. It could be that some of us need to hear the Lord saying, ‘Quit making an idol out of these sources of pleasure. Come to me for fulfillment.”
“Go to the Lord, ask what He’s saying, and then say, ‘How can we be used by you? How can we serve others?’” he advised. “It’s not easy because of social distancing. But we can text and call people, drop gifts off for someone, we can get creative, especially with the vulnerable.”
Max Lucado said that believers should read the Scripture to know how to respond in times of crisis and he said that Jesus provided us with the perfect example.
“If you want to know how Jesus responds to a global calamity, we can look at the way Jesus responded to the fact that 5,000 men women and children had no food, and how he fed them,” he said. “Want to look at the way Jesus responds to the evil specter of death? We can see how He responds when Lazarus died by raising him from the dead.”
Max emphasised that we, Christians, should “keep our Bibles and hearts open” more than ever before. Amen! We agree with Pastor Max Lucado that the Bible is the best source of information we have for all the questions that are lurking in our minds about the Coronavirus and the end of the world.
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