Long, Lonesome Road Book One Freedom from Fear
Published by Project Philip Ministries Copyright 2012 John Devries & Terry Slachter Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. 2 2
Well, it's a long, lonesome road Through the lifetime of a trucker But me and my ol friend here We gonna make it... (C.W. McCall) Are you as confident as C.W. McCall seems to be in his song, Long Lonesome Road? Truckers face many dangerous situations on any given day or night. McCall is best known for his Trucking song, Convoy, but in this less familiar song, he describes just some of the hardships truckers face with troubled roads, heavy loads, and wind rain and thunder. But me and my ol friend here, we gonna make it! Are you as confident? Are you going to make it? There are other dangers and fears truckers face everyday like the fear of falling asleep at the wheel, or the fear of dangerous curves around mountain ranges, or the fear of not making your truck payments, or even the fear of leaving your family behind for days on end. There are other fears that all of us human beings face every day deep within our hearts - including the fear of being all alone. These fears can make a trucker s life on the road seem like an endless night of driving. This little booklet, believe it or not, is a Bible study! It s brief, and it won t demand a lot of your time. But what time you do devote to it, will be worth it, because we want to share the secret of how to be confident, believing that things will turn out all right. You are gonna make it with or even without this here ol truck. Let the Lord show you how through his book called the Bible. We want to invite you to pull off at four different Exit Now points in this Bible study. Maybe you ve never had the time to pull off the highway to see some of the scenic turnoffs or to stop at that mystery spot advertised for 20 miles up and down the highway. But you won t want to miss pulling off the road at these four Exits to see for yourself how the Lord brings peace and confidence into our hearts. 3 3
One reason we have fears... Most people are controlled by fears. They are afraid of many things in life. This happens because they have no confidence in their gods. Everyone has a god. Maybe you don t bow down to some statue or idol, but you may idolize something or someone. You may not pray and have faith in a god for your daily needs, but you may place a lot of faith in your own abilities or in the strength of people around you. But what happens when your problems are too big for your gods to solve? You begin to lose confidence in your support structures, and this fills you with fear. I m not gonna make it! About the BIG God of the Bible The Bible tells us that the one, true God is the BIGGEST PERSON in the entire universe. If God is the biggest, strongest, most powerful Person in the universe, and if we are convinced that he loves us, we have no reason to fear. The Bible tells us that everything came from God. Since God created everything, he is bigger than everything! God will supply our needs The Bible tells us that, because God is bigger than everything, and created everything, he can supply all our needs! And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19) The sun, moon, stars and planets The Bible tells us that on the fourth day of creation God spoke and the sun, the moon, the stars and the planets came into existence. Many people think that the position of the stars controls our life, but this is not true. Our lives are controlled by the one who made the stars! If we trust the stars, we will have fear. We should trust the God who made the stars, not the position of the stars. The Creator is much greater and much more powerful than that which he creates. God is greater than the stars. 4 4
The birds and fish On the fifth day God filled the water and the air with living creatures. He created all the fish and all the huge monsters of the deep. He filled the air with thousands and thousands of birds and flying things. God made everything in the sea and in the air, simply by speaking. Move your fingers was that hard? Your mind sent a command to your hand, and it responded. It was no more difficult for God to speak and call all the birds and fish into existence than it was for you to move the fingers on your hand! Animals and man On the sixth day, the last day of creation, God created the most wonderful thing of all. He started that day by creating all the animals. Think of all the different kinds of animals there are! Then he created his masterpiece. He created something that was in his image. He created something that was like him. He created you and me and all human beings! He created us to be his friends, to love him, to talk with him, to rejoice in his greatness and to find peace in his protection of us. A paradise of peace God created a paradise. The Bible calls it the Garden of Eden. There was no sin, no death, no evil, no pain, and no fear in this garden. The only human in the garden was Adam. He had no other human friends. One of the great mysteries of the Bible is the teaching that God is three persons in one Being: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three persons have always existed in perfect love and harmony. God has never been lonely. God said, It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. (Genesis 2:18) God created a partner for Adam, a woman called Eve. As Adam and Eve became husband and wife, the first family was formed. In their love for each other, they also came into the fullness of what it means to be created in the image of God. God is not alone. He is three persons. So God s image bearers, human beings, were not intended to be alone, but to live in family units. Secret #1 We are set free from fear when we fix our minds on God, the biggest, greatest, most powerful and joy-filled being in the universe! You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. (Isaiah 26:3) Respond to the following questions: 1. How has this lesson changed your view of God? 5 5
2. Why do people live in fear today? What do you fear? Make a list of the things which frighten you. 3. In God s eyes, how important are human beings compared to all the other creatures he made? 4. How would your life be different if you followed Secret #1? For further study, look up the following verses in a Bible: *Matthew 6:25-34 *Hebrews 4:14-16 How fear started When God created humans, he did not make puppets to dance for him, but he created us in his image. God gives perfectly! That means that we have personalities and spirits, and we are capable of freely giving. God created us in his image so that we could give freely to others and to him. God also created angels. The greatest angel was Satan. Angels were created to give, to serve God and to be his messengers. Satan decided not to devote himself to giving but to getting. Satan wanted to get God s position and power. This desire to get for you and not to give is called sin. Sin is where fear starts. We are afraid that we will not get what we want or that we might lose what we already have. From peace to fear Satan came into the world to tempt Adam and Eve to stop giving love and obedience to God, and to start getting things for themselves. God gave Adam and Eve an opportunity to show him their love. He put a tree in the middle of the garden and told them not to eat of its fruit. If they obeyed and did not eat the fruit, they would be giving God their love. As long as they gave to God and made that their first goal, they lived in perfect peace. But Satan convinced them that it was more important to get the fruit of the tree than to give obedience and love to God. So Eve took some of the fruit, and then she gave some 6 6
of it to Adam. Both stopped giving to God. At that moment their desire in life changed from giving to getting. What would life be like if...? Can you imagine what this world would be like if everyone were as devoted to giving to each other as they now are to getting from each other? All wars would stop. All stealing would cease. There would be no more rape or murder. And fear would be all gone! Fear comes from feeling guilty before God and others for not giving to them what one should! Our muddy condition Have you ever dropped dirt into a glass of water? It is very difficult to get the dirt out and make the water clean again. It s like that with sin. Sin is like mud in water. When we sin, we get dirty all over inside ourselves, just like water gets dirty when mud is dropped in it. We have learned that we should not drink dirty water. We must pour it out. If we drink it, we can get sick. Adam and Eve got dirty inside when they stopped giving love and total obedience to God and started getting things for themselves. Because they were dirty, God could not have them in Paradise any longer, and they were banished from the Garden. So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. (Genesis 3:23) Genesis 3:14-20 14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. 16 To the woman he said, I will greatly increase your pain in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. 17 To Adam he said, Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, You must not eat from it, Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return. The curse of sin Adam and Eve were God s appointed rulers over the entire world. As rulers, the decisions they made, affected everything under them, just as a king s decisions affect all 7 7
of his people. When they decided to stop giving and to start getting, the consequences of that decision fell on all the earth. The serpent was cursed to slide on its belly. Women were cursed to have pain in childbirth. The ground was cursed with weeds and thistles. And men were cursed to fight against the weeds and to work long, hard hours. The worst part of the curse was being banished from Paradise, from God s presence. God can no more tolerate polluted people than we can drink polluted water. This banishment from God s presence is called death spiritual death. The Bible says, The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23) When we live to get things for ourselves, we separate ourselves from God and from others. We think ourselves to be the most important people. We set ourselves up as gods. This separation from God and from others is called death and hell. God promised a way out, however. The promise of peace God punished Adam and Eve for their sin, but he also promised them that he would rescue them from their sin. They could not clean themselves up, any more than we can easily get mud out of water. God could forgive them and transform them however. This is what he said at the same time he pronounced all the evil that would happen. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. (Genesis 3:15) God is speaking to Satan in this passage. He promises, first of all, that there will be two lines of people in the world: His (God s) and Satan s. There will be hatred between these two lines of people. Then, one day, God will send a Savior from the line of the woman. While Satan will try to kill this Savior (strike his heel), the Savior, Jesus Christ, God s only Son, will crush the head of Satan. When this is accomplished, the great enemy will be destroyed, and peace will come again to all who believe! Secret #2 We are set free when our purpose in life changes from living to get and keep to living to produce and give to God and to others. We no longer worry about getting things we don t have or keeping things we do have. God is all we need. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. (Genesis 3:15) Respond to the following questions: 1. What did you learn about God in this lesson? 2. What did you learn about the nature of sin and why our world is still messedup? 3. Simply put, hell is. 8 8
4. How would the world be different if everyone lived according to Secret #2? How would your life be different if you lived your life this way? For further study, look up the following verses in a Bible: *John 3:16-21 *Revelation 2:8-11 On that lonesome road Have you ever been all alone and in great danger? Is there any time when we are more afraid than when we are all alone? A husband dies, and the widow is left behind to face a terribly hard life, all alone! Or, we ve offended a friend or even a family member and now they want nothing to do with us. The curse of living to get is that in doing so, we separate ourselves from others. We make ourselves alone. Worst of all, we separate ourselves from God. God is with us The Bible tells us over and over again that we are not to be afraid because God is with us! When God led his people, Israel, out of slavery into the Promised Land, he showed them that he was with them as he appeared by day in a pillar of cloud and at night in a pillar of fire. The Israelites did not have to be afraid God was with them. When Joshua, the great leader, was to take them into the Promised Land, God promised him, No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. (Joshua 1:5) 9 9
Jesus, Savior from sin Remember the promise God gave to Adam when he banished him from the garden and made him live alone? He told Adam that he would send someone who would crush Satan and destroy him. That person would be his own Son, Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity. In the Bible passage below, we read about the announcement of the birth of Jesus to Mary his mother. It was a miraculous birth. Jesus was born of a virgin, and it was God s way of saying that Jesus was both a miracle of God and yet fully and completely man. As Adam was our king or representative, so Jesus became our second Adam or second king to act for us. Jesus, the first name God gave him, meant that he was to save us from our sins by living a perfect life for us and by dying to bear our punishment. Immanuel, God WITH us The second name God gave to his son was Immanuel, which means, God with us! This is one of the most comforting and beautiful names which was given to the Lord. It tells us that God, in his infinite love, has not left us alone. God is with us! God is with us in a most unusual and mysterious way. God is so GREAT, that he not only created the world, but he also stooped so low as to become something which he created - a real, perfect, and sinless man! Jesus was both God and man at the same time. He was God WITH US - ONE of us. Because God is so great, we cannot understand Him, but when he limited himself to our flesh and blood, he revealed himself to us! Now we understand that he loves us and has come to take the poison of sin, the filth of getting, out of our being so that we can give forever with him. Matthew 1:18-25 18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man, and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. 20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel - which means God with us. 24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. The death of Jesus Jesus Christ was God s only Son. He became a human being in order to become our new representative. As our King, the Father placed on him the punishment for ALL our sin. Jesus bore this punishment for us when he died on the cross. When Adam sinned, one of his first experiences was fear. He said he was afraid of God because he was naked. When we sin against God we, too, become afraid. We feel guilty and know we deserve punishment for our sins. Isaiah says this about Jesus Christ: But he (Jesus) was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5) Because Jesus bore our punishment for sin, we can have freedom from fear and lasting peace. Secret #3 10 10
We are set free from fear when we confess our sin to God and believe that Jesus death on the cross is our punishment for sin. Our sin has been punished, and we appear before God just as if we never sinned. We are no longer outcastes or failures. We have become children of the King! If any person is IN Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (II Corinthians 5:17) Respond to the following questions: 1. What new truths about God and salvation did you learn, and how are they different from what you have believed? 2. Why does sin make us afraid of God? 3. What do we need to do to receive God s salvation? 4. How does secret #3 remove our fear? Have you ever applied this secret in your own life? For further study, look up these verses in a Bible *Romans 5 *Romans 8:1-17 *I John 4:13-21 Are you afraid of death? We still face death, however. It is a fearful thing. Yet we know that our second representative, our second Adam, went through death and rose again. The Bible tells us that when we believe, we are in Christ. We can understand what it means to be in a family, in a town, or in a house. To be in Christ means that we are IN-cluded in all that he has done for us. The resurrection of Jesus 11 11
Jesus died. He rose again. This means that we will rise again after we die. Our bodies will come out of the grave when Jesus returns, and they will be glorious. The Bible tells us that our bodies now are like seeds, and just as a tree that comes from a seed is far more glorious than the seed, so our resurrected bodies will be far more glorious than our present bodies. Death has been conquered, and we need not fear it any longer! When we die, we are born to a far more wonderful life. The reign of Jesus as Lord Forty days after Jesus arose from the grave, he left his disciples and miraculously ascended into heaven... he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. (Acts 1:9) Christ did not merely disappear, however. We know where He went.... he was raised... from the dead and (the Father) seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority... (Ephesians 1:20, 21) Today Jesus, in his human nature, is seated at the right hand of the Ruler of the Universe, his Father. All who trust him are in him and thus are seated there, too. Everything is under his control and direction. We need not fear! Our Lord reigns! The return of Jesus We do not need to fear. Jesus is coming again. The Bible says he will appear on the clouds of heaven. When that happens every knee will bow... and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord... (Philippians 2:10,11) Jesus tells us that before he returns, the good news about him must be announced to every people group on earth. Disciples must be made in all these groups. He wants everyone to know that trusting in him provides salvation from sin and freedom from fear. How great and how good is our God! Jesus followers do not fear the future! They know that Jesus is Lord and that he will come again! They look forward with eager anticipation to the time when their Savior will return and raise his followers to live with him in PERFECT PEACE forever! Philippians 2:5-11 5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but 7 made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross! 9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Summarize what you ve learned through this study by answering the following questions based on the Bible passage above. 1. Jesus was in very God. (vs. 6) 2. Jesus did not consider with God the Father something that he had to hold on to and so he humbled himself to become a. (vs. 6, 7) 12 12
3. When Jesus became a man, he humbled himself even further unto. (vs. 8) 4. This was a very horrible death, a death on a. (vs. 8) 5. God exalted him to the place. (vs. 9) 6. God gave him a that is above all other. (vs. 9) 7. Someday every will bow to Jesus and every confess that Jesus is Lord. (vs.10, 11) Secret #4 We are set free from fear when we realize that death is merely an introduction for us to the Father s house. And because he reigns in heaven, nothing in the entire world will be able to separate us from his love. He is in control! Do not let not your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father s house are many rooms; I am going there to prepare a place for you... that you also may be where I am. (John 14:1-2) Respond to the following questions 1. Do you believe that Jesus arose from the grave, and that if you believe in him, you too will be raised from the dead? 2. How should you live your life knowing that Jesus reigns, and that everything that happens is under his control? 3. Do you believe Jesus is coming again, and are you ready to meet him? Read the following passages in the light of your response to this question *Matthew 25:1-13 *I Thessalonians 4:13-18 *II Peter 3:14 *Revelation 22:12-21 4. In your own words, list the four secrets of living a life free from fear. If you are curious about your answers, go to www.projectphilipministries.org and click on to the Truckers Friends Network icon. We also welcome any additional questions about this 13 13
Bible study or even questions about the Christian faith. Fellow truckers are available to correspond with you by e-mailing us at info@projectphilipministries.org We also invite you to study the next booklet in this Trucker s series entitled: Drivin my Life Away. This booklet surveys some of the major places and themes of the Bible at 8 different truck stops. 14 14