Euthanasia Society. They are extremely well funded and are deploying their resources to target new MPs. Your financial help and gifts at this time will help us expand our work and impact in the parliaments of the UK. With greater financial resources, we can offer high quality briefings, conduct polling, produce reports and ensure our elected representatives hear the many powerful arguments against assisted suicide.
FINAL WORD
My prayer for you at this time is that the Holy Spirit will stir within your heart an awesome, reverent, grateful, faith-filled, holy, joyful and fabulous fear of the Lord, to serve Him wherever you live, work and worship!
I believe there’s no simple pathway to this prayer being answered except by increasingly spending time alone in God’s presence and in His Word and worshipping with others ‘in spirit and in truth ’.
‘Lord, grant us Your mercy and grace to pursue a “fabulous fear” of Yourself. Amen!’
Yours in His amazing mercy and grace
Rev Lyndon Bowring CO-FOUNDER OF CARE
FABULOUS FEAR
I see no reason to believe that a Christian ever needs to feel afraid of God, but you may well ask ‘but doesn’t the Bible repeatedly urge us to fear the Lord’? In this letter I want to address this apparent contradiction; how by the help of the Holy Spirit we can learn not to be afraid but to grow in the fabulous fear of the Lord. More about that later.
You may remember that I only try to directly ask for your continued financial support once or, at most, twice a year and only after you’ve responded to the needs of your family, local church and other charities close to your heart. Looking ahead to 2025 it’s clear that we’ll need to increase our income in order to make a greater impact in the UK Parliaments and in wider society and we’d be so grateful for your help.
AFRAID OF GOD
Adam and Eve were the first humans to ‘be afraid’, in the Garden of Eden when the enemy deceived and tempted them to disobey. Their legacy has meant that every human being who has ever lived faced fears of every kind; of war, famine, disaster, sickness, physical and financial insecurity and threats to loved ones. During the 18th century Enlightenment, the idea grew that if people could break free from religion, much of their fear would be removed. This belief persists to this day: the atheist Christopher Hitchens for example considered religion to be actively harmful. For him, the very existence of God meant a ‘permanent round-the-clock divine supervision and invigilation of everything you did … like living in North Korea.’ But today’s secular society, fraught with mental health issues and dysfunction of many kinds, has proved this wrong. Satan works
tirelessly to instil fear and anxiety into people’s hearts.
Reflecting on the apparent paradox between being afraid of God and the ‘fabulous fear’ of the Lord, I’ve appreciated the writings of the 16th and 17th century Puritans, like Martin Luther, John Bunyan and Jonathan Edwards, and have also been blessed by Michael Reeves’ book Rejoice and Tremble. However, I can never remember hearing a live sermon on the fear of the Lord! By my 19th birthday, I’d sat through many Sunday sermons about hell and God’s wrath, and I believe the Holy Spirit used my being afraid of God – of the judgement to come – to bring me to Christ. Sadly though, for some time I continued to be afraid of God, thinking that this would help me grow spiritually. Nothing could have been further from the truth! I believe that while being afraid of God drives us away from Him, true ‘fabulous fear’ of God draws us close in awe and reverence to delight in His mercy, love, peace, and joy.
ENJOY HIM FOREVER!
This ‘fabulous fear’ is the grateful wonder at who the Lord is and all He has done. As the Source of love and the Fount of goodness, our Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has from eternity wanted to adopt us into His family. That was only possible through Christ’s death and resurrection that redeemed us from our sin. The Shorter Westminster Catechism declares: ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever’. Discovering the depths of His holiness, power, wisdom –and above all the ‘perfect love that casts out all fear’ – will cause us to stand in awe of Him, revel in His divine love and peace and begin to profoundly ‘enjoy Him for ever.’
Jesus demonstrated this more than anyone. Isaiah prophesied ‘His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord’ (Isaiah 11:2,3). Proverbs declares that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ and Luke 2 notes that the boy Jesus ‘grew in wisdom’: which couldn’t have happened without Him having a holy fear of His Father. And what’s good enough for Jesus must be good enough for us!
When we look at God’s magnificent Creation – from the majesty of the heavens to the microscopic beauty of plants and living creatures – our hearts want to cry out ‘How Great Thou Art’! Psalm 96 says, ‘Worship the Lord in the splendour of holiness; tremble before Him, all the earth!’; but praising and thanking the Lord as Creator is only the beginning of our relationship. As we come to know Him as true sons and daughters because of what Jesus has done and as the Holy Spirit enlightens us, we are drawn ever deeper into His love and to experience this ‘fabulous fear’!
The Bible speaks of ‘fear and trembling’. I confess to have not yet physically trembled before the Lord, but I hope that before I die this will happen. Surely we as Christians will tremble with fabulous fear, wonder, love and praise when we reach our eternal home, sharing in Christ’s own delight in the fear of the Lord.
‘DON’T BE AFRAID’
In Psalm 34, King David declares, ‘I will praise the Lord at all times. I will constantly speak His praises. I prayed to the Lord, and He answered me. He freed me from all my fears.’ The Bible’s most frequent command is ‘Be not afraid’. Paul in Philippians 4 urges us not to be anxious about anything but instead to tell God what we need, thank Him for all He’s done and learn to experience His wonderful assurance that guards our hearts and minds as we live in Christ – prayer in the context of thanksgiving leads to perfect peace!
Prayer is such a wonderful gift and we make it a top priority at CARE. Perhaps you use our Prayer Diary, written by my wife Celia, to intercede for many needs across our broken world. Ross, our CEO has given her the title ‘Prayer Champion’, which we think is possibly the best job description in CARE! Back in October, CARE was privileged to partner with a number of organisations during the National Week of Prayer ‘to humble ourselves, repent and pray for lives to be transformed by Jesus, and to see a spiritual awakening in the nations ’.
Scripture is clear that God is exceedingly angry at injustice, corruption, abuse, and exploitation. It is right that unbelievers should be afraid of Him, and we as believers in turn need to ‘be angry but sin not’ on His behalf. Some may have a view that because Jesus is humble and loving He doesn’t really get angry. But the Bible holds these two things in creative tension. Only one verse in the 89 chapters of the four gospels reveals Christ’s true heart: ‘I am gentle and lowly’ (Matthew 11:29) but the preceding verses contain very harsh words for those who witnessed His mighty deeds but failed to repent of their sins.
We grieve for the ten million unborn silent sufferers of abortion, the innocent children damaged by violent, pornographic and self-harm material online, for the precious people robbed of life by various addictions, and the elderly person pressurised to agree to commit suicide. CARE will continue to speak up in Parliament on behalf of each of these, as well as defending the freedom of churches to preach and teach the gospel and advocating on behalf of those suffering as a result of poverty. We believe that one day Jesus Christ will return in judgement to put all things right. Meanwhile we must speak up for the vulnerable.
FEAR OF BEING A BURDEN
One area which is a particular focus for us at CARE over the next few months, is the multiple attempts to introduce assisted suicide. As I write, Kim Leadbetter’s bill, which would “allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards and protections, to request and be provided with assistance to end their own life”, has just been formally introduced in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister is known to support assisted suicide, and given how many new MPs there are in this Parliament, it is unclear how many others agree with him.
We know all too well that one of the main reasons why people choose an assisted suicide in countries where it is already legal is because they are afraid of suffering and dying with indignity. This is the kind of fear from which I believe Jesus came to deliver us. In Hebrews 2:14,15 we read that Jesus ‘shared in [our] humanity so that by His death He might break the power of him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.’
At CARE, we have stood resolutely against every attempt to legalise assisted suicide. Over the past 20 years, more than 10 serious attempts have failed to pass. Our team is now throwing everything we have to stop it being introduced in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and we have also been assisting our allies on Jersey and the Isle of Man.
There is a better story for our nation than physician-assisted suicide. Rather than living in fear in their final years, we long to see people flourish, being valued for who they are, being respected for their wisdom, and being supported in the midst of suffering. We advocate for greater investment in palliative care and more support for the hospice movement, fueled by our unshakeable conviction that every human being is made in God’s image and has intrinsic dignity and value.
JOIN WITH US
As I’m sure you know, we are so grateful for your continued financial support without which our work wouldn’t be possible. With the very real prospect of needing to fight multiple assisted suicide bills simultaneously in the coming weeks and months, could I invite you to help us further by generously responding to this appeal today?
The chief proponent of assisted suicide is Dignity in Dying, formerly known as the Voluntary