Safely Trusting

 

The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.

—Proverbs 29:25

At this particular time in our lives, there seems much to frighten us. We have a host of fearful happenings. Diseases seem to flourish these days. More and more people we know seem afflicted with heart disease, or some type of cancer, or failing mental accuity, or … Well, you can likely add to this list, I’m sure.

With some many sources of fear in our lives, it is more important than ever for us to find a source of hope that we can cling to in the midst of our darkest hours. That’s why the Scripture verse at the beginning of this blog post has such great importance.

King Solomon, one of the wisest men who ever lived, wrote this verse as part of the Proverbs he wanted the people of Israel to remember, and by which they should set the course of their days on this earth. The verse at the beginning of this blog post calls us to remain aware of the potent negativity that fear can bring into our lives. The antidote to fear arises when we place our trust in God. In fact, King Solomon contends that trust in the Lord brings with is a safety that overcomes the negativity of fear.

As we begin this new day, let’s lay aside the fear that so easily grips our lives. Instead, let’s put our trust in the God who loves us with His everlasting, unfailing, and undying love. He is the one who can overcome fear in our lives. We remain safe when we trust in Him.

 

_{Copyright © 2026 by Dean K. Wilson. All Rights Reserved.}

_{More info at www.DeanKWilson.com}

 

A Great Heavenly Reward

 

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

—Matthew 5:11-12

At the beginning of the famous sermon of the Lord Jesus Christ found in Matthew 5, 6, and 7—the passage that Bible scholars have titled the “Sermon on the Mount”—we find a list of items that begin with the word “blessed.” Often referred to as “The Beatitudes,” these items chart a pathway for the life of one who believes in the life-transforming power of the risen Lord Jesus Christ:

• Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
  
  
• Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
  
  
• Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
  
  
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
  
  
• Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
  
  
• Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
  
  
• Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.
  
  
• Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
  
  

Then, we come to the last of this list of pathways to blessing. It is found in the Scripture verse at the beginning of this blog post:

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

In an age where many people despise the idea that there is a God who rules over the universe, a God who is holy and condemns sin, a God who expects people to worship Him, we who believe find ourselves experiencing both subtle and not so subtle persecution. In some parts of the world, this persecution has terrible physical consequences. Here in the United States, the persecution has a more psychological substance. Whether physical or psychological, the persecution is very real.

Our only hope comes from understanding that those who believe will become persecuted and this persecution comes with a great reward from the God who loves us and whom we serve. So, we need to take heart, hold our heads upright, and speak forth the praise of which our God is worthy.

We must not hide the Light of Christ under a bushel of our fear or reluctance. We must forthrightly proclaim that we belong to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. In so doing, we will fulfill the purpose for which God has called us to Himself and redeemed us from our sins through the precious blood of His one and only Son, Jesus.

 

_{Copyright © 2026 by Dean K. Wilson. All Rights Reserved.}

_{More info at www.DeanKWilson.com}

 

Approving the Excellent

 

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ…

—Philippians 1:9-10

God-breathed love (agape) is the source of many positive elements within the lives of those who follow Jesus. As the Apostle Paul writes to the Christians gathered at Philippi, in the verse at the beginning of this blog post, abounding love brings forth knowledge and discernment. These latter two qualities are necessary if we are to become able to give our approval to those things that are excellent.

Excellence seems more and more elusive in this day in which we live. Our society has apparently decided that the words “good enough” will serve as the standard by which all behavior, accomplishments, work product, moral decisions, and a host of other life events will be judged. No one seems willing to strive for the very best.

You may have heard the phrase attributed to Voltaire: “Best is the enemy of good.” Or, in contrast, you may have read the book by Jim Collins entitled: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. These diametrically opposed philosphies give us good insight into the competing ideas that struggle to ensnare our culture. For now, among the people in our nation, Voltaire seems to have won—at least for the moment.

In schools today, teachers focus on telling students all the negatives with which our nation has struggled and they minimize all of the truly wonderful positives our unique nation has accomplished. Instead of balancing the bad with the good, they focus only on the bad.

Many of our political and social leaders seem to have followed this same pattern found in our schools: emphasize only the bad about our nation and completely ignore the good. This form of national self-loathing allows people to subscribe to a philosophy that the United States is all bad. Why do techers and other leaders do this?

History has shown quite clearly that in order to control a large group of people, evil leaders must create within the populace a spirit of negative thinking that will wear down their will to maintain a rigorous sense of value, a solid foundational sense of well-being, and their impetus to strive for a higher level of excellence.

If you carefully study the history of the United States, you will find that, from the very beginning of our unique form of government, there were individuals who tried to cast a pall of negativism over the great experiment that became the United States of America. This same striving to distract and ruin through negativity takes place today.

In our spiritual lives, Satan’s principal role is to try to convince us to always view our own lives, and the circumstances in which we find ourselves, as a overwhelmingly negative. If he can convince us, then he can control us.

Our great protection lies within the open and loving arms of our Lord and Savior. The Apostle Paul urges the early Christians to let their love abound more and more. With love abounding, they will experience knowledge and discernment that will lead to them becoming increasingly able to approve what is excellent. From excellence, they will be able to become pure and blameless, looking forward to the day of Christ’s return.

Do not allow yourself to become convinced that we live in a fatally flawed nation. Yes, the history of our nation—including our present day—does have flaws. But, those flaws do not permanently doom us to destruction.

The heartbeat of God still prevails within the souls of His chosen people, including you and me, pointing us to the truth and filling us with positivity. As we allow the agape love from God to abound more and more in us, we will gain greater knowledge and discernment that will lead to an excellence that will preserve us from the evil that seeks to destroy us.

 

_{Copyright © 2026 by Dean K. Wilson. All Rights Reserved.}

_{More info at www.DeanKWilson.com}

 

Doing What is True

 

“For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

—John 3:20-21

Cockroaches hate the light. They much prefer darkness. In darkness, they have a much better opportunity to survive. In the light, they can be seen and destroyed. Sin is exactly like that. Sin hates the light and much prefers the darkness. That’s why negativity is an enemy of the truth.

Someone recently asked me why our nation has become so negative:

“Why do things seem so much worse today than they did when I was a child in the 1950s and 1960s? Why do so many people seem so far from God than they did when I was younger?”

I believe that the so-called sexual revolution of the late 1960s ushered in a time where normal social mores were put aside in favor of licentious behavior. Openly living in the depths of sin was formerly frowned upon by the majority of individuals in our nation.

But, after the sexual revolution took hold, increasingly people began to accept more and more types of sin as normal and deemed that sin acceptable. Why? Because sin begets sin—the more we tolerate sin, the more sin will prevail.

Out of this ever-increasing prevalence of allowing sinful behavior to put on a mantle of acceptability, it became ever-necessary to pull away from God. While once the majority of people living in the United States attended church or synagogue services, now fewer and fewer people do so.

As a general rule, citizens of the United States have pulled away from God because He is the one who judges sin. The more prevalent sin has become, the more necessary it has become to set aside the One who judges sin, declaring that He is irrelevant or nonexistent.

The Apostle Paul wrote these words to believers, found in Ephesians 2:1-3:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

These verses, in addition to the verses from the Apostle John found at the beginning of this blog post, clearly show the pathway taken by the power of sin to destroy a people and a nation. Everyone who does wicked things hates the Light. Sin has a deadening effect of people’s minds and hearts. The only antidote is found in the truth of God’s written Word, the Bible.

We who follow Jesus are children of the Light. We are the ones who shine the Light of God’s truth into the darkness caused by rampant sin in our world. It is a solemn duty, an awesome responsibility, and one that we dare not take lightly.

Let’s not allow fear to hold us back from our calling. We stand against the darkness of sin by proclaiming liberty to the spiritually captive, light to the spiritually blind, the sound of praise to the spiritually deaf, and hope to those spirutally lost in the swamp of sin.

 

_{Copyright © 2026 by Dean K. Wilson. All Rights Reserved.}

_{More info at www.DeanKWilson.com}

 

It Takes the Supernatural

 

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

—1 Corinthians 2:14

“I just don’t get you spiritual nutcases?”

Of course you don’t, I thought to myself. How can you?

The Apostle Paul faced the same dilemma in dealing with the Christians in Corinth. If you carefully read Paul’s first letter to the “Christ’s-ones” gatherd in the church at Corinth, you will soon understand that Paul was trying to deal with a church gone awry. That’s why he wrote the words that appear in the verse at the beginning of this blog post.

The natural person—the person who does not possess the direct, spiritual, supernatural connection to God that true believers have—does not accept the things that come from the Holy Spirit because they seem foolish. Why? Because such things can only be understood by those who have the Holy Spirit living within them.

We should never be surprised when people do not understand our commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. We know that commitment comes from the fact that before the foundation of the earth God chose us to belong to Himself.

In His timing, God sent the Holy Spirit to speak to the depths of our inner beings and convince us that we were sinners in need of a Savior. The Holy Spirit revealed to us that God had chosen us and had redeemed us through the blood of His Son, Jesus.

Once we understood what God had done for us, we embraced this great gift and acknowledged that we did, indeed, belong to God through Christ. The Holy Spirit took up residence within us, and now leads us and guides us along the pathway that God has laid out before us. The lines of supernatural communication and supernatural understanding have been forged between us and God—the One who knows us the best and loves us the most.

This great miracle of God’s amazing mercy, grace, and love overwhelms us with great joy. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. We belong to Him forever. Some day, we will graduate from this world into a world beyond our ability to comprehend. There, we will live for all eternity in the very presence of God.

This is such an amazing miracle, no wonder those “natural” humans cannot understand. It takes the supernatural connection that we believers have with God to even begin to understand this miracle of redemption.

And yet, we must share with those God leads across the pathway of our lives what He has done for us. We must share with them because that sharing may very well be the way God chooses to begin the process of calling them to Himself. That’s why our obedience to the task that God has given us is so very important.

 

_{Copyright © 2026 by Dean K. Wilson. All Rights Reserved.}

_{More info at www.DeanKWilson.com}

 

Our Advocate

 

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

—1 John 2:1

Raised as an only, adopted child, I have always been a misfit. As I have related numerous times on this blog, I have an innate social awkwardness that makes other people quite uncomfortable. Some people accuse me of being angry all the time. Others speak behind my back telling others that I think I’m a “know it all.” Still others insist that I want to always take over and run the organizations to which I belong.

Over the years, many people react negatively toward me because I am morbidly obese. Others speak ill of me because they feel I talk too much. Still others don’t like the fact that I am not inclined to enjoy sports. Many think that I give too long an explanation, or that the stories I tell are boring.

This recitation of the negative feelings people have about me is not a “pity party.” Rather, I am using these facts as an illustration of what it means to feel that I don’t belong, that I am standing alone against the world, that I am a misfit, and that I have no one to stand up for me.

In the period of time from fifth grade through my graduation from high school, I was bullied—a lot! I developed various strategies to try to minimize the impact that bullying had on me. I was never really very successful at developing the kind of “I don’t care” attitude that would have insulated me from the effects of the bullying. I always wished I had someone—anyone—who would stand up for me, take my side, or otherwise advocate on my behalf.

With this background, you can understand why the verse of Scripture at the beginning of this blog post has come to mean so very much to me. The Apostle John—known in church history as “the disciple whom Jesus loved”—writes to the Christians in Jerusalem and Asia Minor a great truth. John shares something that has importance beyond measure.

John asserts that the reason he has chosen to write his first letter to them is so that he can encourage them to set sin aside in their lives. In so doing, John reminds these baby “Christ’s-ones” that if they do sin, they are not facing a holy God alone. No! They have an advocate who stands with them, acting on their behalf between them and God. And, this advocate is none other than God’s dearly loved only Son, Jesus.

Even as we begin another day, whether or not in our personal lives we have anyone here on earth to stand up for us, in heaven where it really matters, we have an advocate who stands before God in our behalf. Jesus takes our place, stands up for us, speaks on our behalf, and saves us from the rightful wrath of a holy God. Just as Jesus bore the penalty for our sins on the cruel cross of Calvary, so Jesus continues to advocate for us. Jesus is our brother. He is our friend. He is the one upon whom we can always depend.

Johnson Oatman (1856-1922) wrote a song toward the end of the 19th century that has appeared in over 350 hymnals. It’s a song that we seldom hear sung today. The words have a special meaning in light of the teaching the Apostle John shared with those early Christians. Here are the words: ¹

There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus—
No, not one! no, not one!
None else could heal all our soul's diseases—
No, not one! no, not one!

Refrain:
Jesus knows all about our struggles,
He will guide till the day is done;
There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus—
No, not one! no, not one!

No friend like him is so high and holy—
No, not one! no, not one!
And yet no friend is so meek and lowly—
No, not one! no, not one!

Refrain:
Jesus knows all about our struggles,
He will guide till the day is done;
There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus—
No, not one! no, not one!

There’s not an hour that he is not near us—
No, not one! no, not one!
No night so dark but His love can cheer us—
No, not one! no, not one!

Refrain:
Jesus knows all about our struggles,
He will guide till the day is done;
There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus—
No, not one! no, not one!

Was e’er a gift like the Savior given?
No, not one! no, not one!
Will he refuse us a home in heaven?
No, not one! no, not one!

Refrain:
Jesus knows all about our struggles,
He will guide till the day is done;
There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus—
No, not one! no, not one!

 

______________________

1 Oatman, Johnson. “No, Not One.” This is a gospel song in the Public Domain. This gospel song is also included in various Hymnals that themselves are copyrighted by the publisher of the Hymnal. Though this citation is noted to be in the Public Domain, in the case of someone claiming Copyright protection of this material, please note that in each case, whenever a citation of any Copyrighted material is made within a post on this blog, such a citation is made strictly for Educational Fair Use illustration purposes only. All Rights Reserved by the original Copyright Holder.

 

_{Copyright © 2026 by Dean K. Wilson. All Rights Reserved.}

_{More info at www.DeanKWilson.com}

 

Holding Tightly

 

Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.

—Hebrews 10:35-36

The other day, I noticed a billboard along the Interstate highway. It read:

“When the going gets tough, most people curl up into a ball and begin to cry!”

I did a double-take and looked at the sign again. Sure enough! That’s what the billboard declared. I could hardly believe what I had read. And, worst off from a marketing standpoint, I have no idea what product that billboard intended to sell.

Maybe at this time of extreme stress: riots and looting in the streets of our cities, increased crime, downward spiraling morals, harsh political divide, war, and a host of other problems, we’re all supposed to just curl up into a ball and sob our way through each day.

In contrast, in the Scipture verses at the beginning of this blog post, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews urges his readers to hold onto their confidence because such a holding tightly has great reward. He continues by pointing our that his readers have a need for endurance to keep on obediently doing exactly what God wants them to do, so that they will receive what God has promised.

It’s certainly true that in saving us from the penalty of our sins, through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, God has asked only one thing of us: He wants us to become obedient to His perfect will for our lives. To grasp onto God’s will, we must surrunder our own fatally flawed and selfish human will and turn our four human modalities—heart, soul, mind, and strength—over to His steadfast and immutable will.

As we begin another new day, we can rejoice in the fact that we have a definite pathway to follow along the road of life: obedience to God’s will for us. And, we have help along the way through the power of the in-dwelling Holy Spirit. That should give us the ability to hold fast to our confidence, knowing that our confidence rests in the God who loves us with His everlasting, unfailing, undying love.

 

_{Copyright © 2026 by Dean K. Wilson. All Rights Reserved.}

_{More info at www.DeanKWilson.com}