Do you ever feel you are in “just Nazareth?”

Jesus faithfully served at home in Nazareth for thirty years before being released into the call of God on His life. Nazareth was…“just Nazareth.” It was no special place. The city of Nazareth was a small and insignificant agricultural village in the time of Jesus. It had no trade routes and was of little economic importance. It is believed that the population never exceeded five hundred while Jesus lived there. It was “just Nazareth.”

In “just Nazareth,” Jesus most likely learned to be a carpenter’s helper since his earthy father Joseph was a carpenter. He learned to live in a family and what it means to care for those in the household. He learned to submit to parental authority. He learned how to be around regular, everyday folks. He learned to do life. It was not wasted time.

When the time came, God said, “You have completed this assignment, and now it is time to move from “just Nazareth.”  Jesus was released and went about doing the work for which He was born, and He fulfilled His purpose.

From the time I felt God calling me to teach His Word, both at home and around the country, until that actually happened was quite a stretch of years. At the time, it seemed like it would never happen and was just a dream. During that time, God taught me so much from His Word, from other speakers, and from my local congregation. I learned how to be submissive to those who were in charge of meetings to which I was invited. I learned that God wanted to purify my heart. I needed maturity. I needed a servant’s heart.

We all have times we feel we are in “just Nazareth,” but rest assured that God uses these places to prepare us for our divine destiny. Never despise “just Nazareth.”

“The Lord will work out his plans for my life…” – Psalm 138:8

Recently, I have seen discussions on faith and fear. Some declare that faith and fear cannot coexist. Others say that fear is a sin. There were those who rebuked any believer who had fear, saying it should never be in the life of God’s people.

Can faith and fear live together in the Christian? Yes, yes, and yes. Faith and fear are not mutually exclusive. Fear is one of the enemy’s most popular weapons that he uses against us. Worry, anxiety, and fear can overwhelm us with a thick shadow of darkness, controlling our every move and decision.

I often hear Christians rebuked when they struggle with fear and faith. Perhaps a challenging circumstance has entered life, a circumstance that could be long-term or with an unclear ending. Since the person is a believer, they pray and ask God’s intervention, and have faith that He will do just that. Yet, all through the day, those circumstances scream, “You will not come out of this! It’s over! This is going to end badly for you! There is no hope it will turn around.”  Fear has raised its head.

That believer is experiencing both faith and fear.

My home is designed with a split bedroom plan. The master bedroom is on one end of the house, and the two guest rooms are on the other end. Between those two guest rooms is a hallway, so one can walk to either room, and one can easily walk back and forth between the two rooms.

Faith and fear are like those two bedrooms, with a hallway in between. Let’s name one of the rooms fear and one of the rooms faith. There are times I find myself in the fear room, and there are times I find myself in the faith room. The question is, “Where will I abide?”

Many years ago, the doctor informed me that it was more likely than not that I had ovarian cancer, and it had spread to nearby lymph nodes. To say we were shocked would be an understatement. Surgery would be done two weeks later, and an oncologist would be present to see how many organs were affected. That was a loooooong two weeks!

Many times, during those two weeks, my emotions would draw me into the fear room. It was a dark room. As a believer, I had to make a choice to walk the hallway to the room of faith. Where would my residency be? Could I trust God that He had my life in His hands?

It became an epic battle to take my mind and body out of the room of fear, enter the hallway and walk over to faith. I did that more times than I can count. It was a constant battle of the mind. It was not until the morning of the surgery that I felt perfect faith that God was in control of the situation. Notice I did not say that God told me how it would turn out, but that God reassured me that I was in His hands.

Every believer must exercise hallway faith. All of us will have situations where the ending is uncertain. Fear will invite you to take up residence in its room.  Over and over, you will be faced with the choice of entering the hallway to walk in faith. Do it! No matter how many times fear beckons you to come and dwell in its room, enter the hallway! There is peace in the hallway! There is faith in the hallway! There is God’s will in the situation once we choose to enter the hallway and trust God!

God does not lose faith in you when you are fearful. Peter left his fishing boat to follow Jesus. Things got tough for the followers of Jesus as the crucifixion neared. Peter had enough faith to leave his boat to follow Jesus but operated in total fear when confronted about being a disciple. Because of fear, Peter denied our Lord. God did not give up on Peter. Later in the book of Acts, that same man who had been fearful, stood and preached a powerful message, resulting in three thousand salvations.

Transformation happens when we enter the hallway of faith. We conquer fear!

What are you facing today that seems overwhelming? Fight for faith. Choosing not to allow fear and anxiety to control us is not always easy, and it often comes down to a choice. Enter the hallway today! God will meet you in the hallway and give you the strength to walk into the room of faith. You are more than a conqueror!

“What time I am afraid, I will trust in You.” – Psalm 56:3

I was born in the South, raised in the South, educated in the South (yes, we actually know how to do that), went to college in the South, got married in the South, raised a family in the South, and will be buried in the South! I am not complaining. I love the southern way of life.

If you live in the South and you want to refer to a group of people, you will say “y’all.” Here in the South, a shopping cart is called a “buggy.” If someone tells you to “mash the button” that simply means that you need to press the button. “Cut off the light” means to turn it off. “Pull the door to” means to close the door. Those that are “fixin’ to” do something means they are about to do it. My southern husband of many years likes his tea extra sweet. In the South, college football fills Saturdays in the fall while good bar-be-cue is served. Yum!

While I do love living in the South, there is one thing in particular I dislike – bugs and insects. We can have roaches about the size of a small skateboard, scorpions that give a healthy sting, spiders that love to visit your home, and ants, ants, and more ants. Having lived in several southern states, I’ve experienced all of the insects I listed and then some. At the present time, the main pests we encounter in our home are ants.

Ants are always on the search for a tasty food source, and when they find one, they let their friends and family know where to go for dinner! The way the ant communicates is to emit a scent known as a pheromone. They leave it all along the trail and then the other ants know where to head and the exact path to take. Now you know why you see a trail of ants from the back door to the garbage can, up the garbage can, and even into the garbage can. (Been there, saw that!) It is fascinating to watch a video of how quickly that pheromone trail develops.

Ants can also emit an alarm pheromone when they are in danger. If you see an ant bed outside and you step on it, thousands of ants begin to feverishly crawl about and even crawl on top of each other trying to locate the disturbance and stop it.

To me, the most fascinating of all the pheromones is the propaganda pheromone. Certain species of ants rely on stealing larvae from other ant species. They raid colonies and spray massive amounts of propaganda alarm pheromones. The deceptive pheromones overwhelm the attacked colony workers, and their alarm response causes them to attack their own nestmates instead of the enemy.

The attacking ants then steal the larvae and take it back to their colony where, once they are born, they perform worker functions for the nest. They become slaves. The attacking ants go after the larvae, after the young.

We are seeing propaganda pheromone happen before our eyes with our young ones. The whole purpose of the propaganda pheromone given by the ants is to capture the eggs and raise the young ones to become slaves. Church, we have to reach the younger generations. We often need to change the method but never the message. I don’t always like smoke machines, louder music, pastors with holes in their jeans, and various lighting effects. You want to know why I do not like those things? Because I am seventy-two years old!

My husband was a pastor for more than thirty years. I remember when we transitioned from not singing just hymns but to also singing new worship choruses that were projected onto the wall. Some people thought we had lost our spiritual marbles. I remember people being upset because a woman could be permitted to wear slacks to a worship service. We lost families over these kinds of changes, though the message was never changed. (I am not talking about sinful or sketchy things, but preferencial things.)

Church, we must be willing to do research, listen to young people, and see how we can reach them. Never change the message, but a change in the “how” might be needed. I know this kind of blog will be controversial to some and might even aggravate a few. So be it.

I probably don’t have too many years left on this earth. I don’t want to spend them complaining about today’s youth. I want God to show me how to reach them. I want to learn all I can about how to reach them with the truth. I want to listen to how they are experiencing the challenges of life. I want to hear their stories and tell them mine.

I am tired of the nest of God’s youth being invaded by pheromone propaganda. Church is more than a good Sunday service. The Church is an army. It is time for the army of God to go to the enemy’s camp and take back what he stole with his deception and lies. Truth sets free and destroys propaganda pheromone!

^“We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God.” – 2 Corinthians 10:3-5. (NLT)

Since I am usually at the gym about the same time each day, I can count on seeing a familiar sight. There is a woman who makes her way into the gym at the same time I do, and she has done that for quite a long time. I am not sure of her name, so I’ll call her Rhonda.  I have watched her over time. She appears to be in her seventies. Rhonda’s gait is slow. She does not have on the sleek gear of so many who are much younger than she is.

There was a brief period of time when I didn’t see Rhonda, and I didn’t think too much about it. I figured that like so many who attend a gym, over time she just stopped. After a couple of months, I saw Rhonda slowly walk into the gym one day. She had no hair on her head and was very thin. My assumption was that Rhonda was being treated for some kind of cancer.

Rhonda, who was dressed a bit dowdy, slowly walked into the gym, made her way over to a recumbent exercise bike, and began pedaling at a very unhurried pace. As I looked around the gym, Rhonda seemed a bit of an oddity compared to so many other gym folks who were sharply dressed and moving at a challenging pace. Yet, it was Rhonda who caught my eye. Through all her battles and hardships, she still showed up. She still stayed in the battle. Rhonda modeled faithfulness.

There is a wonderful story in scripture about a woman whose life did not turn out as she expected, yet she modeled faithfulness to God. Her story takes place as Simeon is seeing Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus. Jesus was the Messiah for which Anna had long prayed for and awaited.

“Anna, a prophet, was also there in the Temple. She was the daughter of Phanuel from the tribe of Asher, and she was very old. Her husband died when they had been married only seven years. Then she lived as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the Temple but stayed there day and night, worshiping God with fasting and prayer. She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph, and she began praising God. She talked about the child to everyone who had been waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem.” (Luke 2:36-38)

Anna’s story is given in a few short verses but let us not underestimate her. Hers is a story filled with deep truth.

Anna married and after only seven years of marriage, her husband died. There is nothing recorded about Anna having children. She is most likely in her early twenties, and has already been dealt a couple of huge, life-changing blows. She was childless, which was difficult in Biblical days, and she was a widow. All of Anna’s earthly hopes and dreams turned into nightmares. Gone were the things that would have made her feel at home on earth.

If Anna married at sixteen years old, which would have been about right in that time period, she would have been twenty-three when she became a widow. As we read the verses of her story, we find that Anna is now eighty-four years old. She has been a widow for more than sixty years.

After becoming a widow, Anna dedicated herself wholly to the Lord. I am sure Anna was grieved when she lost her husband and grieved at never having a child to call her own. It would have been so easy to check out of life naturally and spiritually. Anna decided to cling to God. She never left the temple in Jerusalem but spent her time worshiping, fasting, and praying.

Perhaps Anna was given living quarters at the temple because of her designation as prophetess, or she may have lived closeby. What stands out is that her devotion was constant, and her devotion was rewarded when she saw the baby Jesus when Mary and Joseph brought Him into the temple. Her many years of sacrifice and service were worth it all when she beheld the promised Messiah, the One for whom she had waited so long.

Anna was called a prophetess. The word prophetess comes from the Greek word “profhtij” which means “spokesperson” or “inspired speaker.” A prophet or prophetess spoke what God told them to speak or enlightened them to know, and then shared His word with others. I wonder how many people who were desperate to hear from God, heard from Him through Anna? I wonder how many things changed as a result of Anna’s life of prayer and fasting? How many lives were impacted because Anna dared to be a prayer warrior even when life was unfair?

I’m not quite to age eighty-four, but like Anna, I want it to be said of my life through every season, every hard place, every setback, Barbara Benton spent her days still clinging to Jesus, still worshiping Him, still waiting on the promises of God, still having a word in season and out of season, still glorifying God, still offering hope.  I want an Anna anointing! How about you?