Good morning and welcome to Tuesday’s podcast. My name is Nikky and I’m on the staff team here at STC Sheffield. I lead an Eden Team over in Fir Vale, in the North of Sheffield, and it’s a massive privilege to be able to share with you today what God has been speaking to me about through this great passage in Luke.

REFLECTION

Our reading for today is from Luke chapter 2 verses 8-14, and if you listen until the end of this podcast, you’ll be able to hear the whole passage read out for you, but for now I’m going to focus on verses 8-11. I’ll read them for us now…

“And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.”

This phrase “do not be afraid” stands out to me as I read this passage. These 4 words crop up again and again in the Bible. They’re everywhere! They’re right back in Genesis 15, where God speaks them to Abraham, they’re in the Psalms, they’re in Isaiah, and you can even find them just a few verses prior to today’s reading, in Luke chapter 1, where the angel appears to Zechariah and then to Mary and speaks these very words. Time and time again God tells His people “do not be afraid”, “do not live in fear”.

If you’ve been watching, or have ever watched any of the TV show “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!” you’ll know that as part of the show, contestants have to take part in Bushtucker trials. These are tasks designed around fear, things like holding live spiders in your mouth, lying in a pit of snakes, and swimming in a pool full of crocodiles. Doing well in these trials is all about who can be the most fearless, but at any point, if the fear gets too much, contestants can shout “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here” and they are immediately removed from the situation.

Now I don’t know how many times in the past year you’ve had to endure swimming with crocodiles, or being stuck underground with a load of snakes, I really hope it’s none! But if I had to hazard a guess I’d say that every one of us has experienced fear of some kind this year. I know I have. And the shepherds would have done too. We are told in this passage that they were terrified in the moment when the angel appeared and the glory of the Lord shone around them, but when the angel tells them “do not be afraid”, I have a feeling he’s not just speaking into this one moment of sudden fear, but also into something deeper. The shepherds, like us, would have experienced fear of some kind in their lives.

And whilst spiders, snakes, crocodiles, and having angels suddenly appear out of the blue can definitely bring out fear in us, on a day to day basis, the fears we experience are perhaps slightly different. They’re things like “I don’t know if I have enough money to get to the end of this month”, or “I’m ill, what if I never get better?”, there’s the fear of rejection, the fear of not being enough, the fear of not having enough. I wonder if you can relate to any of these fears?

And unlike the TV show, we don’t have the option of shouting “get me out of here” and being immediately removed from these situations. But despite that, God still tells us, in the midst of whatever is causing us fear, “do not be afraid”.

At first glance, this might seem like a bit of an impossible command for God to give us. “Do not be afraid”, great, thanks God, how the heck am I meant to do that? And in our own strength, it’s true, it would be impossible.

But that is not what God is asking of us. He is not asking us to try to get through it by ourselves. When God says “do not be afraid”, it is only the first half of what He says.