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The Deadliest Virus

I think my least favorite phrase for 2020 was “an abundance of caution”.

I turned on the news every morning to make sure the zombie apocalypse hadn’t started yet. The things I’ve been most thankful have been: my Jesus, my health, and my Disney+ account. 

No church, no theater, no sports…who knew waiting for the angel of death to pass over would be so tedious?

As a Christian, I certainly wasn’t immune to the Corona Virus. However, I do think I had an advantage over my friends who don’t believe in God. You see, we believers are taught to live everyday knowing our life is in God’s hands alone. Put bluntly, 

(a) There is a God.

(b) You are not Him.

Knowing these two will fight off a disease much older and deadlier than the Corona Virus: fear.

I’ll never forget the day after the 9/11 attacks, driving straight from Dallas, Texas back home to south Florida. My flight had been cancelled like all the rest. And those 17+ hours in the car, fearing the unknown and just wanting to hold my wife and kids, were pure torture.

Fear’s a powerful thing. Though it may have no physical force behind it, the threat of devastation is often worse than the object of our fear. People give in to despair and jump to the worst conclusion. They overreact and that reaction often causes greater damage than the original threat itself.

This is the secret the worst despots and manipulators of history have known. Find a threat, either real or imagined. Use that threat to make people run away in fear in the direction you desire. You don’t need actual power, just a potent cocktail of words and ominous shadows. 

Though the recent threat has been quite real, we still have an enemy using it to manipulate us. He knows he can destroy people, even those who never contract a physical illness. 

This is the secret Roosevelt knew when he said famously, at the start of WWII, our main enemy was not bombs or invasions, but “fear itself”.

Fear can color even good experiences with ominous clouds. It can destroy your ability to enjoy a life that others would die to have. It can make you overlook every single gift God has given, and begin to believe you’re cursed when you’re actually greatly blessed.

The pivot point is what you believe about God. Everything turns on whether you believe Him to be good, in spite of bad circumstances, or if you convince yourself He’s indifferent to your needs. 

I know this from experience. If you ask my wife about my flaws, thankfully she won’t tell you. But when the doors are closed and it’s just the two of us, we often laugh together about how fearfully I go through life.

How bad am I? Well, to use the old analogy:

Some people see the glass half full. Others see it half empty.

I see it full…of poison!

My default tendency is to expect the worst from every situation. In fact, expecting the worst is some kind of twisted comfort for me. If I mentally leap to the worst-case scenario, then I finally relax a bit. I know it’s nuts, but that’s the way my mind works. And it’s been the pathology for the whole Gipson side of the family for generations now.

“Doomsday Preppers” were amateurs compared to the Gipson family.

Sure, it’s good to be prepared and keep some money tucked away for a rainy day. Go ahead and buy the Apple Care insurance on that new laptop. But living in fear destroys everything beautiful you might experience. You can’t enjoy life if you’re worrying about death and disaster.

And that’s been Satan’s plan for us all along.

In what’s considered the oldest part of the Bible, the book of Job, we’re taught our enemy has limits and boundaries. Satan’s only allowed to do certain things in your life. So you can know nothing comes into your life that doesn’t go past God first. Sometimes what He allows is quite painful. But if He allowed it in, He had a PURPOSE for it being there.

So when Satan’s not allowed to destroy you physically, he’ll certainly come after you mentally. If he’s not allowed to make you lose your job, he’ll make you fearful of losing it every time you talk to the boss. If he can’t kill your family, he’ll destroy your good times with fear of their destruction on every car trip.

And to be blunt, if he can’t kill you with a virus, he’ll make you a nervous wreck avoiding it.

Sure, take precautions and be careful. Use common sense. But DO NOT GIVE IN TO FEAR. Fear will not preserve your life. It will only steal all the joy from living it.

A few months ago I was having lots of trouble sleeping. I wasn’t sure about God’s direction in several areas of my life. So every night, I just sat up and worried. I’d distract myself with TV, and then worry some more. After a while, I started believing God was probably through with me. Despair wrapped its arms around me like a python, tightening around my chest and squeezing the hope from me.

One day in the midst of my fear, God “took me to the woodshed” as we say down south. He reminded me I’m a child of the One who created heaven and earth, and whose infinite goodness I’d preached about repeatedly. And now my faithlessness was destroying me, while making my faith in God look like a lie.

That day, God gave me a specific prescription. He said, “I want you to go to your Bible and start collecting verses about faith. I want you to study that list on a daily basis. I want you to go on long walks and meditate on one verse per walk. And in that process, I want you to actually start believing again that I AM WHO I SAID I AM.”

So I did exactly what He told me. I made a list of those verses into my iPhone notepad, and referred to them every time I felt fearful. I meditated on them over long walks. I surrendered my will and rested in His faithfulness.

That’s when something happened I hadn’t anticipated. Within days, the uncertainty I was facing was answered in miraculous ways. Yes, I know that sounds too easy, and no, it wasn’t like a magic spell. Believing in “faith” wasn’t the key. But trusting in Him and surrendering to His goodness literally changed everything.

God had put me in a position where my future wouldn’t happen without His help. He’d let me come to the end of my ability to fix my own situation, and then shifted my focus from how powerless I was to how powerful He is! 

Through my little trial, I’ve learned more about placing my fears firmly on my Father’s shoulders. I was never meant to be in control. And if we try to carry that weight, it will crush us. Fear will destroy us well before what we fear every arrives (if it indeed ever does).

In these current crises, God is once again reminding us of our lack of power and control, while beckoning us to cry out to Him for help. Fear will destroy us, but faith in God will sustain us on the road to our destiny.

I’ve listed below seven of my favorite “faith verses” I meditated upon. When you’re tempted to fear, I hope you’ll do what I’m about to do again now with this new fear: take a little walk and meditate on just how big God is. 

Turn off the news for a while, and rest in the only One who can truly hold your life in His hands. Your hands aren’t big enough for all that weight, they were never meant to hold that much. So let Him have it, and fear not!

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. – Mark 11:24

For we live by faith, not by sight. – 2 Corinthians 5:7

God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind. – 2 Timothy 1:7

But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. – James 1:6

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. – Hebrews 11:6

Ask and keep on asking and it will be given to you; seek and keep on seeking and you will find; knock and keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you.  – Matthew 7:7

If you can believe, all things are possible for those who believe. – Mark 9:23

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Copyright © 2024 by David Gipson. All rights reserved.

Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.

Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.