Fear This

Fear This

“The Lord is my light and my salvation---whom shall I fear?” Psalm 27:1(NIV)

I heard a sermon this past weekend while visiting a church (thanks Mike Lynn) and in His message on Courage He talked about FEAR. He said that most people respond to their fears with AVOIDANCE and avoidance takes the form of procrastination, denial, or indecisiveness. We avoid things we fear whether that be physical, emotional, or mental things. When we avoid something whether we are putting it off with procrastination, or we are in denial that there is a problem, or we can't decide on how to face it, so we don’t decide, but really not deciding is deciding, deciding not to face it.

Fear is a natural feeling or emotion. We fear things we don’t know, haven’t tried, or haven’t dealt with before. Like snakes, heights, roller coasters, public speaking, or certain foods. We also fear facing certain situations like confronting someone who has wronged us, confronting an employee who is not doing their job, or confronting a friend in love because you notice their destructive behaviors. We also can fear overcoming things like our own struggles, problems, faults, or issues. We don’t want to face the death of a loved one, our divorce, our break-up, our job loss, or our financial situation. We can avoid, make excuses, run, hide, deny, blame, rationalize, justify, run around in circles, or pretend it’s not there, but no fear ever goes away. It is either faced with courage or it rules our lives.

Courage is not the absence of fear, it’s facing and overcoming something despite our fears. As a matter of fact, God reminds us in the Bible we have nothing to fear in this world because He is our light and our salvation. The only fear we should have is a reverent fear of God because of His power and holiness. Our fear of God is out of respect, but also should be out of love as we develop a relationship with Him. Because of that relationship we can have with God, it gives us the courage to face our fears and with God’s help we can face any fear no matter how scared we are, no matter how big the obstacle, no matter how uncomfortable the situation. The beginning of courage is overcoming our human nature to run from our fears.

Whatever your fears today, know that God is with you always if you allow Him to be and that He will supply the wisdom, strength, comfort, guidance, support, and direction you need to overcome any fears in your life, no matter what it is. God will give you the courage you need to work through your fears and overcome them. You cannot do it alone, but with God you can overcome any fear.