About Fear

As people with beautiful souls in a broken world, we've become well acquainted with many kinds of fear.

There's the fear of failing that test; not finding a job; never feeling better; never finding out where we fit in all of this.

It will manifest itself in a variety of ways.  It might be the worry that makes all your days seem unbearably long yet agonizingly too short - the kind that is the source of your gray hair.  Fear could be what drives you to tears and panic as you're held a captive to your own mind.

Fear isn't make-believe.  You can't tell someone they can't be sad because others have it worse any more than you can say they can't be happy because others have it better.  Sometimes it takes a re-working of the schedule, a weeding out of stress.  Other times it requires a re-working of both mind and spirit, a tearing down of the Devil's strongholds.

But do you know what else?

Fear is a lie.  Whole multitudes of shrieking falsehoods the Devil throws at our hearts like daggers.

The lie that God isn't going to provide, that He doesn't care, He isn't big enough to solve our problems, that He doesn't heal our bodies or our souls.  It's the lie that God is ashamed of our weakness, that Christ's death isn't enough for us, that somehow we've got to do it on our own.

In essence, all fear is the belief that God's love ends.  

As G. K. Chesterton wrote about fairy-tales, we may also say of the gospel - "...It accustoms [us] for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear."  Our God is a god who reigns over fear.