Monday, November 14, 2011

Fear...

My sister Abby is a wise old soul (she looks 20, but don’t be fooled… :) Truly, some of the things that she says blow me away. It’s usually late at night when we’re chatting about the intricacies of life that these profound statements of truth jump out of her mouth and change my life. One late night a few years ago, I was fretting about something insignificant, tears staining my pillow, when Abby looked at me and said, “Johanna – worry is the opposite of faith.” And my life was forever changed.

Okay, that may sound a little dramatic (hey, it’s me we’re talking about here – dramatic is my middle name sometimes… :) but what she said is true. I had never thought about the fact that worrying is the antithesis of faith in Christ. How can I profess to be a child of the living God who trusts the Father, yet continue to worry constantly about the silliest of things in life such as what to eat for breakfast or what to wear?  If God can dress the lilies in the field with glorious golden garments can he not also take care whether or not I will have cereal in the morning? 

Fear and worry are natural, but destructive, responses to lack of control over the future. They are natural to our sinful nature – their roots go back to the garden.  Both of them are rooted in mistrust of God. The Enemy’s main goal is to get us to doubt the goodness of God – can we really trust God? Is God really good? Fear and worry disable us and make us incapable of stepping forward or backward – we are stuck in time.

But fear and worry are two different kinds of mistrust. Fear is specific… for example: I am afraid of the dark, afraid of failure, afraid of the unknown, afraid of rejection. These things are tangible, real, immediate. Scary. Sometimes, fear is healthy (fear of pain keeps you from burning yourself on the stove). But the fear that binds us is irrational fears placed by the Enemy to keep us in bondage, in chains. Fear seems larger than life, making our problems bigger and our God smaller.

Worry is a fear as well, but it is not based on immediate reality and seemingly rational fears. It is an irrational fear of "mights" and "what-ifs". It is a fear of the future - which never comes - and it keeps us from living in the present. It is the opposite of trust and faith in the One who redeems us and lifts us out of the pit. It is a vine that entangles us and keeps us from living life to the fullest potential that God has planned for us. For me. For you. 

One of the most repeated commands in scripture is “FEAR NOT”. Why? “Because I am with you”…

 The only thing that we have is faith in Jesus Christ – a hope rooted in reality and truth, not a blind wishing upon a star. He is who sets us FREE from the bondage of fear and worry. The Lord is my light and my salvation - of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1) Proclaim the freedom for the captives which Christ died for! He did not die so that we could still be enslaved by fear and worry - he died so that we could be FREE.

 Do you want to be free? I do.


(and if God's got the flowers taken care of, then how much more will He take care of me? How much more has he already cared for me? He's got a perfect track record...)