What if…
What if we stopped and looked a little more closely than our “pat answer” minds normally let us?
What if we started to get a glimpse into what makes us do what we do without the “obvious” answer of “sin”?
What if we dug a little deeper into the scriptures we know and love and find treasures and weapons and strategies?
What if there was a component that was bed fellows with our bad behavior and attitudes – a strong foe needing to be taken down?
What if taking down this foe also greatly reduced the strength and influence of sin in our lives?
This post may raise eyebrows. It might offend. But more than anything, I hope that it makes us think outside our own boxes and cliches. I hope that God uses it to open our eyes a little wider to how vast and amazing and powerful and loving He is and how all of those adjectives can thereby apply to the life He has for us here and beyond.
How did fear get here?
I think that fear began in the Garden of Eden. I think that when God set aside one tree that Adam and Eve weren’t to eat from, and after hearing the taunts of the tempter and his blatant lies, Eve was afraid. She was fearful that she was missing something she needed. She couldn’t trust that God had her best interest at heart when keeping her from that tree. The serpent promised that her eyes would be opened and she would know the difference between good and evil. Her eyes were opened all right. Everything she had experienced up to this point had been good. There was no evil in that garden until she responded to her own fear that told her that God was wrong and that she “needed” more. Fear (lack of trust in the One who knows ALL!) then joined hands with sin and turned Paradise into the world we now live in – now marred and marked by these friends, fear and sin. And immediately after eating the fruit and sharing it with her husband, Eve was afraid in a whole new way and hid herself from God.
I’m sure that this idea might not sit well with some of you. It’s easier to say that sin and pure selfishness were the reason for the fall. But I think that even selfishness at its very core is grounded in fear. Fear that God is not enough. Fear that He doesn’t really know my needs or my heart. Fear that what He has planned for me will somehow fall short of my own expectations. Fear that there is something more out there that I need to acquire that goes beyond what He has supplied and that is outside the loving boundaries of His will.
Fear can make us do crazy things. It can make us do nothing at all. It seems to either propel us in the wrong direction or paralyze us with no direction and in either case, no good comes of it. It causes our actions and reactions to be a knee jerk response to our feelings. It keeps our hands and feet from moving forward.
There are as many variations and types of fears as there are people on this planet. We can use a lot of different words – anxiety, distrust, guardedness, distress. But they all partner with sin of either admission or omission.
Fear, whatever its color, says:
– God is not aware
-God does not care
-God is not present
-God does not love me as He says He does
-God is not in control
-God has not provided all I need
-God does not know my heart like I do
In short, FEAR IS A LIE. Just like the lie the serpent told Eve, that told her that God didn’t have her best interest at heart. The lie that instilled the fear that drove the selfishness and sin.
And what is God’s anecdote to this fear? His presence. He IS there. He was out of sight in the Garden when Eve made the choice she did. She neglected to remember that He WAS there and that if she was having doubts and fears, she could have expressed them to Him. But instead, she reacted impulsively and let fear lock arms with sin.
The good news is, God was still there. He made His presence known and addressed their fear and covered their shame. He does the same today. When my fear of the future and all its unknowns rears its ugly head, the lie is that having so many things beyond my control is terrifying. The reality is that I am in the hand of the One who is working in and through every detail right now and in those future parts I can’t see yet. When I want to take matters into my own hand and react or respond out of a place of fear, the lie is that I am in charge of my own surroundings. The truth is that God is Omnipresent, Omnicaring, Omnilistening, Omniwatching, Omniinvolved.
Nothing that I choose to do out of fear ends well. Because it is based on lies. When it controls my actions it partners with other sins. When it dictates my silence and paralysis, it stands alone as the sin itself. And in the end, I am no more free of its deadly grip than I was before.
Fear cannot and will not be my motivator for action or inaction any more.
How much will the lack of fear in my life handicap the strength of sin’s grip? In how I see myself and others, in how I respond and react to people, in my attitudes and actions? Will the new boldness found in God’s mere presence enable new motivation and leave inactivity and apathy in the dust? Will I love with abandon and stretch beyond my own limitations without crippling hestitation? When fear is out of the equation reality is no longer terrifying but thrilling in both its challenges and its opportunities to see God work in ways I would have missed before.
So many times when Jesus said, “Do not fear” He also said, “I am with you”. He knew it was the only answer to this earthly plight. It’s why His name was Emmanuel, – GOD WITH US – when He came to earth to join us. It’s why, when He left earth, He gave us the Holy Spirit to accompany and guide and comfort us in His physical absence. To remind us that He will never leave or forsake us. That we need never have abandonment issues where He is concerned. The God who always was, always is and always will be – here and present long after anything we could possibly fear is done and gone.
I’m memorizing the verses I posted yesterday in Romans 8:31-39 –
What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.
Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
My hope is that the truth of these words will bleed so deeply into my heart that their message sounds in my ears with every beat of my heart.
Proverbs 29:25 – The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.
Isaiah 41:10 – “Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you.”
Matthew 14:27 – But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
