This week I just want to give you a peek inside my heart. Statistically I won’t get as many hits or even comments on a blog like this compared to something with a jazzy title or pictures of orphans in Africa, but it’s what’s most relevant to me right now…it’s special.
This week at my twice-monthly house church meeting, The Gathering, we talked about fear.
Fear just isn’t something you think a lot about until you feel it. That’s the way a lot of things in life are. Things are never more important than when they directly affect you. I don’t really think a lot about fear, or if I’m afraid of something, or what my response would be in a moment of fear.
And yet…I’ve been afraid.
They say there are 3 responses to fear:
Fight
Flight
Freeze
I have a weird hybrid of the three…it’s called anxiety. I usually get it when my world is out of whack, in turmoil, or especially (and most predictably) in transition. The “unknown” is my monster in the closet. Michael Hindes (my spiritual father) told me recently that he knows that to feel better about things in my life I need a game plan. I don’t need to cry on a shoulder, I don’t need to vent (although I will until I have a game plan), I don’t even need to be “taken care of”…I need some reassurance that there’s a path through the quagmire.
This anxiety, at least for me, lives in my mind. The second I wake up my mind goes from 0 to 100 mph in about 3 seconds. I think about what’s happened, what’s likely to happen, what should have happened, what might happen, who might be there, how they reacted, how they should have reacted, how they might react, how I hope they won’t react, what I’ll do when that happens, and in between all of that I’ll actually try living out my life.
It’s an exhausting existence…
And yet, I wouldn’t have said I was afraid… but I was.
Fear is more than getting scared of the dark or snakes or getting startled. It’s worry, terror, horror, timidity, anxiety…it’s a simple emotion with a multitude of expressions.
Fear was the first negative emotion. I’m serious. Think about Genesis 3. Adam and Eve disobey God, their eyes are opened and Scripture says they 1) got embarrassed because they were naked and so they covered themselves…they were afraid to be seen, then 2) when Adam HEARD God, he hid…and he even says “I was afraid…”
If you look at life, at humanity, we are collectively striving to overcome this most instinctual of emotions…fear.
In Timothy Paul is very clear however: GOD hasn’t give you a spirit of FEAR. GOD has given YOU a spirit of POWER, a spirit of LOVE and a SOUND MIND.
Monday night I got delivered from this attack of fear. I surrendered my display of faithlessness and got a reprieve from the Spirit from my revved up mind…and I found peace. I had to fight for it…then surrender it. Courage isn’t the absence of fear. Faith isn’t either.
As Jesus said, have faith! don’t you know the wind and the waves are at my command?! why are you SO afraid?!
I’m not afraid. Not because I don’t feel anxious, but because I choose peace, I choose faith. I am not a coward. I am a man of courage. Fear has no mastery over me and I am not at its mercy. So be joyful, heart.
