The Roots of My Fear
The reality of fear is everywhere. It doesn’t matter where you are in life, fear is there with you. There is no place in this world you can go to hide from it, and if you try, you become afraid of being afraid.
I have been in Guatemala for almost a month now. I have seen so many things, met so many people, and experienced so many new places. This is my first time ever leaving the United States, and when I left, I was without fear for myself. I still feel as though I am that way, to live is Christ, to die is gain. But being in a new area, a place that has different rules, customs, roads, everything, has given me some perspective on fear itself.
The question of “what is fear?” has been on my mind. I have realized through study, meditation, and experience that fear is simply a synonym of another word.
CONTROL.
I used to be a very fearful person, afraid of heights, truth, pain, I was afraid of being afraid. The more I look, the more I see. I let my emotions control where I was. When I was in school, I had fear for my performance, and I let it get to me. In my mind, I had to do everything correct, so everyone liked me, because the thought of not being liked terrified me.
Those aren’t the only examples of how I let fear control me. There was a point in my life when I could not feel the presence of God. I got mad, I got upset, I was tired of it. One day in my car, I don’t remember where I was driving to, but I remember screaming in my car. “GOD WHERE ARE YOU! WHY AREN’T YOU WITH ME!” I did that for a solid ten minutes, and was sobbing and screaming. That is when he put a certain memory on my mind. I am sitting in the middle of chapel at senior high maranatha, and I felt convicted to do something, something that I was afraid of. Instead of doing it, I was reminded of the Pharaoh and how he hardened his heart, so I said I will harden my heart towards God, over and over in my mind, and the conviction went away. So there I am sitting in my car remembering that.
That’s when I heard God speak to me. I audibly heard him tell me to do the same thing I was convicted of sitting in that chapel, to tell my earthly father about my addiction to pornography. I was filled with fear once again, and I let myself stew in it. I was not afraid of my father, but I was afraid of my image. In my mind, I needed to be a good perfect son, and admitting my mistake would eliminate that. No one is perfect and I knew that, but I let it scare me. I let it control me, for an entire year after I heard his voice. I was not being filled with the Spirit, because I was letting myself be filled with fear.
So fast forward a year, I am now working at the same bible camp I had been a camper at. I am signed up to go on the world race, and have a great community behind me. The conviction to tell my father about porn is back, but something is different this time. I have the fear of the Lord in my heart. With the community of brothers and support from my camp family, I was able to do it.
The fear of Lord is an interesting thing, It is often associated with awe inspiring emotions, the way that you feel when you are staring out at the vastness of an ocean, looking into the midst of the grand canyon, or standing at the edge of everest seeing the curvature of the earth. I do believe this is a piece of what it means to have the fear of the Lord in your heart, but what if there is so much more than that? If fear be a synonym for control, what if you are willingly giving that control to God? Having the fear of the Lord is having an urgency in your heart that will give you no choice but to inspire action in your life. If you are afraid of a spider, and there is one walking in front of you, there are three things going through your head:
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Run like my life depends on it, because it does
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Scream like a little girl
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I’m going to prison for arson because I just set my house on fire…
Think about the way our lives would be different if we had that kind of urgency, gave that control to God to inspire our actions. The things that hold us back in our faith, are most often the things we are afraid of. We are afraid of poverty, so we pour all of our lives into a false security. We make our jobs and positions our idols, because they keep us comfortable. We are afraid of death, so we do our best to live lives that are safe. We create safety boxes around our hearts and bodies, so that we can never get hurt again, without realizing that same box has no holes, and we are dieing from lack of air. We are afraid of judgement, so we create fake selves in order to conform to the societal norms and hide from anyone seeing who we really are, but then we wonder why we feel like nobody actually knows us.
Fear is control, and control is chains that hold you back from the glory in which you were created to have. The crazy thing about the fear of God is that when you have it, it is Freedom. When you have the fear of God in your heart, everything else becomes a lot less scary. If God is in control of your life, then what is there to worry about, NOTHING! It is an understanding that to live is Christ, and to die is gain. When I put my fear in the Lord, it takes away my fear of sickness, or injury, of terrorists, or even death. I am free from fearing the unknown, because there is nothing unknown to Him. My freedom is deeper than physical chains, but my mental, emotional, and spiritual chains are gone as well. Speaking in the name of the Lord isn’t scary when all you are willingly in the control of Him who speaks through you.
Christ knows who you are, not who you say you are, but who is hidden inside the mask that is presented to culture. He knows who you were made to be, and where you were made to go. The only thing that holds you back from going to those places or becoming that person, is you. Believe it or not, there is more in this world than a promotion, and an extra level of security. Life is not always brick walls and white picket fences. The pinnacle of life is not a husband or wife, and children do not define who you are in your later years of life. We were made to do and be so much more than that. God made a world of majesty, He crafted a beautiful land of adventure and glory for us to be a part of.
I am not saying that having a home, and a family is a bad thing. They are great things! But letting things have control over you is a bad thing. It is giving fear over to your things that creates chains in your life. Losing your home is a possibility, losing your job is a probability, and losing your life is a necessity. Having fear that one will happen will inspire actions that are not in alignment with God. But having fear in God, will inspire actions that will change your circumstances.
There are plenty of things that I can be afraid of when I am not in the U.S. I have the ability to overcome those fears, simply put because when I am in the presence of God they are not scary. The one who has created all things and is above all things is with me. I know who goes before me, I know who stands behind, The God of angel armies, is always by my side. We all sing that song, but how many of us believe the words we say. Knowing and believing are two very different things. Are you going to let your circumstances control you, or are going to let God control you and your circumstances. The God who has a plan for you, a plan not for evil, but for hope.
As always, with a servant’s heart,
Will Powers
