I am a pretty fearful guy. For most of my life, I have been paralyzed by fear. Whether it was presenting for a group project, making new friends, or asking the cashier at Wendy’s for a refill, I have always let fear rule my decisions when it comes to interactions with people. With the actually dangerous and life threatening stuff I was careless. Ask me to throw my body off a plane with some rando I have never met and I am there. But as soon as you ask me to potentially make a fool of myself and ask a cashier if I can apply a $10 coupon to my purchase after the fact, forget about it.
Then, in 2019 God called me to go on the worldrace and He led me to do things I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing. He called me light years beyond my comfort zone and he forced me to ask myself how much of my comfort zone I am willing to surrender to him. I did lots of preaching, standing in front of lots of people and I probably looked crazy or foolish on at least a few occasions.
In 2020, God exposed to me the roots of my fears. He let me see parts of myself I wish were not real. He exposed my innermost being and put me in more uncomfortable situations than I have ever been in before. I have been afraid of looking foolish, being judged, misunderstood and ultimately ignored for most of my life, but God is preparing me for situations that may require me to give up my life for eternity.
At the beginning of 2020, God spoke to me the verse 2 Corinthians 5:7 which says “Walk by Faith, not by Sight”. 2020 would be a year that would require me to make bold steps of faith based on every word I hear come out of his mouth. There is always a great divide between fear and faith. I hear people say if you walk by faith, you won’t leave room to walk in fear. They are mutually exclusive. I was taught that fear is a liar. In one sense, this is true. Faith and fear are mutually exclusive. If you walk in one, you won’t walk in the other. But walking in faith doesn’t mean you won’t have fear. And fear doesn’t always lie. Sometimes the thing you fear most is exactly what is going to happen.
When Jesus was at the garden of Gethsemane, he was sweating drops of blood because he knew what he was about to endure was the worst thing that any person could ever have to endure, the full unrestrained Wrath of God. There is no fear that I have that even compares. I would venture to guess that Jesus felt tremendous Fear at this point. Knowing exactly what his fate would be and the promise of the future, brought him no consolation. What he was about to endure would be the worst thing anyone on this earth could ever go through.
This is where the Lord heavily convicted me. Jesus may have felt fear in the time leading to his crucifixion. But, he didn’t walk in it.
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”
1 John 4: 18
“Greater love has no one than this: than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
John 15:13
Jesus dreaded every moment of the cross just as anyone would have and probably even more, knowing he would bear the full weight of God’s wrath against all evil. But, he decided in the garden of gethsemane that you and I were worth it. He decided that doing God’s will, no matter where it got him was worth it. His faith to follow through on what he knew was God’s will didn’t make the pain he experienced on that cross any less real. There really was reason to fear. But, fear didn’t rule Jesus’ heart, Love did.
In 2020, God called me to expose my heart. He called me to love freely, and to expect to get hurt as his Jesus did. Loving freely in a broken world always results in pain. I have experienced more emotional pain and heart ache in 2020 than ever before. I let people get closer to me than ever before and I have never been so known by anyone than I have been in my life. The deepest parts of my heart that I didn’t want people to know have been exposed. And many of my greatest fears were realized last year. To love freely at its core, involves exposing the heart, it involves vulnerability and transparency and there is always risk associated with that. But God showed me in 2020 that it’s always worth it. Loving as he called us to love is liberating and frees us from the need to expect a certain outcome from our love. Walking in fear hurts people. Walking in love heals people. God continuously exposes my heart and reveals to me what areas of my life are still being dominated by fear. As I continue walking with Him and remembering how Jesus faced fear, reminding myself that the person right in front of me is worth it, God will continue to transform my heart so that I will look more like him everyday.
