20 Feet Above
This week, my teammate and I faced something that we didn’t realize would be such a challenge. Our team was given a variety of work projects for the week to choose
from. Neala and I chose painting the inside of the church…. the beams that go across the ceiling to be exact. “It’ll be fun!” at least, that’s what I thought before we climbed up and realized theres nothing to hold onto when your standing on two 4×2 boards 20 feet up in the air. Being up there is one thing, painting up there was a whole new ballgame! We conquered our fears though and we painted til our hands were cramping! The third day of painting was when the lesson came.
“The Enemy’s goal is to lure us into accepting his lies and limitations at face value.” -Crash the Chatterbox
The church roof is at a slant, so we took off one level of scaffolding to paint the lower end. We’re not quite as high up now, so it seemed like it would be less of a challenge, but our boards are on the very top of the scaffolding. Theres nothing around us and now we have to reach a little more to paint all of the area we are working on. I stand up to reach out about three feet and I realized that the board we were standing on had a little give in it. I told Neala, “It’s kinda weird to think about how much trust we are putting in these two pieces of wood.” I was immediately overcome with fear to the point I was tempted to get down. The”What-if’s” sat in..”.what if the boards break, what if I fall, what if the scaffolding gave out? There’s two people up here, the boards are going to break if I stand up.”
The odd thing about that moment was that we had been using the same boards for the whole week. We never had a reason to question if they would hold us up. The sudden onset of fear really had no solid base until I gave it one by entertaining it. That’s how fear works. It doesn’t have any ground to stay until we give it permission.
As the moment happened I wondered, how often do I treat my relationship with God like I’m 20 feet above ground and standing on two 4×2 boards? He’s never given me a reason to distrust Him, to second guess Him… but the moment He asks us outside of our comfort zone, we all of a sudden feel a risk of falling hard and hitting the ground. It’s not that our hearts distrust Him. I believe we allow simply allow fear to have roots to stay and it causes a battle within us. What happens when we know the heart of God so well that we don’t entertain the fear- therefore, we don’t allow it to have standing grounds or take root. I think we would realize much sooner that our security isn’t from holding onto something while standing up on two 4×2 boards, but that our security rather lies in the fact that God is holding us up with His right hand as we walk where He has called us.
God is fighting for you. He is for you! He is on your side!
He is faithful. Your security isn’t within yourself or what you can hold onto. Your security is in trusting Him alone. Trust in His promises! Hasn’t He always taken care of you? Things may not turn out the way you see they should, but hasn’t He always been faithful? That’s something we all need to be reminded of. He is faithful. Don’t let fear steal the security that truth brings.
“Fear doesn’t evaporate, it must be evicted…you either kick fear out of your heart, or it will keep you out of the places God has prepared for you” -Crash the Chatterbox
with love,
Andie
