Where to begin… When I signed up for the World Race I wanted to be sure that it wasn’t about the countries or where I would really like to travel. That was the deciding factor between October and January for me. Then at training camp we found out our route. Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, and India. Cool. Central America, Asia, and Africa. I can just coast through Central America, then Asia and Africa will be extreme but awesome. That was a dumb though process let me tell you. I’m sitting in Costa Rica at the beginning of month 3 and the first two have been some of the hardest times in my life. The first month only two weeks into the race i had my appendix and left ovary out. Month two, two weeks in, there’s a guy with a gun at the hotel we are in. Me and a few teammates jumped out a window to try and find help. I’m not gonna harp on it but if you want to read some about what happened that night you should check out my teammate Jobie’s blog. To be quite honest I’m dreading the two week mark of this month. And if these are the countries that I expected to coast through what’s going to happen in the countries that I expected to be hard? What’s going to happen in the next eight months? Should I just give up and give in to the people back home who are continuously asking if these are just signs that I should go home? That the race is just too much? When you are afraid, confused, and basically just lost its easy to be swayed in the wrong direction. To lose your footing. To lose your focus. I don’t want that to be where I’m at. But Fear. It just keeps showing up. In different ways. And it can be hard to battle. The devotional I brought with me is referred to as the blue book in YL and it has a chapter on Fear. These are a few excerpts taken from it that really spoke to my heart.
The older I get, the more I realize that quite possibly the biggest single enemy of our spiritual lives (other than Satan himself) is fear. Fear seems to be at the very core of all the things that battle against my heart and soul. At the core of my busyness is fear. At the core of my insecurity is fear. At the core of my competitiveness… you guessed it – fear. Fear of not having what it takes. Fear of not having any value. Fear of not being lovable. The list goes on and on.
And maybe the main reason this enemy is so strong and dangerous is that by and large it is a hidden enemy. We never really look beneath the surface of our more familiar enemies to spot it. We rarely follow any of these foes down far enough to see what is at their root. And when we don’t know what we are really fighting, how can we possibly be victorious? We just keep getting defeated over and over agin. This fear robs us of the intimacy we were created for. It robs us of the freedom that God longs for us to enjoy. It robs us of genuinely loving relationships. It simply controls the way we live our lives.
What are we to do? How can we possibly fight against this? A first step would seem to be identifying and naming our fears. Somehow naming our fears takes some of their power away to control us. Ann Lamott once said, “When you make friends with fear, it can’t rule you.” Once our enemy is identified it makes it much easier to wage war.
Secondly, we need to remember that our real enemy (Satan) is the “father of lies.” He will use his lies to manipulate us into believing whatever he can. Because of this, it seems that we need to ask ourselves, “What lies are we believing that are simply not true? How is our seeing or thinking distorted?” When the disciples were on the sea battling against the storm (Mark 6:45-52) they screamed out in terror because they thought Jesus was a ghost. Now it wasn’t really a ghost upon the water… they just thought it was. It was their distorted thinking and seeing that gave power to their fears. Once they saw things clearly and therefore thought about things more accurately – they were able to put everything in perspective.
Which bring us to the biggest weapon we have been given to wage ware against fear – and that is what Joh calls “perfect love” (1 John 4:18). It is perfect love that puts everything in perspective for us. Once the voice of perfect love calls out to us, “Take courage It is I. Don’t be afraid.” Then we are reminded that the love of the one who made us, and called us into being, and cares for us more that we can even care for ourselves is in control of all things. ANd his heart for us is good – he can be trusted even when circumstances look dire because he loves us so immensely and completely. When he speaks His words of affection and peace and we hear and truly believe them; then we know that if he is with us – it will be well. Whatever it is, whatever the seas look like, it will be well.
-Jim Branch
And there is another important point about love, something we have heard often, maybe even know in our heads, but forget so easily once we close the Bible. God’s love is so powerful and expansive that it leaves no place for its hurtful, destroying opposite: fear. Fear is unholy; fear keeps us from God; fear itself can become a false and devouring god.
I wonder how many of our sinful ways of being and doing can be traced back to our fear: our fear of failure, our fear of change, our fear of growth, our fear of all that is other. The fruits of our fear are bitter: violence, spiritual deadness, and contempt toward all whom we would push to the margins. I suspect that most of our sinful isms – racism, sexism, ageism – are the fruits of fear.
-Margaret Guenther
I could post several more but this is already a rather long blog. So i’m going to end with this. I painted a mural last month and Elvis, who lived with us at the youth center found a canvas and asked me to paint it for him. So i painted a beach and asked Nikki to ATL (ask the Lord) for a verse to put on it for him. She found 2 Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” I don’t think it’s any kind of coincidence that this was the verse she chose. And that it wasn’t just for Elvis but for me as well. I am not called to have a spirit of fear. I will not have a spirit of fear. That is my prayer going into this month as well as the rest of the race. Please join me in that. Thanks!
