Facing Your Fears
“For God has given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound
mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7
One week after the 9/11 tragedy in 2001, I was invited by a
psychologist to speak to city workers in an adjoining community. The backlash of the event brought many fears
to the forefront. As people went around
the room to express what was going on inside of them, they were transparent and
they didn’t know how to handle the situation.
It became apparent through our time together, that fear has come to stay
in our society. I gently tried to remind
them of a foundation we can have, though life doesn’t always follow a script.
Retaliation. Biochemical warfare. Nuclear weapons. Stock
Market. School shootings. Apparent and real fear was coming from every
angle. Add to these things what we already see all the time, and you have a
recipe for paralysis. Evening news
programs such as 20/20 and Nightline highlighted the fear of babysitters, fear
of drought, fear of defective products,
and fear of salmonilla poisoning.
Russell Baker of the New York Times has been quoted often
as he wrote an article called, “The Good Things That Undone Poor Gum.” He talked about how all the things we
fear take a toll on us. He said, “They buried Gumbacher last week. The death certificate said he died of
coliosur gravis, more commonly known as spreading decline, but his friends know
better. Gumbacher was slowly scared to
death by the combined efforts of several thousand national campaigns to help
him live longer. At the end Gumbacher
simply had more terrors weighing upon him than the human body can support…Every
day science was discovering something Gumbacher had been exposed to all his
life was lethal.” Everywhere he turned he
was bombarded by dire predictions that he might be coming down with a dozen
different fatal conditions. He finally
concluded that all he could do was die.
When someone mentioned his plight to scientists, they replied, “If more
people in this land had the good sense to be afraid of living, they would live
longer.”
Interestingly, from the word “fear” comes the root word “phobia.” We use phobia to describe over 500 types of
fears:
-Claustrophobia (Fear of tight places)
-Hydrophobia (Fear of water)
-Acrophobia (Fear of
heights)
Arachnophobia
(Fear of spiders)
Cyberphobia (Fear of computers)
In many cases, live our lives as fearful people. But the answer is not to run or even hide from
our problems. The answer to fear (or better yet “revere”) the Savior who is
Lord of our fears. I’ve never counted for sure but I’ve been told there are 365
verses in the Bible that say, “Fear not.”
The number calculates to one verse for every day of the year.
The problem is we’re fearful and worried about the wrong
things. e need to regain the correct view regarding fear. The things God says not to fear, we fear. We fear what we can’t control. We fear
people or things. However, the things
God says to fear (or revere).
Corrie Ten Boom, Holocaust survivor, once stated, “I
fear man so little because I fear God so much.” Now that’s a good way to live.
Terry Risser
Reflections:
1) Describe a time where you went through
fear as an adult? As a child?
2) Take time today to acknowledge that
God is greater than our fears
Copyright 2014- Terry Risser
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