Fear

There is good reason we get afraid. Fear protects us from doing things and being places that would harm us.But fear can become overwhelming. It robs people of joy. It hurts important relationships. It can become a barrier to life itself. Like every emotion, the good in fear can betray us and make us think we are just taking proper precautions, when in fact, we are being ruled by unreasonable distress.In a time like this, it's good for us to self-examine. Am I keeping fear in its proper place? Or is fear ruling me, my life, my decisions, my relationships?This isn’t a commentary on our state and federal guidelines that have been imposed. We also have an obligation to obey our governing officials, and I’m trusting that these discomforts, and even the harsh economic losses, will be to our benefit when it’s all said and done. This post isn’t about that at all. This is about you.Is the fear over this virus, or its economic fallout, leading your heart astray? Here’s a couple of questions to ask yourself.

• Am I communing with God with trust in his goodness and power?
• Will I continue to trust him if my fears are realized?
• Is this fear leading me to disobey Scripture?
• Is fear hurting my relationship with my spouse or other immediate family?
• Do my precautions appear unreasonable or foolish to people with wisdom?

Maybe those questions are not even necessary. Most people who are overrun by fear know that it’s ruling them, and want to be delivered. Here are a couple of helps.

1. Confront it. Verbalize what you are afraid of, out loud. Then, talk through what is right and good and how you should handle this situation, with wisdom, not fear.
2. Starve it. What’s feeding your fear? Is it a cable news station? Is it a fear-monger speaking into you regularly? It’s right to get a broad range of views from wise people. But fear-mongers are not wise. If you are spending a lot of time with someone who is overrun with fear, you probably will be as well. Replace that time with God’s word, and people with faith in the goodness of God.
3. Oppose it. Rather than giving way to fear and avoiding things you are afraid of, act out of your thinking, rather than your feeling. Whenever we follow our feelings, we fail. Let your faith lead your thinking, and then act on wise thinking, rather than following overwhelming fear.
4. Disarm it. Fear is disarmed when we do the things we are afraid of, and learn that it was nothing like we had imagined. My wife used to be scared to death to fly. So she became a flight attendant. Remember FDR’s famous line during the Great Depression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
5. Conquer it. Love conquers fear (1 John 4:18). Let your love for your spouse, children, close family and friends, and others, lead you to do the things you are afraid to do. That’s actually what caused my wife to become a flight attendant. She read 1 John 4:18, and said, “If I care for and serve others while flying, I can overcome the fear of it." And she did.

Actually, my wife is a great example in this. Linda was one who used to be plagued by fear over just about everything. It was her prison. It kept her from enjoying so much in life. But she made up her mind that fear had kept her from life long enough, and she worked through the above five steps. Fear is now her servant, and not her master. That can also be true of you.Like it or not, we are in the middle of a fearful time. For you, it may be your opportunity to kill the giant.